Self-Partnering and Self-Love: Soledad's Journey to Becoming the Love of Her Own Life
Thematic Claim: Wholeness Precedes Partnership
In This Could Be Us, Kennedy Ryan advances a bold thematic claim: self-partnering and self-love are not a rejection of romantic love but a prerequisite for it. Soledad Barnes must learn to be the love of her own life before she can trust another person fully. The novel argues that a healthy relationship can only supplement—never replace—the love we have for ourselves. This journey frames the entire narrative, transforming Soledad from a woman who gave her love away in abundance to one who first turns that love inward.
The Solo Anniversary Date: Claiming Space for Oneself
The first major expression of self-partnering appears when Soledad keeps her wedding anniversary reservation at Spiros, an upscale restaurant she had long wanted to visit. Despite her recent divorce from Edward, she refuses to cancel. Instead, she reframes the evening as a date with herself. She tells her followers: "I've been challenging myself to enjoy this journey of self-partnering."
When the host clears the second place setting, Soledad notes the finality of the gesture—that empty space across the table becomes a declaration. She reflects that no one is coming to rescue her, and at the end of the day, it is up to her. This moment establishes self-reliance not as a burden but as a source of power. She captures the moment for social media with the caption "Meeting myself! And I went with the red!" and the hashtags #SelfPartnering, #MeetingMyself, and #Divorce.
This scene also introduces the online community Soledad builds. By sharing her solo date publicly, she invites others to join her. Followers respond with their own stories of dining alone, taking solo trips, and practicing self-partnering. The communal dimension of her journey matters: Soledad heals not in isolation but within a supportive ecosystem that includes her sisters, her friends Yasmen and Hendrix, and her growing online audience.
The She Shed and the Me List: Building a Life of One's Own
Soledad's renovation of Edward's former man cave into her "she shed" represents a powerful act of physical and symbolic reclamation. She demolishes the space with her own hands, tearing out the Boston Celtics memorabilia and the "nasty dookie-colored carpet." The she shed becomes a sanctuary for her work, her reading, and her solitude.
In a live-streamed session from the shed, Soledad introduces her "Me List"—a catalog of activities she pursues solely for her own enjoyment, separate from her roles as mother, friend, or professional. The Me List includes installing a skylight, adding engineered hardwood floors, and creating a reading corner. She also launches an online book club with bell hooks' All About Love: New Visions as the first selection. The timing is serendipitous: when she reads the chapter on self-love, she encounters the phrase "soledad hermosa" (beautiful solitude), which she interprets as a personal sign that she is on the right path. She writes: "It feels like a sign that I'm headed in the right direction, like a letter hooks sent encouraging me that I can be alone and not lonely."
The Me List also influences Judah Cross. After learning about Soledad's practice, he creates his own list, acknowledging that he had neglected himself for years while focusing entirely on his autistic sons and his career. His ex-wife Tremaine had encouraged him to find more balance, but Soledad's example shows him what that might look like in practice. The Me List thus becomes a shared symbol of intentional self-care that bridges their separate journeys.
The Sunday Morning Ritual: Cultivating Contentment in Solitude
Soledad develops a weekly Sunday morning routine that becomes the spiritual core of her self-partnering practice. She walks nearly two miles to Sky Park before dawn, claiming a limestone bench beneath a dogwood tree as her own. There she sits in silence, journals, and holds conversations with her heart. She confronts the voices that blame her for Edward's infidelity—the whispers that she took too long to lose baby weight or should have anticipated his needs. In these quiet moments, she arrives at a crucial realization: "I can never take responsibility for someone else's bad character."
This leads to the deepest question of her journey: not "Can I trust another man?" but "Can I trust myself?" Soledad recognizes that Edward's failures do not automatically make her a bad judge of character. She must learn to distinguish between her own mistakes and the choices others made. The Sunday morning routine becomes a discipline she invests in, using a gift card she earned from meal-prepping for a neighbor to pay for her solo breakfasts at Sunny Side restaurant. She takes a photo of her table for one—the other place setting removed—as a ritual declaration of self-sufficiency.
The epigraph from Zora Neale Hurston—"There are years that ask questions and years that answer"—resonates deeply here. Soledad's year of self-partnering is the year that asks questions: What do I want? What are my boundaries? Can I be alone without being lonely? The novel suggests that the answers arrive not all at once but gradually, through repeated small acts of showing up for oneself.
