Allegra

If it's not an enthusiastic yes, you shouldn't be doing it.

I didn't want to disappoint him.

So I was like, OK, I'll just fake my way through it and then be on my merry way.

I don't think I was super comfortable with what was happening there.

But I definitely at that time period had a problem with people pleasing in my personal life as well as professional.

I think the combination of being an only child to older, stricter, more traditional parents who expected a lot out of me and whom I did not receive enough.

praise, validation, and affirmation from frequently, if at all, then created a situation in my personal life where I craved those things and was looking for it from all the wrong people and all the wrong places.

And then you compound that with the ballet industry where it's easy to live and breathe for what my professors thought of me

It's easy to see how that would become my paradigm through which I filtered everything in my life through.

Did you have a lot of dating experience prior to college?

No, not a whole ton.

I had only really ever had one boyfriend prior to college.

A lot of confusing things, relationship adjacent, but never a relationship.

I was still figuring out this is what I want, this is what I like, and the things that I didn't want and didn't like.

If I could go back, I think I would do almost everything when it comes to my dating life in early college differently.

I definitely think I walked into a situation where maybe there was an opportunity for me at the beginning.

If I had said, I don't want to sit on your bed, let's go back up to the couches.

Maybe something could have been different.

There is that guilt there, but that's normal.

We're always our hardest critics, I guess.