Opinion | Everything we know about love

What Juli knows about love

I define myself by my independence, and I have my entire life. An intense aversion to vulnerability made me assume it was safer to remain alone than suffer the abandonment of losing someone I let past my emotional padlock. I shut the door to love. 

Fortunately, over the past two years, despite my fortress of solitude, I have become earnestly bound to a group of sensitive, intelligent and beautiful women who chipped away at this door and taught me how to love. 

It started with my roommate Sam. As we sent DMs, introduced through the Pitt 2027 Instagram, I felt intuitively seen by her. We have grown so close over the past two years — we now act like an old married couple who have known each other their whole lives. Someday, my future kids will get the pleasure of loving their non-biological, cooler-than-their-mom aunt the way I do because I trusted my gut. 

Then, Sam met Ally in a creative writing class. Although her side gig as an organic chemistry tutor is intimidating, she is one of the funniest, most caring people I know. She has never made me feel ashamed of my loudness or lack of filter. She taught me that the people who love you will never make you feel like you’re too much. In fact, they will encourage you to be more.

Grace was my first friend at Pitt, outside of my roommate. After a dinner at Viva that left me feeling our friendship would not go further, I learned that an awkward first date by no means indicates the way a relationship will go. Now, we share our most intimate and embarrassing stories amidst discussions of the LSAT and our future weddings — mine to be officiated by her.

My friendship with Grace brought me Bella, Megan, Jaida and my sweet-as-can-be, soon-to-be roomie, Zoë. And then it brought me Jack.

On Nov. 1, Grace set me up with a friend of a friend at a Halloween party. She told me he was looking for something casual — a concept that was still more comfortable for me than romantic commitment. 

Casual flew out the window the moment I saw him and was filled with an undeniable sense of familiarity and warmth. Knowing that I had a group of people who would support me if this ended in heartbreak, I kept my door open for this cute brunette with glasses. Now, six months later, although our first meeting had its fair share of awkwardness, I am coping in a long-distance relationship with this proposed hook-up turned first love.

He proved to me that the basis of any relationship worth devoting your time to is friendship. Romantic love should offer you the security and comfort your closest friends do. It is not built on butterflies and jitters. It feels like coming home.

Three months into our relationship, I was sure I would drive him away when I had an anxiety attack at one of his house parties. My friends ran into his empty room after me, refuting every negative claim I could make about myself. I kicked them out, feeling worse now for killing their buzz. Unsurprisingly, Jack found my hiding spot. He sat in silence with me, gently moving his hand up and down my back, refusing to leave until I would go back out with him, never making me feel like “too much” for the unending sensitivity.

I knew I loved Jack during winter break. He bought us a puzzle, and sitting across from each other, we worked on it for hours, listening to our new Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye vinyls. I smiled at our records sitting on a shelf together, overcome by indisputable contentment, just sitting in silence with him. After break, I confided in my girlfriends about this undeniable feeling and my fear of its inherent vulnerability. My favorite women knew I loved Jack long before he did, and convinced me that love’s beauty far outweighed my anxieties. 

Being separated from Jack, this person who can calm me with only his proximity and a glance, has been far more challenging than I expected. My friends’ love is the indelible foundation that keeps me afloat. 

Whether that be during a night spent singing along to Mamma Mia!, trying to decide who is the Donna, Rosie and Tonya in our trio, or harmonizing to Gwen Stefani’s “The Sweet Escape” in the car ride home from a Flipturn concert.

I could not have allowed myself to take the risk of heartbreak if I did not have my girls. Fortunately, my relationship with Jack has proved far worth the risk, but in the uncertainty of romance, my friends remain constant. Jack may be my first romantic love, but these women taught me what love is long before he came along.

What Grace knows about love

I am obsessed with keeping myself busy. While I constantly complain about all of my commitments, looking at a packed Google Calendar brings me a sense of anxiety-driven purpose. Given that I barely have time for myself, one would think a relationship would not be something I desire. That would be incorrect. 

