How I Decentered Men and Learned to Center Myself
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Tap the banner or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to get started today. This is attorney advertising. Love now and always. Did you fall in love last night? I fell in love. Love is stronger than anything. I feel the love. Love. And I love you more than anything. There's still love. Love. From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. Every week, we bring you stories about love, lust, and all the messiness of relationships, inspired by the Modern Love column.

This week, Emmy-nominated actor and writer Natasha Rothwell. You might recognize her from the HBO show The White Lotus, where she plays Belinda, a spa manager. This season, season three, she's finally getting some spa treatments for herself while she's on a work exchange in Thailand. But in season one, when we first met her, she was trying to figure out how to become her own boss as she worked at a hotel in Hawaii. Yeah, I just got to work myself. You're never not at work.

Well, you think I'm working hard now. Wait till I start my own business. What are you talking about? I don't know. I think I'm getting ahead of myself. Like her character, Rothwell is no stranger to manifesting what she wants.

Way before she was even cast in The White Lotus, she dreamed of working with its creator, Mike White. He is someone that I was just like, I want to be in his orbit. And then when the show came to be, I was terrified. I didn't even want to take the meeting because it was COVID 2020 pre-vaccination. It was scary times. And I could have said no and just stayed home and wiped down my groceries. Yeah.

Being scared or nervous didn't stop her from going after her dreams. And that's what the majority of Rothwell's characters are like. They're willing to push through discomfort to put their needs first.

Take, for example, the show Rothwell created and starred in, which ran for one season on Hulu. It's called How to Die Alone. In it, her character Mel is on a journey of self-love. In this one moment on the show, she needs a push from her friends to go after a promotion, even though it could jeopardize her relationship with the guy she's interested in. Putting yourself first is not being selfish. Yes, it is. If it hurts somebody, you've got to put your needs aside. Be honest.

Do you want to take this management class? It does come with the ratings. Bitch, take the class. Today, Rothwell reads a modern love essay called I Decentered Men. Decentering desire for men is harder by Jasmine Browley. It's pretty easy to understand why she picked this essay, whether through her characters or in her own life. Rothwell understands the challenges and the joys of putting your own needs first. Stay with us.

Have you experienced serious complications with a Perigard IUD like breakage or fracture? You're not alone.

Keller Postman is here to help. Tap the banner now for a free case review. We're helping women hold manufacturers accountable. If eligible, you may be entitled to compensation of up to $200,000. Don't wait. Tap now or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to see if you qualify. Your health matters and justice is within reach. Tap the banner or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to get started today. This is attorney advertising.

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Natasha Rothwell, welcome to Modern Love. Thank you for having me. Natasha, I want to start by asking you about something that you've talked really openly about and seem to be a huge fan of, and that is vision boarding. Yeah.

Am I correct in saying you're a fan of that? I am. I am. I feel like more and more people are talking about vision boarding. I'm constantly fed, you know, content on my Instagram about manifesting your dream life. What is vision boarding to you and how are you doing it? I think for someone like me that I'm busy a lot and I feel like the end of the year is

It's an opportunity to sort of take time and think about what I'm wanting from the year ahead. Can you sort of tell me or share some specific things you've put on a vision board and perhaps if it's worked out for you? Yeah. On previous boards, I printed out a sort of clip art version of a call sheet. For every show, you know, you get this

call sheet and it's kind of got all the details of the production, everyone who's working, when they're working, then the list of the cast. And it's in numerical order. And number one is typically the person on the call sheet that is the lead or sort of the most important person. And I wanted that. I wanted to work towards that. And I did when I had my own show called How to Die Alone. And

I created it and I just remember seeing my name as number one and I was like, I did it. I did it. I did it. Natasha, I have to be honest with you. I have never vision boarded in my life. And hearing you talk about it, I'm like, wow, it has really worked out for you. And maybe I'm missing out on something, but I just feel like...

I've been kind of resistant to it because it feels... It's kind of cringe, yeah. No, but it's like I do want things, right? I want them a lot. I want a lot of things. Well, yeah. I was that way by even speaking my wants and needs, you know? And so I was so tight-lipped about saying what I wanted out loud because it felt like, you know...

too, I don't know, too much, you know, just to say, I want these things. But now I go into meetings and I say, I want hardware. I was like, let's write a show. I want hardware on my shelf. Like I want. Oh, I didn't know what you meant by that. I was like, she wants a hammer. I want a really nice brass door handle. No, I want trophies. You know what I mean? I love that.

