Just so you know, I’m not penning this on Cupid’s behalf. It just so happens to be February, and I just so happen to be reflecting on the idea of romantic partnerships. And maybe that’s a shit cover, and maybe I just now admitted it’s a shit cover, but I’m not here for your pity (unless pity means an edible arrangement delivered to my door, pretty please).
Okay, so I believe romance is really just a glittery umbrella that chooses to hold itself over a friendship. Finding a romantic partner means finding a companion suitable to our identity. Finding the person, not the mere idea of that person, who we feel able to give our full selves to. And such is life, really. The people we forge the deepest connections with are oftentimes ones who end up knowing us the best. This is how romance should be. This what we want romance to be. But this, the pursuit of an unfiltered, romantic connection, is not always an easy one.
Healthy romantic relationships, like any other, require well-measured honesty in order to thrive. This can prove stressful, particularly for people used to concealing parts of themselves.
Hello there; I am (sometimes) one of those people.
In the past, struggling with my stutter has had some unfortunate impacts on my love life. It’s acted as a wedge, a crutch, as well as a source of both timely connection and untimely detriment. And while I won’t unpack all that there is pressed into my mental diary, I’d like to shed some light on the crossroad where stuttering meets the idea of romance.
This is You, Getting to Know Me. Maybe.
Even as a stutterer, my wavering confidence never put a stop to my wanting a romantic connection. Early on in college I never shied away from letting somebody know that I wanted to know them better. With a tireless facade of self-worth, and perhaps some charisma from a distance, I made it a goal to never settle for non-connection. Non connection, after all, is almost scarier to me than trying to form one.
Unfortunately, when it came to attracting romantic interest, behind all my “bravado” was a voice telling me to remain fluent. An itch housed at the back of my neck reminding me not to stutter any excessive amount. Soon, I started measuring the frequency of my stutters as if a litmus test. Formative interactions that should’ve been spent testing the waters of compatibility, served as a practice- stage for verbal overcompensations. Often, I would take the more comedic aspects of myself, such as my unprecedented celebrity impressions and zany one-liners, and use them as a line of defense against stuttering. Theatricality and loudness signaled to me the only clear path to attracting somebody. It seemed considerably more feasible to have someone fall for Pat the “funny guy”, even if he was rarely laughing on the inside.
These methods served me fine. Every fling and brief flirtation of mine knew that I stuttered, but at least I felt mostly in control. My fluency curve was raised through a selective choosing of what I said, and how I would say it.
But circling beneath these entanglements was an inability to envision any further, holistic acceptance from a possible partner.
Thus, I couldn’t trust myself to be any more authentic.
Any spark I felt, ultimately ended in a hollow sizzle.
Let’s Get Physical, Physical.
This strictly imposed damage- control over my stutter was put in place to help appearance-wise, too.
I’ll never forget the exact moment a fellow peer of mine remarked how they had once found me attractive. Besides the slight uncomfortable nature of how they broached the topic, this perhaps would’ve made for a (semi?) gratifying memory. If only their lips had not gone on to form the words “…until you opened your mouth.”
Hey batter batter, hey batter batter swing a knife right into my nutsack, why don’t you.
To be frank, this wasn’t the first time my stutter had convinced me that I was outwardly unappealing. However, it was the first time I had received any kind of confirmation adjacent to this belief. As you know, sometimes all it takes is one critic to drown out all notes of one’s logical thinking.
Now, if you’re familiar with how a stutter operates, that means you’ve probably glimpsed the various subsets of physical tics that accompany one. These include hand tapping, incessant swaying, neck tensing, as well as a plethora of facial contortions some make whilst struggling to make sounds.
For some of us, when considering yourself as a romantic possibility for another person, it’s in our most natural, most vain human nature to also consider how we physically appear to them. And whilst a tryst with a new hair color, or a forage through Poshmark for new looks are candidates for change, the same isn’t true for clearing up a developmental disorder like stuttering.
For stutterers, it first takes being content with what’s on the inside. Only then will some of that inner-peace manifest in how we view ourselves physically.
Love, Loss and Learning
I’ve only had one partner that I can confidently say I’ve ever definitively loved. For roughly seven years, we experienced life in all its forms. Everything from joyous highs to emotionally depleting lows.
Even so, inhabiting nearly every shared moment between us was the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. That being the permission to be my full-fledged self. This permission was effortlessly granted to me through their innate sense of empathy to understand what I was dealing with.
For the first time, I felt safe to share my feelings. More than that, I felt safe enough to share via my unfiltered words, and not some modified clown-routine better suited for a backyard birthday. The generosity I was met with enabled me to, as I had never done before, come clean about just how much my stutter had always plagued me.
But the thing no-one told me about sharing, was that there has to be a healthy balance. A line carefully drawn somewhere well between relying on somebody as a confidant and exploiting them as personal shrink. Blinded by my partner’s big heart, over time I began indulging myself in occasional spurts of self-hated and negativity. Episodes that I’ve come to understand were daunting displays of just how insecure of a person I was.
Simultaneously, I was displaying my blatant selfishness as one half of a supposed two-person team. For every one time I would do my best to lend my partner support, there were three where they would have to witness the same disparaging attacks against my stutter.
It Has to Start with You
The most regrettable aspect of my past relationship is that I could’ve been allocating my time more towards figuring out how to help myself heal. Coming to terms with the way that I spoke, so that I could better verbalize the affection I knew I felt. Re-learning myself as enough, so that I could better show my partner just how “enough” they were for me.
But there’s a lesson to be found, even in the throes of heartbreak.
For me, it is that future romantic endeavors have to be just one piece of my life’s puzzle. The work needed to better me is imperative in order to pull my dutiful weight in a relationship. From now on I have to live more for and in tribute to myself, so that I can better live alongside the ones that I love.
When romance comes back into the picture, I hope to love my stutter as freely as I hope to love.