‘Modern Love’ Podcast: How I Decentered Men and Learned to Center Myself

From “The New York Times,” I’m Anna Martin. This is “Modern Love.” Every week, we bring you stories about love, lust, and all the messiness of relationships, inspired by the “Modern Love” column. This week, Emmy-nominated actor and writer Natasha Rothwell.

You might recognize her from the HBO show “The White Lotus,” where she plays Belinda, a spa manager. This season, Season 3, she’s finally getting some spa treatments for herself while she’s on a work exchange in Thailand. But in Season 1, when we first met her, she was trying to figure out how to become her own boss as she worked at a hotel in Hawaii.

Like her character, Rothwell is no stranger to manifesting what she wants. Way before she was even cast in “The White Lotus,” she dreamed of working with its creator, Mike White.

He is someone that I was just like, I want to be in his orbit. And then when the show came to be, I was terrified. I didn’t even want to take the meeting, because it was COVID 2020, pre-vaccination. It was scary times. And I could have said no and just stayed home and wiped down my groceries. [LAUGHS]

Being scared or nervous didn’t stop her from going after her dreams. And that’s what the majority of Rothwell’s characters are like. They’re willing to push through discomfort to put their needs first.

Take, for example, the show Rothwell created and starred in, which ran for one season on Hulu. It’s called “How to Die Alone.” In it, her character Mel is on a journey of self-love. In this one moment on the show, she needs a push from her friends to go after a promotion, even though it could jeopardize her relationship with the guy she’s interested in.

Today, Rothwell reads a “Modern Love” essay called “I Decentered Men — Decentering Desire for Men is Harder” by Jasmine Brawley. It’s pretty easy to understand why she picked this essay. Whether through her characters or in her own life, Rothwell understands the challenges and the joys of putting your own needs first. Stay with us.

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[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]

Natasha Rothwell, welcome to “Modern Love.”

Thank you for having me.

Natasha, I want to start by asking you about something that you’ve talked really openly about and seem to be a huge fan of, and that is vision boarding.

[LAUGHS]:

Am I correct in saying you’re a fan of that?

I am. I am.

I feel more and more people are talking about vision boarding. I’m constantly fed content on my Instagram about manifesting your dream life. What is vision boarding to you, and how are you doing it?

I think for someone like me, I’m busy a lot. And I feel like the end of the year, it’s an opportunity to take time and think about what I’m wanting from the year ahead.

Can you tell me or share some specific things you’ve put on a vision board, and perhaps if it’s worked out for you?

Yeah. On previous boards, I printed out a clipart version of a call sheet. For every show, you get this call sheet, and it’s got all the details of the production — everyone who’s working, when they’re working. Then a list of the cast, and it’s in numerical order. And number one is typically the person on the call sheet that is the lead, or the most important person.

And I wanted that. I wanted to work towards that, and I did. I had my own show called “How to Die Alone.” And I created it.

And I just remember seeing my name as number one. And I was like, I did it! I did it! I did it.

Natasha, I have to be honest with you. I have never vision boarded in my life. And hearing you talk about it, I’m like, wow, it has really worked out for you. And maybe I’m missing out on something, but I just feel like I’ve been kind of resistant to it.

Yeah.

Because it feels —

It’s kind of cringe, yeah.

No, but I do want things, right? I want them a lot. I want a lot of things.

Well, yeah. I was that way by even speaking my wants and needs.

Yeah.

And so I was so tight-lipped about saying what I wanted out loud, because it felt like too much just to say I want these things. But now I go into meetings and I say, I want hardware. I was like, let’s write a show. I want hardware on my shelf. I want —

Oh, I didn’t know what you meant by that. I was like, she wants a hammer.

I want a really nice brass door handle. No, I want trophies, you know what I mean?

Yes, totally! OK, hell yeah.

Yeah. And a lot of executives I’m in meetings with, when they hear me say that, they kind of perk up. And I’m like, I said the quiet part out loud.

Mm!

We love this. We do this because it’s our heart’s passion. But at the end of the day, we want the respect and the recognition of our peers, and that’s one of the ways. And so I feel like putting things on the vision board, as cringe as it is, it is this sort of tongue-in-cheek, playful reminder.

What do you think changed for you that made you able to do that?

Girl, therapy! 20 years. I’ve been grinding.

20 years.

But I was such a people pleaser. I was such a people pleaser. So much so — I can’t believe I’m telling you this story.