Totally. Okay. Hell yeah. Yeah. And I was just like, and a lot of executives I'm in meetings with, when they hear me say that, they kind of perk up and I'm like, I said the quiet part out loud. Like, we love this. We do this because it's our hearts, you know, passion. But at the end of the day, we want the respect and the recognition of our peers. And that's one of the ways. And so I feel like putting things on the vision board is cringed as it is.

It is this sort of tongue-in-cheek, playful reminder. What do you think, what changed for you that made you able to do that? Girl therapy. 20 years. I've been grinding. 20 years. But I was such a people pleaser. I was such a people pleaser. And so much so...

I can't believe I'm telling you this story. I was a vegetarian for like 12 years, but there was a moment where I ate meat and it was because I didn't have the courage to tell my best friend at the time her mother made chicken enchiladas when I came to visit.

And so I sat there and I was just like, I guess I'm going to eat this. And I ate it, got real, real sick because it had been a long time since I'd eaten meat. That's how much of a people pleaser I was. You're just like sitting there, the plate of poultry that you haven't ingested in years in front of you. And you're like, I will put this in. Wow. Okay. That's like very, that's like a peak, peak unable to speak my needs. And that is tough. Real physical implications to that one too. Yeah.

Exactly, exactly. That was free therapy. So now I'm no longer making concessions. I'm articulating my needs and saying my dreams out loud. I've actually, I've read in an interview with you that you call yourself a recovering people pleaser. How did you, you're saying it's therapy, but I want to get a little more specific just because I actually think it's very apt to the modern love essay you're going to read. Like, how did you recover from that tendency? How did you center yourself?

yourself and your needs. Well, I think for me, instead of deriving value from another person and their pleasure, I centered myself. I became sort of the main character of my life. And it's that main character energy that I just never had. And it's also consequence because I'm consuming television in which like thick black women were never centered.

You know? And so it was walking through the world not thinking that I should put myself first. And so it's a perspective shift. And...

At the direction of my therapist, she encouraged me to follow some fatty baddies on Instagram to diversify my perspective because I think so often I'm inundated with straight-sized women and subconsciously that plays on my value. And so I started cutting the ones that were like...

lingerie models and like, you know, doing boudoir pictures. And I put them on my vision board. I love that. Because I just wanted to lean into like the sexy and wantedness of those images. And so much of what therapy is, it's giving you tools, but you have to decide whether or not you pick them up. Right. And so, and you have to decide in the moment of, you

when these thoughts come up, do I entertain it? Do I give it weight? Do I identify with it? Or can I just acknowledge it in this moment that I want to please this person and decide if that's an authentic feeling that I genuinely want to or if I'm just trying to placate a version of myself that derived worth from their pleasure.

And that feels very resonant with the modern love essay you chose to read today. This is by a woman, this author, who seems like she's figured out how to put herself first. She prides herself on not needing validation from romantic partners. She really, I will say this, seems to have her vision board on lock. She knows what she wants out of life. Why don't you go ahead and read this essay for us? I De-Centered Men. De-Centering Desire for Men is Harder by Jasmine Browley.

You don't want to get married, Roy said. I always bristled at this question. No, I said with a sheepish smile and modest shrug. I've learned to make people, namely men, feel comfortable with my steely answer through humble body language. It's too much of a burden to want that when I also want to live a really big life. Roy's brow wrinkled as he played with the lukewarm french fries on his plate.

This sunny diner reminded me of my favorite Southern aunt's kitchen. Maybe that's why I felt so at home sitting there with him, or maybe it was just him. I think I get what you're saying, he said in his Texas drawl. A long beat past. This was one of the many things I liked about him, his flirty relationship with measured silences. Finally, he said, I want to get married one day. You know why? I know my big life will be bigger with her.

I met Roy at a bar crawl in Dallas on Juneteenth, 2022. One of the best times and places to be Black, young, and proud. Fresh off of my flight from Chicago, I was warm, drunk, and happy as I followed my girlfriends through a throng of partygoers. When I felt a tug at my denim shorts, I turned around to see Roy standing there, all tall, dark, and smiley. May I help you? I asked. Yeah, I think you can.

We wound up dancing, joking, and touching long enough for my friends to have to come find me in the crowd to share that they were moving on to the next bar. Before following them out, Roy and I exchanged numbers. I never expected to hear from him again. Just like with most flirtatious touch points I had had with men over the years, I couldn't have cared less. At 32, I had long given myself permission to reach self-actualization with or without ever finding everlasting romantic love.

I had familial love, friend love, unlike some of my girlfriends whose ultimate joy hinged on their nameless, faceless future husband and children. I often panicked at the thought of tethering myself to such things. There's so much more to life, I would think to myself as my friends talked about their dream dress or the ideal diamond cut for the ring they would proudly wear for the rest of their lives.

