Ask Sunny: Our Life Feels Boring Next to Instagram
Dear Sunny,
Every couple on my feed is doing sunrise hikes and surprise trips to Tulum, and last night my partner and I watched three episodes of something and split a quesadilla. I love him, but I keep feeling like we are behind, or boring, or doing it wrong. How do I stop measuring my real relationship against everybody's trailer?
Behind on the Group Chat, Brickell
Dear Behind,
You're not alone in this, and I promise the feeling is lying to you. You are comparing your ordinary Tuesday to everyone else's greatest hits, and that is a rigged fight. Nobody posts the quesadilla night. Nobody films the comfortable silence, the inside joke that would make no sense to anyone else, the person who already knows exactly how you take your cafecito. And that, mi amor, is the actual relationship. The sunrise hike is the trailer. The quesadilla is the movie, and the movie is good.
So here is what I want you to try. For one week, keep a private note in your phone, and every time a small good moment happens, the hand on your back in the kitchen, the way he laughs at his own joke, write one line. At the end of the week, read it back. That list is your real feed, the one the algorithm never gets to touch, and it is fuller than you think.
"Behind" assumes there is a schedule, and there is no schedule. There is just your life, which is currently on the couch, warm, fed, and loved. Do not trade a good Tuesday for a stranger's highlight reel.
Sunny