I was a vegetarian for 12 years. But there was a moment where I ate meat, and it was because I didn’t have the courage to tell my best friend at the time. Her mother made chicken enchiladas when I came to visit.

And so I sat there, and I was just like, I guess I’m going to eat this. And I ate it. Got real, real sick because it had been a long time since I’d eaten meat. That’s how much of a people pleaser I was.

You’re just sitting there, the plate of poultry that you haven’t ingested in years in front of you. And you’re like, I will put this in. Wow! OK.

That’s a peak unable to speak my needs.

That is tough. Real physical implications to that one, too.

Exactly.

That’s rough.

That was pre-therapy. So now I’m no longer making concessions. I’m articulating my needs and saying my dreams out loud.

I’ve actually read in an interview with you that you call yourself a recovering people pleaser. You’re saying it’s therapy, but I want to get a little more specific, just because I actually think it’s very apt to the “Modern Love” essay you’re going to read. How did you recover from that tendency? How did you center yourself and your needs?

Well, I think for me, instead of deriving value from another person and their pleasure, I centered myself. I became the main character of my life. And it’s that main character energy that I just never had.

And it’s also consequence, because I’m consuming television in which thick Black women were never centered. And so it was walking through the world not thinking that I should put myself first. And so it’s a perspective shift.

And at the direction of my therapist, she encouraged me to follow some fatty baddies on Instagram to diversify my perspective. Because I think so often I’m inundated with straight-sized women, and subconsciously that plays on my value. And so I started cutting the ones that were lingerie models and doing boudoir pictures, and I put them on my vision board.

I love that.

Because I just wanted to lean into the sexy and wanted-ness of those images. And so much of what therapy is, it’s giving you tools. But you have to decide whether or not you pick them up, right?

And you have to decide in the moment of when these thoughts come up, do I entertain it? Do I give it weight? Do I identify with it? Or can I just acknowledge it in this moment that I want to please this person and decide if that’s an authentic feeling that I genuinely want to, or if I’m just trying to placate a version of myself that derived worth from their pleasure?

And that feels very resonant with the “Modern Love” essay you chose to read today. This is by a woman, this author, who seems like she’s figured out how to put herself first. She prides herself on not needing validation from romantic partners.

She really, I will say this, seems to have her vision board on lock. She knows what she wants out of life. Why don’t you go ahead and read this essay for us?

“I Decentered Men — Decentering Desire for Men is Harder,” by Jasmine Brawley. “You don’t want to get married?” Roy said. I always bristled at this question.

“No,” I said with a sheepish smile and modest shrug. I’ve learned to make people, namely men, feel comfortable with my steely answer through humble body language. It’s too much of a burden to want that, when I also want to live a really big life.

Roy’s brow wrinkled as he played with the lukewarm French fries on his plate. This sunny diner reminded me of my favorite Southern aunt’s kitchen. Maybe that’s why I felt so at home sitting there with him — or maybe it was just him.

“I think I get what you’re saying,” he said in his Texas drawl. A long beat passed. This was one of the many things I liked about him — his flirty relationship with measured silences.

Finally, he said, “I want to get married one day. You know why? I know my big life will be bigger with her.”

I met Roy at a bar crawl in Dallas on Juneteenth 2022 — one of the best times and places to be Black, young and proud. Fresh off of my flight from Chicago, I was warm, drunk and happy as I followed my girlfriends through a throng of party goers, when I felt a tug at my denim shorts. I turned around to see Roy standing there, all tall, dark, and smiley. “May I help you?” I asked. “Yeah, I think you can.”

We wound up dancing, joking, and touching long enough for my friends to have to come find me in the crowd to share that they were moving on to the next bar. Before following them out, Roy and I exchanged numbers.

I never expected to hear from him again. Just like with most flirtatious touch points I’d had with men over the years, I couldn’t have cared less. At 32, I had long given myself permission to reach self-actualization with or without ever finding everlasting romantic love. I had familial love, friend love.

Unlike some of my girlfriends whose ultimate joy hinged on their nameless, faceless future husband and children, I often panicked at the thought of tethering myself to such things. There’s so much more to life, I would think to myself, as my friends talked about their dream dress or the ideal diamond cut for the ring they would proudly wear for the rest of their lives. How they would be the matriarch in their modern day version of the Huxtables, the epitome of the Black and excellent nuclear family structure. All of that just made me nauseated to think about.