How they would be the matriarch in their modern-day version of the Huxtables, the epitome of the Black and excellent nuclear family structure. All of that just made me nauseated to think about. I would like to think my disconnect from domesticity stemmed from a string of teenage and 20-something heartaches at the hand of relationships and situationships gone wrong, but it started way before that.

In second grade, I noticed how serious the girls would get around their crushes and how they would change their little burgeoning personalities to suit what they thought would get the boys' attention. Even then, at six, I thought, ew. I read that many adolescent girls are inundated during their formative years with images that shape their expectations of love.

which informs most of their biggest decisions in life, and most of the yearnings that they would later have to be a wife were just the manifestation of early conditioning from the Disney fairytale movies they watched growing up. That's exactly why I didn't let myself expect too much from Roy that first night we met. Yeah, the flirting felt delicious, and he showed the classic signs that he liked me just as much. But so what? I had no vision of what was next and was fine leaving him where I met him.

I hadn't dated anyone in nearly a year at that point, and it was wonderful, which was a bit weird. So I took to the internet to investigate, and I found the TikTokified term for what I had been feeling for most of my life. I had officially de-centered men. It's a movement that holds space for women to put themselves first rather than focusing everything, whether they realize it or not, on men's opinions and influence.

After falling down the TikTok rabbit hole, I realized one of the things I found I loved most about the phenomenon was that the movement wasn't about rejecting your femininity. It also wasn't about hating, intentionally repelling, or removing men either. Men simply took too much energy to care about, for me anyway. And this was about women not putting men at the center of their lives. It's not a new concept at all.

At least four waves of feminism involve some form of women centering themselves over men in their lives, even cishet women. Finally! I felt like I wasn't alone in my disinterest with the concept of landing and keeping a man to be the validation of my existence as a woman. And yet, my heart still leapt when Roy texted me two days later. My face hurt from all the smiling I did when we went on our perfect first date the next evening.

My stomach ached from the deep belly laughs his well-timed jokes pulled from me. We wound up spending the entire night together, bonding in a way I hadn't with a guy since before I recognized the type of damage men could do if I wasn't vigilant with my heart. God, who was I becoming? Over the next several months, any time I was in Dallas for work or to visit friends, Roy was a priority. When I was there, I was his.

The irony, though, is that I would go a long time not talking to him at all. No texts, no calls, nothing. It was a great way to affirm to myself that I came first. To not get too lost in the flowery, poetic nature of it all. My life was still mine. My feet were still on the ground. There would be no family planning, no delusion, no fantasizing or floaty daydreaming about what a home would feel like if the two of us created one together. Nope.

I'd think, men aren't my focus. Roy isn't my focus. And that worked well until I made plans to see him during a trip to Dallas for my best friend's birthday. I texted him an itinerary, planned a dinner, bought expensive gifts, quaffed, waxed, and primed myself in anticipation for the time we would spend together. Upon touching down, I sent him a simple text that said, Do you still have time for me? Just arrived in your city.

Absolutely, he replied. I texted him the location of the restaurant I had painstakingly chosen for us to have dinner that night. I sent another text a few hours later to make sure the time I chose worked for him. The hours ticked. Nothing. The next day, his radio silence alarmed me, so I reached out again to make sure he was okay. He responded, Sorry, I got caught up in some things. Can't wait to see you today.

Totally fine, I told him. A do-over could happen that day at brunch. Or that night at the lounge my friends and I planned to go to. He agreed. I shared all the meet-up details, cautiously giddy again. I imagined how the night would go. And people would remark on how good Roy's and my version of black love looked when we walked to the venue, hand in hand. But he never showed up. The next day, as I sat on the plane ride home...

At time to ponder just how much more space Roy took up in my life than I realized, and how his absence reinforced that. As much as I wanted to believe that my dream, career, healthy friendships, and self-indulgent hobbies took up all the real estate of my heart, there was still enough wiggle room for something else to get in. Love? Ugh. Eventually, as I deplaned in Chicago, Roy texted a short, vague apology for his unresponsiveness.

After the break, Natasha talks about her experiences with the Roys in her own life. That's next. Have you experienced serious complications with a Perigard IUD, like breakage or fracture? You're not alone. Kelly

Keller Postman is here to help. Tap the banner now for a free case review. We're helping women hold manufacturers accountable. If eligible, you may be entitled to compensation of up to $200,000. Don't wait. Tap now or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to see if you qualify. Your health matters and justice is within reach. Tap the banner or visit iudinjury.com slash audio to get started today. This is attorney advertising.

