Admitting Your Candidate is Toxic is Step One

Last week, I sat at happy hour with one of my best friends. For the purposes of this article, I’ll call them Bay Gay. They’re a gay from the Bay Area. The Mexican bartender may have mistaken my speaking Spanish with him as flirting, and the drinks kept getting stronger. He was also giving me candy.  “He’s being so nice to us”, I said as Bay Gay rolled their eyes at my delusional comment.

As the mango margaritas started tasting more like tequila and less like dessert, our conversation about boys drifted to my trust issues and my last serious relationship. I’ve written about him before. It’s hard not to write about someone multiple times when they took up the better part of your twenties. Bay Gay had met him before we started dating. They were friendly and shared common interests. Maybe that’s part of why I never told them how bad the relationship got.

I never told anyone how bad the relationship got. Even now, I still feel ashamed to admit I stayed and kept choosing to stay. Most of my memories of that relationship are moments when I should have told him I was leaving. Instead, I waited for him to break up with me over the phone because I hadn’t shown enough enthusiasm over what he had given me for my birthday (it was a Crayola drawing of the outline of Colombia). There was one time in particular when I stood against the wall, with the door easily accessible to me, for what felt like fifteen whole minutes as he flipped over his coffee table, knocked down everything on the shelves, and turned his wall into a punching bag. I should emphasize that a fist was never aimed at me.

That’s the story that came out of my mouth last week in between sips of my mango margarita. Bay was genuinely surprised and speechless. “What a fucking monster”, they said. Sure, you can call him a monster. But I chose to stay. What embarrasses me most isn’t what he did. It’s how fiercely I hid it to defend my decision to stay. Once you’ve invested enough in a choice, admitting it was wrong can feel impossible.

We do that in politics, too. We need people to respect our decisions, no matter what they are. It never helps us, but it always helps the people, or politicians (who may or may not be real people) we’re trying to get behind. This week, Colombia had the first round of what has become a heartbreaking and contentious presidential election. We’ve lived with a populism that has danced with extremism for thirty years, with many in the country continuously believing ex-President Alvaro Uribe and any decision he makes is the only way forward. Four years ago, another populism rose to the forefront as the left of the country got behind Gustavo Petro, a decision that’s the clear backlash of decades of being told there is no other choice.

No one talks about how isolating not having a choice can be. I definitely didn’t feel like I had a choice when it came to Alcoholic Ex. That’s why I never told Bay Gay or anyone else about what was going on, even when his temper got the better of him in front of others. Bay was there for me when we broke up, but really, I didn’t want to let them or anyone else in. I was ashamed of what they’d think of me.

Our friendship has required work, especially in the last four years since my break-up and political tensions made me, someone who already felt like my muchness was too much for people to handle, feel like I shouldn’t count on others. I isolated myself because I didn’t think I had any other choice. I pushed away the people who wanted to be there for me. I never told Bay Gay how bad things had gotten because I knew exactly what they’d say. They would have told me to leave. And once someone tells you to leave, you either have to leave or admit you’re staying. Political movements work the same way. We stop talking to people who might challenge our decisions.

We make absurd decisions when we feel like we have no other choices. To get ourselves there, we fixate on our partner, our mission, our political candidate, and make ourselves believe they, the only choice, is the best choice. This passionate, blind love doesn’t work in in relationships, and though it’s a great tool to get people to the polls, it doesn’t work in politics, either. Toxic candidates and toxic boyfriends both survive because admitting you’re wrong feels worse than doubling down.

For months after my breakup, I kept asking myself why I stayed. This election has forced me to ask a similar question: why do people stay loyal to political projects that keep disappointing them?

I didn’t vote for the candidate I wanted to vote for, Sergio Fajardo, a centrist in a country who doesn’t know what the center is. Instead, I placed my bet on Paloma Valencia, a right-winged candidate from a party I’ve never felt attuned to, because I was scared of where we are right now: between the far-left successor, Iván Cepeda, of the man who made my family flee our country, and the far-right new kid on the block, Abelardo de la Espriella, who promises to make Colombia look like El Salvador.

Neither of these are good choices. I’ve felt sick to my stomach knowing I’m going to have to put my values aside either way, and knowing we’ll be in a similar spot in another four years, when Colombians have to face the backlash of another extremist government. Unlike my last relationship, we truly don’t have another choice. So we have to convince ourselves that our choice is the only right one.

Politicians know this. They rely on our need to be right to fuel their campaigns. I voted for Paloma Valencia with a clear head, with the only passion being for my country, not for a figurehead. Those voting for Cepeda and de la Espriella went in with full force, claiming their choice was the only valid one to defend our country. All it does is isolate ourselves from those we care about. It also makes social media exhausting.

After a lot of therapy and time away from my ex and my family’s fleeing, I invited Bay Gay over to watch the Paddington trilogy and apologize. They had never done anything other than be there for me. In return, I went deeper and deeper inside myself, too scared to admit the full scope of my mistakes. Too scared to show just how badly my decisions had hurt me. They cried, accepting my apology with an open heart, and teaching me that isolating ourselves doesn’t just hurt us. It hurts the people we push away.

I’m going to vote for Abelardo de la Espriella in the runoff election. There is no passion in my vote. I don’t need to trick myself into loving my decision, just like I don’t need to trick myself into removing the shame around my last relationship. I just need to be honest about why I made the choices that I did.

Bay Gay didn’t judge me when I told them what I had kept hidden about my last relationship. Only I did. There was a moment in my life when I didn’t think I could develop deep friendships again. This weekend, Bay Gay had a cat related emergency. I got out of bed and rushed to be with them. I didn’t need to think twice about that decision. On their couch hours later, I told them that I’m their person, and they’re mine. Unlike politics and unlike my ex, the friendship only needed honesty.