7

FOLLOW YOUR HEART OR YOUR IDEALS

You sit in your cubical, staring at your computer screen, trying to give yourself a mental therapy session before the status meeting in nine minutes. The unsettling combination of almost constantly feeling overqualified and underqualified in your job is giving you a complex that you’ve never experienced before.

You feel overqualified because this work is actually pretty easy. You’re given placeholder text for different content on the bank website and apps, and you edit that text to sound articulate and in line with the company’s brand. On occasion, you even get to write a little blurb to explain a concept, like savings account interest or overdraft fees. It’s not exactly rocket science, and you’re doing fine at it. Your manager seems to like you, and you’ve made a few friends with whom you enjoy eating lunch and critiquing the soft drink selection, as well as the wardrobe choices of a few more interestingly dressed executives.

At the same time, you feel underqualified. You often find yourself sitting in meetings and feeling embarrassed for even being there because you don’t know what value you bring to the table. Everyone around you appears to be brilliant, as they banter, throw big ideas out there, and reference case studies and experiences that you have no awareness of. This feeling of being out of place—as though you accidentally walked into a planning meeting for an aircraft carrier instead of the weekly user experience review—is only exacerbated by the fact that when you do try to pipe up and say something, no one usually seems to notice. Someone with a louder voice will start talking as though your quiet words were actually only in your head after all. Or if you do get them out, the next comment will not be in response to yours, but on a different thought altogether. And then, on occasion, someone else says the same thing you just did, and everyone wholeheartedly agrees with them. It makes you feel invisible.

You learn later in life that what you are experiencing now is an example of a painful but extremely common condition called imposter syndrome—a feeling of psychological discomfort brought on by difficulty acknowledging one’s own success, which an estimated 70 percent of the US population has experienced at some point.¹ You are also being subjected to microaggressions—the subtle forms of discriminatory behavior that 64 percent of women experience at work, with much higher rates for women of color and lesbian women.² But for now, you just feel like the parts of your job that you find easy are probably due to you not understanding their complexity and that you are on the verge of being exposed as a fraud.

Outside of work you’re also battling other complexes of the dating variety. You’ve been meeting a variety of young men through a combination of Tinder, Bumble, and introductions from friends. Although some of the dates are fun, and more of them result in humorous stories, you’re finding that just the act of putting yourself out there is almost a second full-time job. Previously, you met boyfriends though school or groups of friends, and the relationships formed organically. This goal-based dating is exhausting.

That state of exhaustion is where you are residing when the final straw—or, specifically, the final unsolicited dick pic—prompts you to shut down your online dating accounts. You decide to write off dating for a while, which of course, by the laws of the universe, means that three days later, while running an emergency toothpaste, peanut butter, and wine grocery store trip in your pajama bottoms and your old high school volleyball t-shirt, you meet Nathan in the checkout line.

You smile at each other. You see a twinkle in his blue-gray eyes. You remember what you’re wearing and blush. “Oh, you like your peanut butter crunchy too. Cool!” he says. And that’s all it takes.

You and Nathan start hanging out. A lot. You have an awesome combination of chemistry and compatibility—dynamics that you can only ever remember feeling one of strongly at a time in past relationships. And your friends love him too, which is a high bar to achieve!

As time progresses, you find yourself in a state that feels both familiar, in the regularity of the activities and relationships that surround you, and also unfamiliar in that you’ve never felt quite so calm and happy before. Although you still experience some anxieties and restlessness at work, and of course you and Nathan have the occasional disagreements (ok, yelling matches), you have settled into a state of general comfort. You’ve gotten promoted to senior content specialist, you’ve met Nathan’s parents (and they’re quite lovely) and he has met yours, and you have a third Sunday dinner party with a group of close friends. This adulting isn’t bad.

That is, until Nathan gets an offer for his dream job—across the country. He has been working as a marketing manager for an online shoe store, which he’s enjoyed, but has been feeling limited career growth as of late. A sporting goods retailer in Portland, Oregon, reached out to him and offered him a director of marketing role, and he is through the roof about it. You want to be happy for him, but this throws your life into a tailspin.

Although you and Nathan haven’t been living together yet, you have been discussing the idea. And you have definitely been discussing your feelings for each other: you are very much in love. He asks you if you would be willing to move to Portland and move in together there. It makes you happy that he’d like you to move with him but sad that he seems to have already made up his mind about moving regardless of your answer.

You’ve been to Portland once, for a friend’s wedding (she doesn’t live there anymore, though), and it seemed like a great city. However, you like where you’re living now too, and you mostly like your job. You wouldn’t be considering moving if it weren’t for Nathan. The feminist in you is cringing at the idea of uprooting your life and making a decision purely based on the job prospects of your boyfriend . . . you always saw yourself as someone who would only make major life decisions for your own reasons.

You go out with your friend Mara and your aunt Ashley for a sip-and-paint night and ask for their advice. Mara feels strongly that you shouldn’t move just for a boy, although you suspect this might be slightly influenced by her not wanting you to leave—a sentiment that you feel too. Ashley, however, surprises you by telling you about the “one who got away”—a former boyfriend who you don’t even remember, but who apparently broke her heart when you were only in junior high. Both Mara and Ashley are strong women whom you love and respect, and you feel like right now they are playing the role of angel and devil on your shoulders. Although you’re not sure who is who.

If you decide to quit your job, pack up your apartment, and move to a brand-new city with Nathan, go to Chapter 8.

If you decide to try keeping in touch with Nathan long-distance but aren’t ready to leave your whole life behind for a man, go to Chapter 10.