Olivia Rodrigo’s New Album Is a Reminder to Stop Abandoning Yourself for Men

Cristina Ciocanu
3 hours ago
3 min read

Olivia Rodrigo's new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, reminds me of the heartbreak of a woman who sacrifices herself in order to keep a relationship alive: a fatal ritual of young womanhood.

After spending three years in an emotionally depleting relationship, the album reminded me of what lost hope feels like, and yet the most painful part is the regret that follows after the fantasy dies.

After losing both my father and the relationship I had spent three years trying to save, I found myself spiraling through a grief that reached far beyond heartbreak. The energy that had once fueled my ambitions was gradually consumed by the exhausting work of reshaping myself to preserve a relationship that was already slipping away.

I was not prepared for the bitterness that followed, or the resentment I felt towards myself for giving so much to someone who chose betrayal over honesty. Instead of learning to lean into my grief, I ignored my instincts, buried the urge to let the relationship die out, and surrendered my own power to a boy who desperately tried to fix me but, ultimately, could not.

This is the ache Olivia captures in “purple”: unrealized dreams traded for the promise of love. It begins with the softness of a love song, almost convincing the listener that devotion alone can sustain a relationship, but as it unfolds, that tenderness starts to feel less like love and more like self-inflicted numbness. The illusion of being chosen becomes another anesthetic, quietly convincing you that it is enough.

Perhaps our greatest naiveté lies in believing that a man could ever navigate the wilderness of a woman’s inner world. What follows is the delusion that you can cut pieces of yourself away to fit into the life of a man who is slowly forgetting how to love you. There is no remedy for the continuous practice of self-abandonment, only the shame that follows when you realize how much of yourself you have lost. How could I ever have believed a man could hold the entirety of me? How could I have betrayed myself so profoundly as to forget who I was?

The emotional core of the album begins to reveal itself in “the cure.” The antidote to all of your insecurities cannot be a bond shared with the person you love. The soothing tone of the song hides a darker realization: “the poison” lingers despite being loved. Searching desperately to relieve the pain, you become wrapped up in a comforting illusion that your insecurities will vanish once you are chosen, but the song ultimately dismantles the myth. The battles within you are only yours to carry, and placing that responsibility onto another person leaves the relationship carrying a weight it was never meant to bear.

That illusion became hardest to sustain when trust was broken repeatedly. I never expected infidelity to happen to me. I kept mistaking his coldness for a temporary mood, denying the signs that something had changed between us. The coldness turned into indifference, and eventually, I found myself no longer recognizing the stranger standing beside me.

I fabricated excuses in my mind, constantly bending the truth so that I could stay. I threw my values out the window and tried even more desperately to salvage our relationship until I suddenly felt lonely and exhausted. One morning, I woke up to the quietness of my apartment and the bitterness of realizing how much of myself I had abandoned trying to fix something I had already lost: my partner. I had hoped for so long that our bond would survive, but somewhere along the way, I got lost.

That heavy yet relieving awakening that comes after admitting the truth to yourself is perfectly captured in the song “cigarette smoke.” The lyrics feel like an intimate conversation with yourself, an attempt to make sense of everything that remains after the noise of love has finally quieted.

Loneliness, resentment, regret: these feelings linger, but so does the strange relief of no longer having to hold yourself together for someone else. The memories begin to lose their sharpness. You look in the mirror and find a version of yourself you had almost forgotten: older, wounded, but still there.

Perhaps that is what remains after the love ends: not an emptiness, but the quiet recognition of the person who existed before it, and who was waiting to be found again.