Best Friends, Bachelor Nation, and the Difference Between Love and Anxiety

In this episode of Note 2 Self, Saskia's cup is full, and not by accident. Her best friend flew back to New York for the weekend to honour their annual tradition of seeing their favourite DJ, Blondish, play live. It was, as it often is with the people who truly know you, exactly what she needed.The show didn't go quite as planned, with a hysterical "VIP" experience, but the music was transcendent, and that kind of friendship, the kind built over years of shared history and deep knowing, doesn't need a perfect backdrop. Saskia reflects on what it means to have someone in your life who sees you in full, and how quietly extraordinary that is.That idea, of what real connection actually looks like, runs as a thread through the second half of the episode, where Saskia turns her attention to Bachelor Nation. She's been rewatching an old Bachelorette season and she has thoughts. Having grown up watching the show and taking it as the fairytale that falling in love is all about, she now watches it with the rose-coloured glasses fully off. What she sees troubles her: a franchise built on the firework relationship, on anxiety mistaken for chemistry, on self-worth handed over to whoever holds the rose. The contestants aren't falling in love. They're trauma bonding. And for years, we were watching it like it was a fairytale.Love is not a feeling that either hits or it doesn't. It's an action. A choice you make when it's hard and unglamorous and not under the stars during a candlelit dinner in Paris. That's the episode. Tune in.