My Greatest Risk
We all have that one decision—the one that felt like skydiving without a parachute, except in your heart of hearts, you were sure you'd MacGyver the landing somehow. For me, that leap was starting over when I least expected to. Not in an "I quit my job, sold all my possessions, and backpacked through Southeast Asia" way—though, respect to anyone with that kind of wanderlust. No, my big risk was leaving behind a relationship with someone who, on paper, checked all the boxes. But as any good rom-com will tell you, love isn’t lived on paper.
Spoiler: It got messy. But also—teaser for the end of this story—it got amazing.
Let’s set the scene.
Chapter 1: Mr. Perfect...ish
When I first met Ethan (not his real name—this isn’t an exposé), it felt like a meet-cute fresh out of a movie I probably grew up watching on the Universal lot. We bonded over obscure film trivia at a mutual friend’s dinner party while playing an overly competitive game of charades. He was smart, funny, and wore those wire-rimmed glasses that somehow make a guy look both intellectual and sexy. He laughed at all my jokes. He wanted to know all about my screenwriting career. He even liked musicals, which is basically like discovering a unicorn among straight men.
Our relationship moved quickly, the way LA traffic will never move—seamlessly, effortlessly. Ethan fit into my life like he had always been there. Shabbat dinners? He charmed my mom with a well-timed kugel compliment. My Hollywood friends? He could actually hold his own in a conversation about Tarantino’s use of non-linear storytelling. It all made sense.
Until it didn’t.
Chapter 2: The Quiet Doubt
Here’s the thing no one warned me about: Sometimes, you can love someone who’s objectively great, and still... something feels off. At first, I brushed it aside. Hollywood teaches you that relationships are supposed to be a little uncomfortable—aren’t we all just waiting for our montage moment where it “clicks”? Except, months passed, and the montage never happened.
The doubts weren’t loud, dramatic Dealbreaker™ moments. They lived in the quiet.
Like the way Ethan avoided conflict, brushing every disagreement under a rug even Marie Kondo wouldn’t dare fold. Or how he planned our lives so meticulously that any deviation—say, canceling plans to just stay in and eat overpriced sushi on the couch—felt like disappointing a life coach.
The kicker? Ethan didn’t really see me as much as he appreciated the image of me. To him, I was the “cool writer girlfriend” who went to film premieres and knew my way around a bris. But the Becca who loved writing messy short stories about family drama or binge-watching “The Real Housewives” ironically? That felt... less important.
Chapter 3: The Leap
It hit me like the third act of a rom-com, the moment where the protagonist finally takes charge. Only this wasn’t a big public declaration of love—it was the opposite. One morning over overpriced lattes at Alfred’s Coffee, I said the words:
“I think we want different things.”
And we did. Ethan’s vibrancy came from structure; mine came from spontaneity. He wanted a perfectly curated future. I wanted a partner who could sit in the chaos of the present.
The breakup was surprisingly civil—as much as it could be with tears staining the marble countertops. But let me tell you, the days afterward were brutal. The kind of brutal where you kind of want to text your ex just to ask how they handled your mutual HBO subscription. Still, I knew the void I felt wasn’t an absence of Ethan but the absence of certainty.
Chapter 4: Standing Still is a Risk Too
Here’s the surprising thing about leaping: Half the battle isn’t in the jump—it’s in sticking the landing. And that part was harder than I expected. There’s this unspoken pressure to immediately “glow up” after a breakup, to prove you’ve evolved beyond the person who once thought matching brunch outfits were a good idea.
For weeks, my friends tried valiantly to set me up. (“You know, my coworker’s brother also likes Proust!”) And I tried my best to embrace the newfound space in my life by throwing myself into hobbies I didn’t even know I had. Hot yoga? Hated it. Screenwriting? Actually, kind of missed it.
But commitment is tricky, right? It’s rarely just about the relationship you’re in. Sometimes, commitment becomes a comfortable routine you don’t want to leave because, well, what’s out there? For me, leaving Ethan wasn’t just about him. It was my gamble—on myself and what kind of life I actually wanted to build.
Chapter 5: The Reward
Fast forward a bit. One sunny day—because in LA, they’re all sunny—I decided to hit pause on the “search for someone” loop and buy myself a ticket to New York for a week. A solo trip, just because I could. Leaving behind LA’s date-night restaurants and familiar routines was exactly what I needed to hear my own voice again.
Somewhere between wandering MoMA alone and eating a $14 bagel (worth it), it hit me: There’s power in recognizing when something good isn’t good for you. That trip didn’t just help me rediscover what I wanted—it opened me up to the real possibility of meeting someone better. Not someone “better” in a checklist-or-IMDB-credits sense, but someone who matched me in the ways Ethan and I couldn’t.
And surprise surprise, six months later, at another dinner party, I met someone. Picture a film nerd who didn’t just tolerate my “Real Housewives” binges but argued Lisa deserves more credit as a businesswoman. That’s another story for another day, but this one? It ends with a happy Becca, on her terms.
The Big Takeaway
Leaving a good thing that isn’t the right thing is probably one of the scariest things you’ll ever do. Risk-taking isn’t just cliff diving or quitting your job to move to Paris (but if you’ve done that, props to you). Sometimes, the greatest risks exist quietly in the lives we’ve curated because they require us to admit: “This doesn’t work for me—and I deserve better.”
If you’re feeling that weight sitting on your shoulder, let me be the friend whispering in your ear: Leap. Believe me, it’s even better than landing safely.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got Shabbat dinner to host—and my boyfriend swore he’s finally going to try gefilte fish.
