Imagine being hated just for loving someone

I relate a lot to Hailey Bieber.

Not in a, typical, Gen-Z, “clean girl,” Rhode beauty-connoisseur kind of way — although the Pocket Blush in Toasted Teddy is the shade that I wear, every day. Nor is it in a vapid, aesthetic-emulating type of way. After all, there are many things about Hailey and I that could not be more different, starting with the fact that she is a 5’8” blonde model from New York and I am a 5’1” brown-skinned girl from California. Both come with their own strengths, which is neither here-nor-there for the context of this story. But in spite of our glaring differences, there’s something about her soul that I can quite relate to.

Loving someone that the entire world wishes you didn’t.

It’s a complex conversation that few people can relate to, and even in drawing this comparison, I must give a few caveats. Of course, the hate, jealousy, and opposition that both she and I get are on completely different scales. After all, I’m not waking up to press articles every day, talking about the intimate details of my love life. I’m also not logging online to see millions of comments with vapid-discourse about why I don’t deserve to be with the man that I love. It feels important for me to note that I, in my relatively-much-smaller reach, cannot possibly understand what it’s like for Hailey to experience pushback on such a big level.

And yet, in many ways, I understand her more than the average person would. For I too know what it’s like to feel hated by the world (re: my world) just simply for loving someone.

There’s a side to this conversation that I think many people can understand — after all, I know plenty of women who have had a boyfriend that their friends didn’t like. Just a few years ago, I was that girl, too. On that account, it’s because he was shitty, and there’s unfortunately not a more palatable word to describe it. Not just shitty towards me, but shitty towards my friends, as well. When it comes to watching one of your friends be so intimately intertwined with a man like that, it makes sense that it would put a sour taste in your mouth. After time-and-time-again of watching your friend get hurt, it’s inevitable that eventually, it would get old. Like chewing a piece of gum past the point of its flavor, eventually, there comes a time where you need to spit it (re: your disdain) out.

But there’s another side to this conversation that I think is less universally-understood, and that is the side where people love your partner so much, that they cannot stand to see you with them. The side where people hold their own opinions, based on their idea of the type of woman who deserves to be with them. Few people ever meet a man that great, that it elicits that type of public response. Without assuming how she feels, or putting words in her mouth, I imagine it’s something that Hailey has experienced.

And, much like Hailey, I have been on the receiving end of it, too.

It’s the spring of 2023, and I’m sitting inside a buzzy coffee shop on San Francisco’s Polk St. The sun is shining through the windows, causing rainbows to dance off of my laptop screen. I’m perched at the counter, sipping on a vanilla caramel latte, as a woman walks into the shop that I can only recognize as one of his friends. He, being the man that I’ve been dating for the last 10 months, who I’m very deeply (and openly) in-love with.

I wave and smile as she walks my direction, and we exchange a simple hug. I don’t know her well, save for a few sporadic, prior interactions, but I’m determined to make a good impression. After all, I love this man, and like most partners, I want the people in his life to love me, too. It’s the first time that I’ve run into her without him here, so I take it as an opportunity to get to know her.

But the conversation goes south quicker than I could have imagined, as she asks about my relationship and I tell her that I’m happy. “You know he doesn’t really care about you, right?” she says, poignantly. “He’s just using you, girl. You know this. And you know, he can do better too, right? He has options.”

I stare at her, dumbfounded as to how she can talk to another woman like this, least of all when she’s in a relationship of her own — something that the glimmering, vintage diamond on her finger inevitably signals to. I watch her shrug her shoulders with the sort-of ease that one would if they had just told me that the sky was blue. Dumbfounded in the moment, I respond back, “You know that I have options too… right?”

He’s just using you. I chew over the words as my mind instantly flashes back to February of the same year, when a woman at his work tried to tell me a similar thing. She talked up stories of hearing him in the back office late at night, laughing as he chatted on the phone to a woman. As my call log full of late-night, six-hour phone calls would suggest… that woman was me. If there’s one thing that being an avid reader will teach you, it’s to always consider the narrator of the story. And a narrator that, you later find out, tried to get him to take his clothes off with her… is what we’d call an unreliable one.

But I can’t help but smile inside of the sun-soaked coffee shop, as a peripheral friend tells me her unsolicited thoughts on my relationship. I thank her for her feedback, curtly, and my stomach twists in knots as she turns around to leave. Suddenly, I’m replaying the late night calls and good morning texts; the clothes he picks out just for me, and the way he holds me tightly in his arms when I cry. The dinners with his parents, trips for my birthday, and the gentle reminder that, “we don’t always have to have sex. I really enjoy just talking to you, just as much.” How could any of this love come from a man who was simply just… using me? Her story contradicted my entire, lived reality. Was I just supposed to believe her, simply on the account that she was one of his friends?

More doubt creeps into my head as I remember my conversations with his sister-in-law — a presumptuous, blonde woman who I tried so hard to befriend, but who loved to remind me how much I didn’t deserve him. Tears flood my eyes, and I want to cry. Not because of their words alone, but because it validates the story inside of my head. One that says that I’m not good enough, that I’m not worthy of love, and that finding a man who truly loves me is downright impossible — namely, a man as kind, beautiful, and successful as he is. The voice of my ex-boyfriend echos through me ear, as I replay the moments in our breakup when he said, vehemently, that he could not shake the gut-feeling that, “he could do so much better than me.” Having the courage to love, after a conversation like that, required me to shatter every single protective wall that I’ve placed around my heart. And after this conversation, I want to build them right back up again.

