I am not a relaxed woman...
But maybe we're trying too hard to unwind
It’s 4.30am and I’m turning a conversation I’ve just had with a former colleague over and over in my mind. My husband, swaddled in our winter quilt, is breathing steadily beside me. I can feel the heavy warmth of the cat somewhere down the bed, though not as near to the end as she knows she ought to be.
I’ve just been to a party - the sort filled with people you once worked with, might have worked with but might only know from social media, or really want to work with. It was fun - in a dark little basement bar, noisy with energy - and I can still feel a little of the adrenaline from a couple of hours of intense socialising buzzing around my body. I’m also feeling smug that I spent the night sipping on a full fat Coke, despite a free bar.
My colleague departed from her newspaper job last year, at roughly the same time as me. We had catching up to do. So, naturally, we had that standard conversation where you condense many months of your life into a couple of minutes - picking out only the sparkliest or most interesting bits.
It can be superficial, but this one is making me pause for thought, as I try to make out shapes on the bedroom ceiling in the dark.
Here’s what’s plaguing me: after leaving her job, she had taken some time away from the grind, spent weeks abroad, recharged her batteries and felt she could now see and act more clearly for it. I had plunged straight into freelance life (couldn’t really afford not to) and haven’t really stopped since.
It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. From the outside, I have a much healthier work-life balance and a lot more flexibility. And it’s true, I do. Before the party, I had been to my local council pool at midday, when the only other swimmers were retired or school children. It felt indulgent, despite the chlorine and strip lighting. Like I was playing truant or treating myself.
That’s great. But it’s not the same as being relaxed.
So here’s what I’m lying here wondering: have I ever truly switched off? Which, if you’re asking it while wide awake in the small hours, might just answer the question for you.
Then, I read a viral post by psychologist Nicola Jane Hobbs, on Instagram this week.
‘Growing up, I never knew a relaxed woman.
Successful women? Yes.
Productive women? Plenty.
Anxious and afraid and apologetic women? Heaps of them.
But relaxed women?... I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman like that.’
That hit home.
Have I ever truly felt relaxed? Have you? Have any of the women in your life?
We’ve not been raised to relax. We’re taught, from a young age, that we always need to be spinning plates. My generation was told we could ‘have it all’ but that ‘all’ doesn’t leave much time to flop, rest and recalibrate.
And even if you could be the sort of woman who can relax, there are 100 other women in your brain reminding you that the cat needs worming, you’ve run out of shampoo and judging you for wasting precious time.
We feel guilty if we do nothing, because there’s always something to be done. We beat ourselves up for being ‘lazy’ and worry about others thinking we’re slacking off. Our hobbies become side-hustles, so unable are we to do something for the pure pleasure of it.
We use relaxation as a reward - promising to treat ourselves to some downtime after finishing this and that; training our brains to see relaxation as something we only deserve when on the brink of exhaustion.
That we scroll through social media as a way to relax shows just how badly we’ve lost our way. We’ve confused distraction with relaxation, trying to escape our brains and thoughts rather than learn to quieten them for a bit.
As one friend put it, when I asked if she could remember a time when she felt properly relaxed, “Nah. And don’t even start me on orgasms - hard to let go, always thinking of something else.”