Performing for Love

One of us was given wings and the other was given insecurity. It took me a lifetime to understand why Alene moved through the world with ease while I was still trying to earn my right to exist.

Growing up, I was taught that being loved was based on how I performed.

The rules were clear:

• Get good grades.

• Be cute.

• Be polite.

• Never talk back.

• Eat the food you hate because I said so.

• Never show fear.

• Your needs are not as important as ours.

I learned early that love was conditional. There was always a price to pay. To be loved, I had to perform expected roles, whether they fit me or not. When you grow up this way, performance stops feeling like performance. You think it’s who you are.

Even days after my father died, the performance was expected. I was told only my mother’s feelings mattered. So I showed nothing. There was a cost to that. Suppressing real emotion sends it underground. After a while, you stop knowing what you actually feel.

But buried feelings don’t disappear. They quietly determine your choices, your relationships, and the way you live.

I carried those invisible rules into adulthood and relationships. I thought love was something you earned by being pleasing, adaptable, undemanding, whatever someone else needed me to be. I didn’t yet understand the difference between being valued and being useful.

As adults, my childhood best friend, Alene, and I took very different paths. Alene knew what she wanted and went for it. She opened her own clothing store while I continued to flounder, never quite sure what I wanted to do with my life, and always tripping myself up along the way. The messages inside me were relentless: You’re not good enough. Listen to your fear. You can’t have what you really want.

When we were little girls, I got better grades than Alene and assumed I was smarter, so I couldn’t understand why she moved through life with confidence while I struggled with insecurity. Then one day she explained the difference. If Alene brought home a C, her mother would say, “Oh, you got a C. How wonderful!” Meanwhile, my father expected A’s and would become angry at anything less.

Alene was given wings, not insecurity.

It took me decades to understand how deeply those early messages lived inside me. I kept recreating relationships where love was tied to performance, approval, and self-erasure because that was what felt familiar. Of course I didn’t realize I did this while I was living that way.

Then I met Bob.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to perform to be loved. I could be myself. Not an idealized version of who I thought Bob would like. Not always the agreeable version. Not the polished version. Just me.

Over the twenty-three years we’ve been together and the nineteen we’ve been married, he has allowed me to show up exactly as I am. He’s the least judgmental human being I’ve ever known. He’s seen all of it: the good moods, the difficult ones, the exhaustion, the fear, the pain, the parts of myself I used to think I had to hide in order to be loved.

No performance necessary.

Freedom finally became who I am and has allowed me to freely swear and sing when pain overtakes my movements. No wonder I can laugh as each movement spikes an electrical jolt down my leg. No wonder being loved no longer feels like an audition.

But the deeper truth is this: I was only able to find someone like Bob once I stopped demanding performance from myself. Once I learned to show up honestly, tell the truth, and loosen my grip on outcome.

I had to accept and embrace myself before I could recognize being accepted and loved by someone else.

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