Hello, welcome to my new newsletter

A first try! Please bare with me, we're on a journey

Dear Friends,

Hello and welcome to my very first ‘newsletter’. I am very nervous to send this around and honestly, I love to write but I haven’t written consistently or for other people’s consumption in many years so please bear with me as I work out the kinks and relearn how to share my thoughts this way. I welcome your feedback! This feels a little like sharing my diary! So weird! xx

Three things I love right now

The lululemon power pivot tank ($58) I wear one of these almost every day (I’m going through a phase) they’re reversible and comfy and cute as a shirt not just at the gym

Male psychology which is a complicated topic but specifically I’ve been re-reading The Things They Carried which is one of the most empathetic and beautiful fictionalized self-portraits in print

My Deborah Pagani hair pin you must practice before you figure out how to pin your hair up but this clip feels like a piece of who I am at this point.

Some thoughts!

When I was finishing college, one of my good friends cheated on her long term, live-in boyfriend. It was the first time one of my contemporaries had a major relationship issue, and ultimate break up, with the person I thought she would marry. My thoughts on the situation then were very similar to my thoughts about infidelity now.

My friend’s affair was an emotional one, there were photos sent and all that, but if anything physical happened it was one time. They decided to try to work through it but he ultimately said that he could not move past her transgressions.

And I do not think that’s true.

I think he could not forgive her for what she had done unless she was willing to grovel and take all of the blame. Sometimes, good people do ‘bad’ things. And when good people who aren’t typically philanderers (I do think it is possible to largely be a good person and also to be a chronic cheater! That is a character flaw, we all have them! It is not one I could personally look past but that does not mean that no one should look past it or that I, as an adult, judge the men and women who accept their spouses chronic infidelity. But I digress!) and who would normally never consider cheating cheat, it is very often because they feel neglected or alone or sad or aren’t getting something they need from the relationship.

And so they go and get that from someone else. And that is wrong. The right thing to do is to talk to your partner and address it and try to work through your issue in the relationship before you hook up with someone else. But we aren’t always perfect people and sometimes we have partners who won’t listen or we have avoidant personalities or we just don’t deal with things perfectly.

All of that to say, I do not think that the issue is that he couldn’t move past her sending a guy a photo of her boobs (or whatever she did!). I think the couldn’t move past it while also looking at his own actions in their relationship and admitting that he also contributed to the dynamic between them that ultimately led to poor choices. And he didn't have to! We were very young and even when we’re very old you don’t have to move past anything or admit to anything that you do not wish to work through. Walk away!

My point is just that self-reflection is valuable and that it is good to understand the small ways we are wrong even when we are mostly right.

I talk about this because last night at the Oscar’s Will Smith slapped Chris Rock after Chris made a joke at Jada Pinkett Smith’s expense. I was struck by how many people responded by mentioning that Jada is known to have had at least one affair and that Jada and Will have an open marriage. The implication (or explicit statement) being that it was insane for Will to do something so extreme for her when their marriage is known to be a messy and imperfect one. Because, to me, love has never been about keeping score and loyalty doesn’t come from checking boxes. I think it will continue to surprise me how many people linked their open marriage to Will’s actions. It’s something I’ll be thinking about for a while. Maybe I’ll write about it more.

Anyway, you don’t have to be perfect all the time. Don’t cheat but if you do, I at least will understand that sometimes life is a little more grey than we’d like it to be.

Hope you all liked this even though it was a bit green!

Cheers to figuring it out, in more ways than one. And thank you, sincerely, for reading this. I cannot believe that anyone is interested in what I have to say and I am grateful.

All my love,

Hannah

PS please let me know what you want from this! My thoughts? Fashion? Skincare? Pop culture? Advice? Recipes? I am at a loss!

I am also so anxious about you all reading my writing that I hardly edited this. I will be better about that— we’re all friends though, yes?