At the start of my sophomore year, relationships were not heavy on my mind. Crushes were here and there. I was more focused on moving into a house with my best friends, starting new classes and crafting lifelong memories. 

Once I settled into the year, I figured, why not give dating a try? Two of my roommates were and still are in healthy relationships, and it became difficult not to desire something that was all around me. The comfort and security that relationships can offer became something I was willing to make time for. Instead, I was brutally introduced to the world of college dating. 

While simultaneously embracing my title as a D1 wing woman for Jack and Juli, I was becoming a translator for the text language of men, for which I could not find the dictionary. What I did not expect from this was to discover that our generation has lost its ability to communicate. I had humiliatingly spent hours decoding a man’s three-word message or crafting my own, when meaningful conversation had never worked that way. Responding too fast or not waiting long enough became an unnecessary stressor. 

This comical communication method had become a catalyst for me to accept the bare minimum. Getting excited when someone you are talking to asks about your day, as if that’s not human decency, was a rude awakening to the reality of 20-something-year-old men. Although not every situation was grueling, and some great things naturally fizzled out on both sides, the disappointment inevitably made me question myself and my worth.

I found myself basing a significant amount of my confidence on whether there was that mediocre validation from a man. If a situationship fell through, my first instinct was to blame myself. What do I need to change about myself? How can I be prettier or more likable? While this is an embarrassing headspace to admit I was in as someone who prides herself on the feminist notion of independence and comfort with or without a man, I know I am not the only woman who has felt this. 

As a mixed woman, I know that I am not the socially constructed beauty ideal, and that fact is even more apparent at a predominantly white institution. However, my awareness of this was heightened when my confidence was faltering, and I felt the need to change things about myself and my appearance that I couldn’t. 

Despite this feeling of shameful insecurity, I have women in my life who understand me better than any 20-something-year-old man ever could. These women have the ability to change how I see myself in the mirror. These women wipe my tears and remind me of who I am. 

The women in my life, whom I am lucky enough to call my best friends, made it impossible for me to spend the entire day overthinking a man’s intentions. They were there to hype me up before a date, but most importantly, they were there to debrief, no matter if it went good or bad. We ended up together with a sweet treat and a necessary viewing of Silver Springs.

It would be easy to say sophomore year sucked because the men of sophomore year sucked, but this year was the year I learned most about love. I didn’t learn this love from men who barely know me — I learned love from the women I surround myself with.

I learned love from Juli, with whom I can share my most humiliating stories and receive the most wholesome advice in return. I learned love from Bella, with whom I can share my every thought without an ounce of judgment. I learned love from Megan, with whom I can talk till sunrise and feel the most understood I have ever felt. I learned love from Jaida, whose gentle words have the power to put my guard down. I learned love from Zoë, who will not let an ounce of negative self-talk slip my lips. I learned love from my best friends hundreds of miles away, Jenna, Phoebe, Isabella, Maggie and Avery, who make me feel so at home through the phone and have never left my side, no matter the distance.  

When someone comes close to the standards of love that my best friends have set — I say “close to” because meeting those standards is nearly impossible — I know they will be worth finding the time for. Until then, I will feel that security and comfort a relationship brings with the women who have made me feel that way since the day I met them. 

What we know about love 

As Dolly Alderton states, “Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learned from my long-term friendships with women.” Nearly everything we have learned about love is from the women who have seen us laugh so hard that we have tears in our eyes and cry so hard that our face gets puffy. The women with whom we share confessions about the parts of ourselves we are most ashamed of.

We still don’t know everything about love. We don’t know what it is like to not live just a few blocks away from our favorite people, or not spend every weekend in another person’s kitchen, dancing on the beer-soaked floor to ABBA. We do know love like this will remain with us for the rest of our lives. 

We dedicate this column to all the beautiful women we get to call our best friends. Thank you for showing us how to love and what it feels like to be loved. 

Juli and Grace wouldn’t have been able to write this article without the unending support of their first best friends — their beautiful moms. Reach them at jhs106@pitt.edu and gmh66@pitt.edu.