Fuck the Performance

Fuck the Performance.

We’ve all done it. We put on the outfit, polish the backstory, and show up to a first date or an initial text exchange playing a carefully curated character. Let’s call it the Healed and Highly Functioning Persona. We nod along, we smile at the right times, and we edit our lives into neat, digestible soundbites. We perform because we are terrified that if we hand someone the raw, unedited script of who we are, they’ll run for the hills.

Personally? Fuck the performance. I’m officially retired from the theater.

I am a "what you see is what you get" kind of woman. My life is an open book, and frankly, I don't have shit to hide. I don't drive, I live across from the post office, and I am usually the loud-ass neighbor with the music blasting. I have to hear "Banana Pancakes" each morning to start my day, and I normally end it with some form of a deep saxophone because it gives me actual chills on my spine. I have four children, three grandbabies, and a mandatory old lady of a cat. I spend 90 percent of my time completely by myself because I don’t do fake people.

But I need to be entirely honest with you: I haven’t always been like this.

I didn’t just wake up one day with an iron-clad boundary and a flawless sense of sovereignty. For a very long time, I was the girl who tried too hard. I quieted my own voice. I shrank myself down. I twisted my personality into knots, constantly trying to become whatever version of a person I felt like the man in front of me wanted me to be.

And what did that performance get me? It left me open to betrayal, lies, and relationships where I was minimized, hidden away, or treated like I didn't matter. My whole life, I’ve been told I was wrong in some way, shape, or form by people who simply couldn't handle my confidence or my truth.

So when I say fuck the performance, it’s not an aesthetic. It’s a survival mechanism. When you stop performing, you become a walking psychological litmus test. You don't have to guess who people are anymore; your unfiltered reality forces their unhealed shadows straight to the surface.

Lately, my job has brought a couple of customers into my space who ended up asking for my number. Watching how they handled the reality of an open-book woman was a masterclass in why the modern dating pool is completely broken. It comes down to two distinct types of rot: the Consumer trapped in his impulses, and the Over-Thinker trapped in his past.

The Drive-Thru Transaction

A couple of months ago, a customer I’ll call "The Adolescent" asked for my number. The red flags didn't just wave; they practically slapped me in the face before he even arrived. He completely refused to meet in a public place when I explicitly asked. He wanted a closed-door transaction from the jump.

When he showed up at my place, there was no introductory banter, no attempt at a basic human connection. Within seconds of crossing the threshold, the caveman brain took over. He grabbed my ass and tried sticking his tongue down my throat. The performance wasn't even a performance; it was a straight-up boundary invasion of my personal space. He just wanted ass.

I had to tell him to leave three separate times. And on his way out the door—as if to prove he was operating entirely on a single, misfiring brain cell—he actually turned around and asked me if his dick was pretty.

My response? “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five,” he said.

“Yep. You gotta go for real.”

Look, as much as I like the fact that I’ve clearly still got the MILF factor working for me—let's be real, the physical validation is fine—I am entirely too grown for these bullshit-ass games. There is a grand canyon of difference between being a desirable, sovereign woman and being a convenient target for a kid who hasn't learned basic human decency or consent.

On his way out, he actually wanted me to delete our messages. When an entitled boy realizes he messed up, the immediate instinct is to control the narrative and wipe away the evidence of his own poor behavior. He wanted the thread gone so no dumb, shit-talking messages could be sent back and forth, trying to preemptively manage the fallout of his own choices. I showed him the door, closed the loop, and made sure he left my space completely.

The Case of the Over-Thinker

Then, just a few weeks ago, a second customer I’ll call "The Auditor" came into the picture. He seemed promising at first. But the moment I casually dropped the reality of my life into the conversation, his historical trauma entered the room like an uninvited ghost.

 " I've been down this road before and it didn't end very good. A lot of lies and secrets.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t Jenni. I was the stand-in actress for the ex-girlfriend who screwed him over years ago. He immediately began a repetitive, hyper-focused interrogation  He was paralyzed by his own history, running a security audit on me before we even had a first date because he was terrified of being hurt again.

I told him the truth. And just like that, his ego folded. “I’m going to step away, that’s nothing I want to deal with,” he said.

But a day later, after tossing the entire thing back and forth in my head, wide awake in the middle of the night, I sent him a message. I didn't try to be slick with words. I just gave him unadulterated reality.

I let him know what it feels like to spend a lifetime being told you are wrong, only to realize that you are actually completely fine just the way you are. I told him that I am done overexplaining, done chasing, and done being "too much" for people who are too small.  I  offered him something rare in the modern dating pool: genuine, pressure-free empathy. I recognized that he had been deeply hurt before, and I offered no expectations- I'm not a good flirt anyways. 

People think laying yourself out bare is a vulnerability risk. I think it’s a triumph. I am not "too" anything. I like me exactly as I am. And if a man can’t handle a woman who offers both iron-clad boundaries and radical honesty, he self-selected out.

The Death of the Theater

In the old days, a lot of us would have accommodated both of these men by erasing ourselves. We would have shrunk to fit The Auditor's paranoia, and we would have politely laughed off The Adolescent's aggressive entitlement just to avoid making a scene.

Not anymore. Making them face real boundaries—and offering them real truth instead of a polished performance—is a total reclamation of sovereignty.

The current dating pool is exhausted because everyone is tired of the theater, yet everyone keeps auditioning for the same stale plays. One side is frozen in fear, analyzing you to death based on their old ghosts; the other side is chasing blind impulses, completely unhealed from a culture of instant gratification. We are a collection of walking wounds masquerading as finished products.

But true intimacy doesn't start until the performance fails. It requires you to look at a partner not as someone to manage, trick, or consume, but as a mirror. And if you aren't brave enough to look at your own reflection, wounds and shadows included, you have no business asking someone else to step into your frame.

Until people do the work to bury their own ghosts, I’ll happily stay right here: playing my music loud, hanging out with my old lady cat, and keeping my circle small. The ticket price for admission to my life is radical reality. If you can’t match that, the exit is right there.

I spent so much of my life worrying about the dark rooms people tried to lock me in, or the broken records they kept playing in my ears. But this morning, I woke up early. The house was quiet, the screen threads were dead, and outside my window, there was a beautiful sunrise. It didn't ask for permission to light up the sky. It didn't perform, it didn't look back at yesterday's shadows, and it didn't give a damn who was awake to validate it. It just showed up, completely raw and certain of its own warmth.

And honestly? For right now, that is exactly what I'll suffice with.

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