The highest achievers among us are the people still striving, still reaching for something. The people who aren't satisfied to stay where they are and want to keep climbing higher. And it's those people who approach the impossible and embrace it. There's a vehicle for people like that. It's called the Defender. The Defender is an icon reimagined for a new generation of explorers through thoroughly modern design.

Its interior is modern and functional with rich material finishes and quality craftsmanship. When you're in a Defender, you can tell the interior is built for purpose. Luxury appointments throughout and practical storage options ensure you adventure in comfort.

This is a vehicle capable of great things and engineered to meet challenges head on. Wherever you're headed, experience the Defender's legendary capability, both off-road and on. And there's a family of vehicles for Defender. Meet the Defender 90, Defender 110, and the eight-seat Defender 130. Are you ready to embrace the impossible? Explore the Defender at LandRoverUSA.com. All right, Natasha, tell me your immediate reactions to this essay. What does it bring up for you?

I'm so angry at Roy. I still like, my God, the number of times I've had Roy's in my life where they have fumbled the bag where I'm like, do you know who I am? And not even career wise, but like just as a human. Do you know what I mean? Totally.

I'm surrounded by boss ass bitches who got Roy's in their life wasting their time. This is dedicated to all the Roy's out there. This is a country. This is a world. This is a world full of Roy's. And that sucks. Let's just say that. That sucks. And the work of so many incredible women. I would like to include myself.

And that is just sort of sifting through the roys. We're doing a shovel motion for those who are listening. But it's like, you know, I don't know why I'm digging. I'm digging in my mind. I feel you when you're doing that motion. I'm like, yeah, it feels oppressive to be, one, confronted with hope. Like, that is just...

It feels almost violent for the hope to be provoked and taken away by the same person. Can you share maybe an example from your own life where, as you put it, like a Roy fumbled it? And how did you handle it? And how did you sort of pick yourself up and move forward after that hope disappeared? Yeah, so many Roys to choose from for this story. Well, you take your pick. I'll go.

There's definitely been a moment where Arroy played upon, I think, that kind of particular and acute vulnerability of, you know, women who are longing for partnership and to be seen. And it's kind of insidious how it slips in. It's like, good morning, you know, infamous fuck boy, good morning text and just like,

And I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. And now you have schedule send. So these guys, these Roys, probably have many, many women that they're... I never thought about that. Oh, I think about it all the time. I'm like, huh, I wonder where I am in the lineup with this guy. Shoot. Oh, my God. Okay, well, that's a whole can of worms I'll think about later tonight. But I do think, like, the bait is particularly appetizing for...

Those of us, yourself included, who are like boss-ass bitches, who are like in this alpha mode, running their lives, running businesses, you know, because it's this like, are you okay, is the subtext. And how often do we have someone check in on us because people think we have it, you know, handled. And so it's this kind of like little comfort pocket you can nuzzle into if just like, yeah, good morning to you too. And like, how was your day? Thanks for asking. What do you think made you...

susceptible to the powers of Roy at that point? Yeah, I think most Roys can slip in when I think my life can be rather chaotic. And when I forget to pour into myself and a Roy is like, I got a pitcher of water. That's like an easier lift than pouring into myself, right? Be like, oh, I'll drink from this source. So those moments I'm the most susceptible is when I

I know that I need to fill my cup because you can't pour from an empty cup. And rather than fill the cup myself,

It's when I'm going for the whatever drink that they were offering, you know, metaphorically. And that's when I betray myself because I do think what Jasmine is doing is talking about the need to fill her own cup. She takes herself out on this date and she's not waiting for a man to treat her well. She's going to treat herself well. And I think that's

That's how you combat it. This is giving a whole new meaning to when you call someone thirsty. Listen, the metaphor comes from real. That is so true. I want to talk about something the author of the essay, Jasmine Browley, says at actually the beginning of her piece. She goes all the way back to her childhood, and she writes...

about how many, this is a quote, many adolescent girls are inundated during their formative years with images that shape their expectations of love, which inform most of their biggest decisions in life. Was that true for you growing up? What expectations did you have of love and how were they formed? I had immense expectations about love and expectations.

I think part of it, my parents celebrated 46 years of being married on the 23rd of February. Wow. Congratulations, mom and dad. I mean, truly. And as wonderful of an example that is, it's oppressive. That's like a high bar. You know what I mean? It's like not everyone's going to have that. Yeah.

And compounding that was, you know, rom-coms and When Harry Met Sally and, you know, all of these cinematic depictions that love was the cure-all, right? Yeah.

