A couple weekend ago my friends and I ended our night gathered around my friends dining room table. Earlier in the day we had explored a vintage shop and then got margaritas. And by margaritas I mean pitchers- pitchers and pitchers of margaritas. But it was a 70 degree day in Chicago, so did we have a choice?

Around the table we talked about relationships. We listened as one friend shared her struggles and her hopes for hers. We listened through tear filled eyes as we heard her say the words that we had all thought many times before, “I just want him to be better” she said through the tears. “It’s so good when we’re together, I just wish he was better.” Then she repeats, “I just wish he was better, I just wish he was better, I just wish he was better.”

I’m not sure if it was the margaritas or if it was the fact that it was me on the other side of the table. I felt this out of body experience where I was looking at myself through someone else’s eyes repeating those words. For the first time, I could clearly see how others I had confided in felt about me in the past- that the hopes of a man being better was never the point, it was finally seeing how much I was loved at *that* table. The love that they have for me catapulting me into somewhere I am loved better.

As I heard the words “I just wish he was better” and saw myself (and her), I quietly thought “but you are so good.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my almost 28 years, it’s that wishing for a man to be better is beside the point, if anything, it’s a distraction. Men will come and go, and often, they won’t change. But the women around the table, the ones who reflect the parts of you that need to be seen, are everything.