I would like to think my disconnect from domesticity stemmed from a string of teenage and 20-something heartaches at the hand of relationships and situationships gone wrong, but it started way before that.

In second grade, I noticed how serious the girls would get around their crushes, and how they would change their little burgeoning personalities to suit what they thought would get the boys’ attention. Even then, at six, I thought, ew.

I read that many adolescent girls are inundated during their formative years with images that shape their expectations of love, which informs most of their biggest decisions in life. And most of the yearnings that they would later have to be a wife were just the manifestation of early conditioning from the Disney fairy tale movies they watched growing up.

That’s exactly why I didn’t let myself expect too much from Roy that first night we met. Yeah, the flirting felt delicious. And he showed the classic signs that he liked me just as much.

But so what? I had no vision of what was next, and was fine leaving him where I met him. I hadn’t dated anyone in nearly a year at that point — and it was wonderful, which was a bit weird.

So I took to the internet to investigate, and I found the TikTok-ified term for what I had been feeling for most of my life. I had officially decentered men. It’s a movement that holds space for women to put themselves first, rather than focusing everything — whether they realize it or not — on men’s opinions and influence.

After falling down the TikTok rabbit hole, I realized one of the things I found I loved most about the phenomenon was that the movement wasn’t about rejecting your femininity. It also wasn’t about hating, intentionally repelling, or removing men, either. Men simply took too much energy to care about — for me, anyway. And this was about women not putting men at the center of their lives.

It’s not a new concept at all. At least four waves of feminism involve some form of women centering themselves over men in their lives — even cis het women. Finally, I felt like I wasn’t alone in my disinterest with the concept of landing and keeping a man to be the validation of my existence as a woman. And yet, my heart still leapt when Roy texted me two days later.

My face hurt from all the smiling I did when we went on our perfect first date the next evening. My stomach ached from the deep belly laughs his well-timed jokes pulled from me.

We wound up spending the entire night together, bonding in a way I hadn’t with a guy since before I recognized the type of damage men could do if I wasn’t vigilant with my heart. God, who was I becoming?

Over the next several months, any time I was in Dallas for work or to visit friends, Roy was a priority. When I was there, I was his. The irony, though, is that I would go a long time not talking to him at all — no texts, no calls, nothing. It was a great way to affirm to myself that I came first, to not get too lost in the flowery, poetic nature of it all.

My life was still mine. My feet were still on the ground. There would be no family planning, no delusion, no fantasizing or floaty daydreaming about what a home would feel like if the two of us created one together.

Nope. I’d think, men aren’t my focus. Roy isn’t my focus. And that worked well, until I made plans to see him during a trip to Dallas for my best friend’s birthday.

I texted him an itinerary, planned a dinner, bought expensive gifts, quaffed, waxed, and primed myself in anticipation for the time we would spend together. Upon touching down, I sent him a simple text that said, “do you still have time for me? Just arrived in your city.” “Absolutely,” he replied.

I texted him the location of the restaurant I had painstakingly chosen for us to have dinner that night. I sent another text a few hours later to make sure the time I chose worked for him. The hours ticked by. Nothing.

The next day, his radio silence alarmed me. So I reached out again to make sure he was OK. He responded, “sorry, I got caught up in some things. Can’t wait to see you today.”

“Totally fine,” I told him. A do over could happen that day at brunch, or that night at the lounge my friends and I planned to go to. He agreed.

I shared all the meet up details, cautiously giddy again. I imagined how the night would go. And people would remark on how good Roy’s and my version of Black love looked when we walked into the venue, hand-in-hand. But he never showed up.

The next day, as I sat on the plane ride home, I had time to ponder just how much more space Roy took up in my life than I realized, and how his absence reinforced that. As much as I wanted to believe that my dream career, healthy friendships, and self-indulgent hobbies took up all the real estate in my heart, there was still enough wiggle room for something else to get in — love?

Eventually, as I deplaned in Chicago, Roy texted a short, vague apology for his unresponsiveness. There was noticeably no further explanation for what caused it. At that point, it didn’t matter to me. I needed to hurry up and get home to steam the sexy dress I planned to wear for the dinner reservation happening in a few hours.

I had a hot date, with myself.”

After the break, Natasha talks about her experiences with the Roys in her own life. That’s next.

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All right, Natasha, tell me your immediate reactions to this essay. What does it bring up for you?