And it definitely formed my opinion of what to expect. You know, in terms of my parents, like very famously, my mom says, you know, she was on this youth trip with the church and my dad was on the bus and they were sitting together and my mom fell asleep on his arm. And she's just like, you know, in that moment, I felt like God was telling me this is my person. Wow. Wow.

So that just sent me, you know, a clumsy 15-year-old all through Westlake High School grabbing random dudes' arms being like, is this the one? Is this the one? Sorry, let me just fall asleep really quick. Yeah, just like, is this? Nope, nope. And it's just like, yo, Natasha's walking around school just grabbing boys' arms. And I'm like, I'm doing something. Thanks. Waiting for God to speak to me through this bicep. Hello. Yeah.

I can laugh at it now, but I think that the impulse is beautiful, right? To want to be loved, to want to love, to want to be seen. And I think that the beauty of this essay, it's reminding you to fall in love and to chase and to woo yourself. Because I didn't have that a part of my equation for the longest time.

I want to say like for the better part of like the last 10, 15 years, I've been courting myself. I've been like really trying to center myself in the same way that she describes. And it resonated with me so hard because, again, she acknowledges that the desire is always going to be there. But you have the desire for men. Yeah. Or a partner. Yeah. And you have the agency to also choose yourself. You know, you can decide.

You say for the last 10 or 15 years, which is a long-term relationship, you have been courting yourself. You've been wooing yourself. Can you give me like a specific look into what that means for you? For Jasmine, the author of the essay, it's wearing a sexy dress and eating a delicious meal. Like what does that mean in your life to you? For me, and I want to clarify, the last 15 years, it wasn't

a perfect, blissful relationship with myself. At times it was abusive. I would not treat myself very well and I would be sleep deprived, haven't eaten. And what it looks like for me now in a big way is honoring my wants and my needs, giving myself permission to rest. And I think there's so many small micro moments of love that we can do for ourselves. And

Yes, the bath is great and, you know, the candles and all of that. But it's like, you know what? I'm going to sleep in tonight. Or you know what? I don't want to go to this party that everyone says I have to go to. I just want to stay home and crossword. That's what I'm going to do. Or vision board. Or vision board. If it's the end of the year, I'm vision boarding. But most of the times it's crosswording. Yeah. You know, I think loving ourselves is...

often means protecting ourselves, as you're pointing out, like protecting our peace, protecting the ways we like to live or take care of ourselves. And

But then I guess the question is, like, what happens when something or someone new enters the picture? Like, I'm thinking about the author of this essay, how she'd carefully constructed her life to not revolve around men. And then she meets Roy and he throws everything off balance. Like, do you think the author was panicked by that?

The panic, at least as I see it, it's that fear that the independence and strength that you've found will be betrayed by the desire that you have for this person. And I think it is something that you can't predict or know. You know, you can lose yourself at any time. And I think that's like the risk reward of it, right? And, you know, there's this moment when I lived in New York.

There was a Roy and I realized he was a Roy and we stopped talking. And I'd always wanted to like walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I lived in Brooklyn and I was saving it. Right. I was saving it because I wanted to do it on a date. I was like, this would be so romantic when that happened. And after this particular Roy, it wasn't a fancy black dress like Jasmine wore and got ready to go out.

But I walked across the bridge and went to Grimaldi's Pizza. Yum. And took myself on the date that I was waiting for this Roy to take me on, you know? And I still worry that, you know, the panic is real of just, like, I don't want to meet someone and...

give up this independent version of myself that I found. You're strutting across that bridge, you're eating some pizza, and you're like, fuck-a-roy. Can we have that? Fuck-a-roy! Fuck-a-roy! Fuck-a-roy all the way. Like, listen, I was so deliriously happy. It felt so, like...

I felt like I was breaking rules. You know what I mean? And it felt so empowering to be like, I am not going to put life on hold with the hopes that a Roy will catch up to where I am. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Had me a little pepperoni slice. We got to end the interview there. Had me a little pepperoni slice. Natasha Rothwell, thank you so much for this conversation today. Thank you.

This episode was produced by Emily Lang, with help from Reva Goldberg, Davis Land, and Amy Pearl. It was edited by Gianna Palmer, and our executive producer, Jen Poyant. Production management by Christina Josa. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Alicia Bietoup, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Rowan Nemistow, Amin Sahota, and Carol Savareau.

This episode was mixed by Sonia Herrero, with studio support from Maddie Macielo and Nick Pittman. Special thanks to Mahima Chablani, Nelga Logli, and Jeffrey Miranda. And to our video team, Brooke Minters, Felice Leone, Dave Mayers, and Eddie Costas. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you want to submit an essay or a tiny love story to The New York Times, we've got the instructions in our show notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.