did your fyp fuck with your feelings?

We’ve hit mid-August. You know… that stretch where summer’s not quite over yet but you can feel it starting to wind down, and your IG feed is a nonstop highlight reel of other folks’ rooftop dinners, European vacays, and unexpected hard launches while you’re possibly on the couch feeling a specific type of way about your current situation(ship) and lack of trust fund/ability to fly to the South of France on a moment’s notice. Or maybe it’s just me?

They say comparison is the thief of joy, but it’s especially brutal when you’re single or stuck in something undefined and the summer clock is quickly counting down to back-to-school (aka cuffing) season. But before you start spiraling about your perception that everyone has someone but you, let’s find our way back to reality and get to the heart of what that feeling actually is, because I promise you it’s probably not what you think.

Let’s get into it.

– Holly

Actually… before we get into it… Episode 2 of Hot Girl Propaganda drops today: "It Will Happen When You Least Expect It." You know, that line you’ve heard a million times from all of your couple friends? The one that absolves them of any guilt over the fact that they get to go home and crawl into bed with their boo and you’re still the odd man out figuring out how to split the bill with 2 couples at every dinner. It’s the second saying we’re putting on trial, and it also just so happens to be the perfect companion to today’s tool, since both cover the garbage stories the world loves to feed us about timing, and what it means to be “behind.” Go subscribe and tell me what you think in the comments, then come back and we can address your feed-induced spiral :)

THE CONTEXT

Let’s just call a spade a spade - if there was a contest for most performative season, we all know Summer would be winning that 1st place prize by leaps and bounds. Everyone’s out and about, everyone’s documenting and publicizing, and your social media feed turns into a nonstop slideshow of that random friend with 3 roommates and student loans who somehow got invited on a yacht trip in Greece and met the love of their life in the process. The cherry on top is the seasonal timing of it all, because when August hits, it does something very specific to your brain (or at least it does to mine).

August means Summer is ending soon, which means Fall is around the corner, which means the holiday season is a hop, skip and a jump away, and you’re suddenly doing the math in your head about how many months you have before you have to show up to another Thanksgiving single, ending another year solo, and how you might avoid the same conversation with the same aunt about if you’re “seeing anyone.” It’s like the Groundhog Day of singledom on steroids. So panic sets in, you re-download Hinge for the 5th time this year, swipe for twenty minutes, feel even shittier, and re-delete it more convinced than ever that you might be destined to die alone.

But the real problem with the spiral from comparing yourself to everyone else is that feeling behind makes you cling a little harder to whatever is right in front of you in that moment, even if whatever is in front of you takes six hours to text back and you’ve never seen the inside of their apartment.

THE TOOL

Don’t worry, no one will ever gaslight you here. This is a safe space. The feeling of wanting someone, of wanting love and partnership - that is absolutely real. It’s how you’re interpreting it that typically starts to cross some internal wires. So next time the doomscrolling has you convinced the DJ who texts you at 2am on Tuesdays is your future spouse, go through this chart, and ask yourself which column you’d check off when you’re seriously contemplating a future with the fuckboy you’ve spent the last three weeks rolling around with:

If your yearning for them fades the second you’re out living your life but reappears the second you’re scrolling on your phone, that’s not real desire. It’s a scarcity mindset manufactured by your IG algorithm and the fuel that keeps every dating app in business: the terrifying feeling that you’re running out of time and all the “good” ones are taken.

So please, I beg of you. Close the app, put the phone down, go touch some grass and remind yourself of what you were really yearning for before our little enemy, comparison, aka the thief of joy, hijacked it from you.

if this one hit, tips are always appreciated

also acceptable form of tip: taking yourself on a solo date and refusing to feel weird or bad about it.

THE TAKEAWAY

The Italian Riviera yacht girl? Guess what - she’s got her own 2am spiral. The couple that just hard launched out of nowhere might be in love or they might actually be one fight away from a very public breakup. And the truth is you will never really know from whatever they’re curating for their socials, so grading yourself against their perceived relationship status is a complete waste of time. Because what you’re really comparing yourself to is 10 seconds someone took an hour to edit to make sure it looked perfect. And that, my friends, is just simply not a fair fight.

So please, for the love of all that is holy, do NOT let that feeling push you into a state of settling for less than you deserve. The real danger isn’t feeling bad, it’s settling because you’re afraid to be left behind.

You’ve got this. I’m rooting for us.

xoxo,
Holly