I’m so angry at Roy. I still —

Thank you!

Like, my god! The number of times I’ve had Roys in my life where they have fumbled the bag. Where I’m like, do you know who I am — and not even career-wise, but just as a human? Do you know what I mean?

Totally!

I’m surrounded by boss ass bitches who got Roys in their life wasting their time.

This is dedicated to all the Roys out there.

Yes.

This is a country — this is a world full of Roys.

Yes!

And that sucks. Let’s just say that.

That sucks.

That sucks.

That sucks.

And the work of so many incredible women — I would like to include myself in that —

Yes, girl!

— is just sort of sifting through the Roys.

Yeah.

I’m doing a shovel motion, for those who are listening. But I don’t know why I’m digging. I’m digging in my mind.

I feel you when you were doing that motion. I’m like, yeah, it feels oppressive —

Yes!

— to be, one, confronted with hope. Like, that feels almost violent for the hope to be provoked and taken away by the same person.

Can you share maybe an example from your own life where, as you put it, a Roy fumbled it? And how did you handle it? How did you pick yourself up and move forward after that hope disappeared?

Yeah. So many Roys to choose from for this story.

Well, you take your pick.

There’s definitely been a moment where a Roy played upon that kind of particular and acute vulnerability of women who are longing for partnership and to be seen. And it’s kind of insidious how it slips in. It’s like, good morning.

Yeah.

The infamous fuck boy good morning text.

Totally.

And I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. And now you have schedule send. So these Roys probably have many, many women that they’re —

I never thought about that.

Oh, I think about it all the time. I’m like, I wonder where I am in the lineup with this guy.

Shoot! Oh, my god. OK, well, that’s a whole can of worms I’ll think about later tonight.

But I do think the bait is particularly appetizing for those of us, yourself included, who are like boss ass bitches, who are in this alpha mode, running their lives, running businesses. Because it’s this “are you OK” is the subtext. And how often do we have someone check in on us because people think we have it handled. And so it’s this little comfort pocket you can nuzzle into of just —

Yeah.

—“yeah, good morning to you, too. How was your day? Thanks for asking.” [LAUGHS]

What do you think made you susceptible to the powers of Roy at that point?

Yeah, I think most Roys can slip in when — I think my life can be rather chaotic. And when I forget to pour into myself and a Roy’s like, I got a pitcher of water, that’s an easier lift than pouring into myself. I’d be like, oh, I’ll drink from this source.

Yeah.

So those moments I’m the most susceptible is when I know that I need to fill my cup, because you can’t pour from an empty cup. And rather than fill the cup myself, it’s when I’m going for the whatever drink that they are offering, metaphorically.

Mm-hmm.

And that’s when I betray myself. Because I do think what Jasmine is doing is talking about the need to fill her own cup. She takes herself out on this date. And she’s not waiting for a man to treat her well, she’s going to treat herself well. And I think that’s how you combat it.

This is giving a whole new meaning to when you call someone “thirsty.”

Listen, the metaphor comes from real.

There you go.

But that is so true.

I want to talk about something the author of the essay, Jasmine Brawley, says at the beginning of her piece. She goes all the way back to her childhood. And she writes about how many — this is a quote — “many adolescent girls are inundated during their formative years with images that shape their expectations of love, which inform most of their biggest decisions in life.” Was that true for you growing up? What expectations did you have of love, and how were they formed?

I had immense expectations [LAUGHS]: about love. And I think part of it, my parents celebrated 46 years of being married on the 23rd of February.

Wow. Congratulations, mom and dad.

I mean, truly. And as wonderful of an example that is, it’s oppressive. That’s a high bar, you know what I mean? It’s like, not everyone’s going to have that.

And compounding that was romcoms, and “When Harry Met Sally,” and all of these cinematic depictions that love was the cure all. Right? And it definitely formed my opinion of what to expect.

In terms of my parents, very famously my mom says she was on this youth trip with the church and my dad was on the bus. And they were sitting together and my mom fell asleep on his arm. And she’s just like, in that moment, I felt like God was telling me this is my person.

Wow!

So that just sent me, a clumsy 15-year-old, all through Westlake High School grabbing random dudes’ arms, being like, is this the one? Is this the one?

Sorry, let me just fall asleep really quick.

Yeah, just like, is this — nope, nope. And it’s just like, “yo, Natasha’s walking around school just grabbing boys’ arms.” And I’m like, “I’m doing something, thanks. I’m waiting for God to speak to me through this bicep.”

