Dump Him

Image of Britney Spears sporting her “Dump Him” shirt.

In 2002, after a three-year long relationship, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake broke up. Once the breakup became public, Britney was photographed all over London wearing a light blue shirt with orange letters that read “DUMP HIM.” The shirt and the image of Britney donning it has seen a revival in the wake of the #FreeBritney movement. After seeing the photograph while scrolling Instagram a few months ago, I immediately bought myself a cheap cotton version of the shirt on Etsy. I admire the way Britney irreverently expressed herself—and those two words capture the most pivotal lesson I learned after a three-year relationship in an equally flippant, almost humorous way.  

Also in the wake of the #FreeBritney movement, Tavi Gevinson, creator of the now retired Rookie Mag and one of my personal heroes, published an article in The Cut. In it, she argues that Britney was never free, but, rather, that her image and artistry were always in the control of older men in the entertainment industry, even though the latest documentary about her attempts to claim otherwise. Gevinson then discusses her own relationship to and with abusive older men in entertainment. Mentioning Rookie Mag, the online magazine for female-identifying teenagers Gevinson founded and edited for years, Gevinson writes: 

“Believing that teen girls can do anything had helped me believe in my artistic pursuits, create Rookie, and gain access to a world where my professional peers were grown adults. Rookie was realistic about the challenges girls face, publishing a wealth of great writing about consent, gender dynamics, and sexual assault. But editing these articles did not make me impervious to the issues they described.” 

Throughout high school, I read Rookie Mag religiously. I rewarded myself with the magazine’s daily updates after miserably lonely days in my public high school that was supposedly designed by a prison architect. Alone in my childhood bedroom, I discovered all my music from Rookie’s curated playlists and read about sex and love long before I encountered either. In ninth grade, Rookie guided me through the painful betrayal of a friend—my closest friend of nine years from my small and tightly-knit Jewish Day School. When she ditched me a month into our first year at our new public high school and took all our new friends with her, I wrote a plea into Rookie’s advice column that was published with a long and thoughtful response. Alongside the magazine’s extensive guides to dealing with problems exactly like this, the response I received, and the validation of my problem deserving such a response, offered me relief day after day that year and into the next. In these ways, Rookie offered me confidence, as trite as that may sound. I even started a feminist club at my high school in 11th grade, a direct result of the ways Rookie encouraged my growth.  

Rookie and the women in my immediate life—my mother, my teachers, my soccer coaches, the counselors at the summer rock band camp for girls I attended when I was twelve and thirteen—all told me that I was “powerful,” that I could do anything I wanted, be anything I wanted, and that I didn’t need a boyfriend. Isn’t that how most middle class girls from liberal towns grew up in the early 2010s? 

I thought I was a smart teenager. I worked hard, I got into Swarthmore. I found some passions, and I had close friends. 

But, like Tavi Gevinson, I wasn’t impervious to the dynamics with men that I could so easily intellectualize. Rookie taught me the terms: “manipulation,” “gaslighting,” “unhealthy,” what was right and what was wrong. But naming these behaviors or knowing how to recognize them didn’t stop me from experiencing them. 

I broke up with my first boyfriend of three years exactly one year ago. Our relationship was never healthy. Sometimes it was emotionally abusive. Once or twice it became physical. I ruined friendships over it, I let it take over my semesters and summers and time abroad. I completely lost myself in it.  

It was funny, too, because throughout the entire relationship I could see so clearly the damage it was causing me, how clearly that the way I was being treated was not okay. I knew it wasn’t characteristic of a healthy relationship to have weekly check-ins with my college’s Title IX office, or to cry every day over incessant, disparaging comments on my passions, habits, character, friends, and family.  

It was all very textbook. The highs felt extremely high because the lows were so low.

I was hypnotized by this overwhelming feeling that I needed my former partner, that somehow I wouldn’t be okay without him. Despite my upbringing, something—probably a combination of the pervasive society that sexualized a 13-year old Britney Spears, my fear of feeling abandoned the way I did when I was 15 in high school, and my former partner himself—convinced me of this. At one point, on a walk to Title IX, I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. When I started that feminist club in high school I thought I was stronger than someone who would find herself feeling that shattered, that erased. 

And yet there I was.  

* * *

I spent this past year rebuilding. I took the spring semester off from school. While all my friends and my former partner graduated from Swarthmore, I worked at a perfume store and a cupcake shop in my hometown. I lived with my parents, and I ate homemade dinners every night. I ran down the paths of Berkeley that I ran in high school, sometimes I sprinted in rage, and I dealt with the grief. I grieved the way I let myself be treated, the way I let myself go, and the loss of a person with whom I shared three years of my life. I listened to a lot of Taylor Swift. I made new friends and reconnected with old ones. I felt sad and angry and lonely often, but, for the first time, instead of calling my ex in search of reassurance that was always met with dismissive and belittling remarks, I comforted myself.

And through it all, I healed. I rediscovered my old comforts, and I reconnected with the self I had worked so hard to grow into before I knew my ex. I’ve grown since I was with him, too. I’ve discovered new interests and passions, like my love for perfume, and I’ve learned to surround myself with people who show compassion rather than people whose approval I feel an urge to fight for.  

I have been happier this year, I think, than I’ve ever been before. I visited the family of my close friend from high school for dinner a few months ago, and my friend’s mom observed that I seemed “lighter” than she’s ever known me to be—which is true. I am.  

This isn’t to say that all relationships are bad or that I never want to be in one again. I can’t wait to let myself love and be loved, to open up and become close to another person. I just never want to lose sight of what I love about myself again. I never want to beg for the love that I deserve, or forget that I deserve it in the first place.

Sometimes I see my friends struggle in the faces of their romantic relationships. I want to tell them it’s not worth it, that they don’t have to be in relationships that bring them more pain than joy. I want to save them from making the mistakes that I made, from the years of missed college and friends and adventure that I instead spent feeling anxious, berated, hurt, from the anguish that I felt. 

I learned from my experience in that relationship that people have to come to these conclusions on their own. No matter how many times people told me that I didn’t have to be in my former relationship, that I would be okay—perhaps even better off—without it, I refused to listen. I would get angry at even the most subtle suggestions. I think a lot of people are like this, especially when they’re caught in a codependent relationship. I try to tread lightly with these friends, as my friends did with me.

* * *

I bought the blue “DUMP HIM” shirt in a moment of triumph. I am proud of myself. I learned after my break-up that it takes an average of six tries for someone to actually leave a relationship as unhealthy as mine was.   

I’m also grateful for the lessons I learned. I wish it was as easy as saying “you don’t need this person” and “you will be okay alone — you will be more than okay alone” to teach what I had to learn over three painful and tumultuous years. But I know how hard it is.  

Last week I expressed to my friend concern about another friend’s relationship.

“Next time you hang out,” my friend joked, “you should wear your ‘DUMP HIM’ shirt.”