There’s a lot of discourse online about how much strength and self-confidence it takes from a man, in order to be with a beautiful woman. Yet, we seldom talk about how much strength it takes, the other way around. In a world where it can feel like finding a good man is like searching for a needle in a haystack, we forget to talk about how much strength is required from a woman, once she finds that good man. Not because of the way that he treats her, but because of the way that the world dissects her, in order to decide whether or not she’s worthy. That’s the irony in all of this — we (societally) place good men on such a pedestal, yet we question whether or not they have good judgement when they finally bring a woman around. We assume that if he’s good in all areas, then surely that must be the one where he has it all-wrong. We size-up the other woman, as a means of boasting our own ego or licking our own wounds around not being able to find a good man. Never once, do we stop to consider the fact that he actually might want to be with her.

When Hailey and Justin announced their engagement to the world, Hailey inevitably became a trending topic — and the discourse surrounding her wasn’t very kind. In 2023, she was the subject of a viral hate train, where the internet (namely, TikTok), accused her of being mean, sent her death threats, and body-shamed her online. Was any of it rooted in reality? Likely not, considering that it came from people who had never had a personal interaction with her. Would she have received the same level of hate, had she not been with Justin? This answer is pure speculation, of course, but I think it’s safe to assume that she would not.

The next inevitable question that one would ask, is why do it? I’ve seen this question floated around online so often, particularly when it comes to Hailey. If the hate was so hard for her to handle, then why does she still choose to stay with him?

Again, I don’t want to put words in her mouth — nor do I want to pretend like I know her. But if I can empathize with her from the context of my own experience, I can imagine that her answer would be quite simple: love, really is the only answer. When it feels as if the world is knocking you down for who you choose to be with, money, good looks, or a prestigious career are not nearly enough to hold you over. After all, looks fade, money comes and goes, and no career lasts forever. If those are the superficial anchors tethering you to a relationship, then your ship is eventually bound to sink. The only way to prosper through a relationship with this amount of public scrutiny, is to be so deeply convicted in the love that you have for that person, that nothing else truly matters.

Not only that, but a deep sense of security, knowing that your heart is in the right place, your intentions are pure, and that you love someone enough to accept all of them… even if that means that others won’t accept you.

I want to clarify that there’s a difference between others not liking you based on merit, and other’s not liking you based on their assumption of you. The first one is valid, and I’m a big believer that if someone doesn’t like me based on a real, personal interaction that we had, then they are fully justified in their opinion. But if it falls into the latter category, that’s where it becomes harder to deal with. And that’s where the Universe is asking you to return to love.

The most ironic part of this, is that when you find yourself in a relationship that’s thematically similar to Hailey and I, others will justify their disdain based on their love for the other person (your partner). Yet, if love is justified on the basis of hatred, then it cannot be considered love at all. If your love is only further vindicated by your unjustified dislike for the person that they love, then that is the furthest thing from unconditional. In fact, I’d go as far as to argue that unconditional love is not displayed by those who wait on the sidelines for the woman in their dream-man’s life to stumble. Rather, it’s the woman in the relationship herself — the one who continues to prevail, in spite of the hatred that she receives — who actually embodies what unconditional love means.

For unconditional love directly translates to, “love without condition.” Which means, continuing to choose love… even when it’s hard, and the circumstances are unfavorable.

It reminds me a lot of the sentiment shared by researcher Brené Brown in her infamous Man in the Area speech. In this speech, she references Theodore Roosevelt’s 1910 speech, “Citizenship in a Republic,” where she says the following…

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.…”

In this case, the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, refers to those outside in the peanut gallery. The man who is actually in the arena, is none other than the woman who chooses to remain inside of the relationship, herself.

I know who I am and what I’m capable of. I know that my intentions are nothing but pure — as does the man that I love. And if you’re going to choose to be in the arena, then that is the level of self-assurance and tenacity that is required. It’s not to say that you aren’t allowed to have days where perhaps you don’t feel quite as confident. But if you allow the outside noise of those around you to dictate the choices that you make, you will find yourself sitting further away from love, while simultaneously sitting no closer to having anyone else’s approval. If you’re going to be in the arena, then you must be prepared to receive cuts and scrapes. You must also trust that even if your skin gets scraped, it will grow back thicker and stronger.

If I were looking for an easy relationship, I certainly would not have stayed. But the older I get, the more that the Universe teaches me that love, is certainly not easy — and fighting for love, even when the world feels like it’s against you, is a much less easy feat. Yet, in the same breath, I would (and have) continue to choose it, over and over again, even in spite of the difficulty. Not because I feel like I have something to prove to the world, but because I deserve to prove it to myself that I get to be loved, in spite of what anyone else had said. I deserve to rewrite the patterns that were instilled within me by my past partners, and so many others. In some ways, it’s further proof from the Universe that everything is working out for me… even, if I can’t always see it.

It’s these moments of life that have the the ability to either make us or break us, depending on the path that we choose. And if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t blame any woman who found herself broken down, by this experience. To be continuously knocked down by the world, simply for the act of loving, could be the start of the world’s greatest victimhood story.

Yet, for me, it’s the exact place where my love story begins. Not just with a man, but with myself — and with the part of me that still allows myself to move through the world with an open loving heart, choosing the love that I’ve always wanted for myself, and not allowing another person to take it away from me.

No matter what it is you do in this world, the only inevitability is that people will have something to say. They will ridicule you for being too much, then chastise you when they feel that you aren’t doing enough. But as the saying goes, if they’re going to talk, then you might as well give them a show. In other words, you cannot fight hatred with more hatred and expect that will prevail. But if you meet the hatred, the anger, the bitterness, and the resentment, with an open heart that chooses to continue to love, even in spite of the odds…

… then you will always come out on top.

For as it turns out, love, truly does conquer all.

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