Hello? Yeah.

I can laugh at it now, but I think that the impulse is beautiful to want to be loved, to want to love, to want to be seen. And I think that the beauty of this essay, it’s reminding you to fall in love and to chase and to woo yourself. Because I didn’t have that part of my equation for the longest time.

I want to say for the better part of the last 10, 15 years, I’ve been courting myself. I’ve been really trying to center myself in the same way that she describes. And it resonated with me so hard because, again, she acknowledges that the desire is always going to be there. But you have the —

The desire for men.

Yeah.

Yeah, or a partner.

A partner, yeah. And you have the agency to also choose yourself. You can decide.

You say for the last 10 or 15 years, which is a long-term relationship, you have been courting yourself. You’ve been wooing yourself. Can you give me a specific look into what that means for you? For Jasmine, the author of the essay, it’s wearing a sexy dress and eating a delicious meal. What does that mean in your life to you?

For me — and I want to clarify. The last 15 years, it wasn’t a perfect, blissful relationship with myself. At times it was abusive. I would not treat myself very well. And I would be sleep deprived, haven’t eaten.

And what it looks like for me now in a big way, is honoring my wants and my needs. Giving myself permission to rest. And I think there are so many small micro moments of love that we can do for ourselves.

And, yes, the bath was great, and the candles and all of that. But it’s like, you know what? I’m going to sleep in tonight. Or you know what? I don’t want to go to this party that everyone says I have to go to. I just want to stay home and crossword. That’s what I’m going to do.

Or vision board — to bring it back.

Or vision board, right. If it’s the end of the year, I’m vision boarding. But most of the times, it’s crosswording.

Yeah, I think loving ourselves often means protecting ourselves, as you’re pointing out — protecting our peace, protecting the ways we like to live, or take care of ourselves. But then I guess the question is, what happens when something or someone new enters the picture? I’m thinking about the author of this essay, how she’d carefully constructed her life to not revolve around men. And then she meets Roy, and he throws everything off-balance. Do you think the author was panicked by that?

The panic, at least as I see it, it’s that fear that the independence and strength that you’ve found will be betrayed by the desire that you have for this person. And I think it is something that you can’t predict or know. You can lose yourself at any time. And I think that’s the risk-reward of it.

When I lived in New York, there was a Roy. And I’d realized he was a Roy, and we stopped talking. And I’d always wanted to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I lived in Brooklyn, and I was saving it. I was saving it, because I wanted to do it on a date. I was like, this would be so romantic when that happened.

And after this particular Roy, it wasn’t a fancy black dress like Jasmine wore and got ready to go out. But I walked across the bridge and I went to Grimaldi’s Pizza —

Yum.

— and took myself on the date that I was waiting for this Roy to take me on. You know? And I still worry that the panic is real of just like, I don’t want to meet someone and give up this independent version of myself that I’ve found.

You’re strutting across that bridge, you’re eating some pizza, and you’re like, fuck a Roy. Can we have that in the —

Fuck a Roy!

Yeah. [LAUGHS]

Fuck a Roy.

Fuck a Roy.

Fuck a Roy all the way. Listen, I was so deliriously happy. I felt like I was breaking rules, you know what I mean? And it felt so empowering to be like, I am not going to put life on hold with the hopes that a Roy will catch up to where I am.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah, had me a little pepperoni slice.

We got to end the interview there. “Had me a little pepperoni slice.” Natasha Rothwell, thank you so much for this conversation today.

Thank you.

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This episode was produced by Emily Lang, with help from Reva Goldberg, Davis Land, and Amy Pearl. It was edited by Gianna Palmer and our executive producer Jen Poyant. Production management by Christina Djossa.

The “Modern Love” theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music in this episode by Elisheba Ittoop, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Roman Niemisto, Aman Sahota, and Carole Sabaro. This episode was mixed by Sonia Herrero, with studio support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pittman. Special thanks to Mahima Chablani, Nell Gallogly, and Jeffrey Miranda. And to our video team, Brooke Minters, Felice Leone, Dave Mayers, and Eddie Costas.

The “Modern Love” column is edited by Daniel Jones. Miya Lee is the editor of “Modern Love Projects.” If you want to submit an essay or a tiny love story to “The New York Times,” we’ve got the instructions in our show notes.

I’m Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.

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