Being The Cool Girl Got Me Nowhere

The pitfalls of pretending in love and life.

Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

Hi, I’m Reid! I write about my life experiences and how we can all live in brave new ways. Dare You is an entirely reader-supported publication. To receive weekly posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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In my early twenties, I saw myself as “the cool girl,” especially when it came to matters of love and dating. You know that girl… the easy-going, undemanding, “I’ll eat wherever you want to eat” girl. Being a cool girl means putting aside your wants and needs in the hopes of being loved and accepted.

I was never a pushover and always had high standards, but would use those standards as boundaries to protect myself from ever needing to be upfront with what I actually wanted. I would wait for THEM to come to me, rather than just saying how I felt. This, in many ways can be a good thing; I am all for not chasing someone and having high self-worth. But what isn’t okay is passively waiting to be chosen and then wondering why you never are.

It’s hard to blame young women for stumbling into the cool girl identity; after all, being in your early twenties can feel a lot like living in survival mode, constantly climbing the ladder, desperate to be chosen, to survive. We are told by society not to be like “other girls.” Don’t be too demanding, don’t be too much, don’t be needy, don’t talk too much, don’t ask for what you want too soon or else you will scare them away. It goes on and on.

The first time I ever heard of the cool girl trope was in the famous “Cool Girl” monologue that Rosemund Pike’s character gives in Gone Girl. Yes, it is delivered in a rather sinister way as Rosemund Pike is on the lam after faking her own kidnapping in an attempt to seek revenge on her cheating husband, but the words struck a chord with many women as it perfectly incapsulated the pressure some of us feel to play the part of the perfect girl in exchange for sacrificing our own truth.

Symptoms of the cool girl:

You avoid saying what you really think.

You never ask for what you truly want.

Lack of vulnerability, or only expose yourself in ways that may seem vulnerable to others but are not vulnerable for you.

When someone asks where you want to go to dinner, you reply “Wherever you want to go.”

Putting up with bad behavior

Settling for less than what you need.

Not wanting to hurt peoples feelings.

Fronting as an easy go-with-the-flow person and then internally complaining about how you never get to choose.

Never getting angry.

Suppressing your authentic self.

You like what they like.

You dress for other people rather than your own style.

You stay in a six-month-long situationship with someone who you want to be in a committed relationship with but never voice the fact that you DO want a relationship with them and instead settle for the in-between area where you aren’t getting your needs met and end up wasting your time because no one wants to commit to someone that has made it convenient to stay in something casual with no need to commit, and you end up having a borderline psychotic break that comes off as a completely unnecessary outburst because you have never expressed your needs before but are now fed up with agreeing to settle for crumbs.

Being the cool girl is an odd form of self torture. In the end, you always lose. It’s boring, predictable; it’s not an option for us as women anymore.

I can recall on a few occasions, I’d be dating a guy, playing the cool girl part, and after months of never really voicing what I wanted, I would snap out of frustration and expect something different which was completely out of left field for the other person, probably making me come across as crazy, which was exactly what I feared in the first place. But why couldn’t I have just been up front from the beginning? Why is it so scary to voice what we want and need?

The reality is, the men I actually liked probably never knew how I truly felt, and the men I was not that into in the slightest probably thought I was crazy about them because I was actually showing up as my authentic self rather than trying to be the cool girl. They say you meet your person when you aren’t looking for them… that was true for me at least. I don’t think I ever would have entered a serious relationship unless it was with someone I had known for a long time beforehand. When I reconnected with my boyfriend whom I had known since I was a kid, I had no energy left to be anyone but myself. I was “a lot” from the get go. I was emotional, I was upfront with who I was and my past, and what I wanted for my future. Somehow, being known by him for so long allowed me to feel comfortable just being myself. I wish I had known that it was okay to be all of those things when I was younger.

But beginning to date my boyfriend was absolutely not the catalyst for dropping my old Cool Girl ways. I began the journey of unraveling my people-pleasing tendencies years before, and it did not happen over night. I began to take care of myself better, acknowledge my own feelings, prioritize my own needs over other people’s. I found an awesome therapist who was integral in helping me understand WHY I felt the need to abandon myself and also pushed me to voice my wants and needs in dating, which had been so scary for me up until then. Slowly but surely, with trial and error, I grew out of it.

If you find yourself having Cool Girl tendencies and are ready to let them go, the first step is to let go of any guilt or shame you may feel. It’s a very natural thing to want to be liked; only now moving forward, you must be ready to be liked and embraced for who you truly are rather than the old facade. Consider finding a therapist you vibe with who can support you as you make some changes.

Next, here are some questions to ask yourself:

Am I actually happy with my life/my relationship/my job/my dating situation?

Do I feel safe to be myself and be seen? If not, why?

What do I need to feel safe that I’m not asking for?

Do I actually like myself?

Do I feel afraid to show up as my authentic self in certain situations? If so, why?

When it comes to dating, a great question to ask yourself is “What do I like about them?” rather than “Do they like me?”

How can I better support myself?

Dropping the Cool Girl act can feel scary at first. The fear of not being liked for who you really are might creep up from time to time. You might not be for everyone, but at least you will gravitate towards those who you share an authentic connection with, and nothing is better than that.

-Reid