The Complexity of Self-Partnering: Desire, Connection, and Timing
Self-partnering in This Could Be Us is not a rigid doctrine but a lived tension. Soledad experiences real conflict between her commitment to herself and her powerful attraction to Judah. After they kiss, both acknowledge the difficulty of restraint. Judah admits he is struggling not to act on his feelings, and Soledad confesses she has thought about the kiss "a lot." When they eventually sleep together, she worries that her feelings might not be genuine—that she might simply "not liking being alone" rather than truly wanting Judah.
Her friends help her navigate this complexity. Yasmen asks whether Soledad must deny herself happiness with someone else in order to be happy with herself. Hendrix points out that self-partnering does not mean celibacy, and that taking something for oneself—including physical pleasure—can be compatible with the journey. Soledad's internal question becomes the central tension of the novel: "What if I make the same mistakes I made before? Don't I need more time?"
Lola offers a nuanced answer: "Wholeness is not a destination, but a lifetime process. Something that instead of waiting for, you could be living for." This reframes self-partnering as an ongoing practice rather than a prerequisite checklist to complete before deserving love. Soledad can continue her self-work even as she opens herself to a relationship.
Mami's Legacy: The Hornet as a Model of Self-Love
Late in the novel, Soledad discovers her mother's leather-bound journal while cleaning out the family garage. In its pages, she finds a philosophy of self-love that predates and validates her own journey. Mami writes: "I told her I am the love of my life. I have learned to love myself without judgment or condition. It's the only way I have enough love for everyone who needs it—to love myself."
But the most striking passage redefines resilience. Mami rejects the common metaphor of the butterfly—too fragile, she argues, to carry women through repeated loss. She declares herself a hornet: "I can love. And I can sting." This metaphor transforms self-love from a passive, gentle ideal into something fierce and protective. A hornet loves her own fiercely but also possesses the capacity to defend herself. Soledad realizes her mother loved herself "fiercely enough that if no one else ever saw her, ever loved her fully, she would love herself enough to have some left over for everyone else."
This discovery crystallizes Soledad's journey. Self-partnering is not about constructing walls against love but about building a self so whole that love becomes an addition rather than a completion. The hornet metaphor also connects to Puerto Rican cultural identity, symbolized by the pilón and the flag. Soledad's heritage grounds her self-love in a legacy of survival and strength.
Symbolic Connections
Several recurring objects reinforce the theme of self-partnering. The machete Soledad uses to demolish Edward's pool table represents the decisive, even violent, act of reclaiming space for oneself. The Rubik's Cube likely symbolizes the complex puzzle of self-discovery—every face must align before the picture is complete. The purple motorcycle suggests freedom and the willingness to move through life on one's own terms. Finally, the pilón and Puerto Rican flag anchor Soledad's identity in her culture, reminding her that she comes from a people who have survived and thrived through self-reliance and community.
Each symbol reinforces the idea that self-partnering is not a withdrawal from the world but a reorientation of one's relationship to it.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does Soledad's solo anniversary date challenge traditional expectations about romance and partnership? Soledad actively resists the cultural pressure to avoid being alone by reframing the anniversary as a date with herself. Rather than canceling the reservation out of shame or loneliness, she documents the experience publicly, using the hashtag #SelfPartnering. She claims her own space at the table and has the second place setting removed, symbolically declaring that she does not need a partner to validate her presence or her enjoyment.
2. What role does the Me List play in Soledad's self-partnering journey, and how does it influence Judah? The Me List is a deliberate catalog of activities Soledad does solely for her own enjoyment, excluding obligations to children, work, or family. It functions as a tangible commitment to prioritizing herself. When Judah learns about it, he creates his own list, realizing that he had made his sons and career his entire identity. The Me List becomes a shared practice that allows both characters to pursue self-discovery without losing sight of each other.
3. How does Soledad's reading of bell hooks' All About Love shape her understanding of solitude? Soledad encounters the phrase "soledad hermosa" (beautiful solitude) in hooks' text, which she reads as a personal sign because her name means solitude. This coincidence helps her reframe being alone as something beautiful rather than frightening. She physically places the book on the pillow where Edward used to sleep, symbolizing that her dreams are no longer haunted by the past but oriented toward a future of her own making.
4. Why does Soledad initially resist her feelings for Judah, and how does she eventually reconcile desire with self-partnering? Soledad worries that her attraction to Judah might be a sign she cannot be alone or that she is repeating old patterns of dependence. She questions whether she needs more time before any relationship. Her friends help her see that self-partnering is not a rigid timeline but a continuous process. Lola argues that wholeness is not a destination one reaches before living—it is something one practices while living. Soledad eventually accepts that she can pursue a relationship with Judah while continuing her self-work.
5. What does Mami's hornet metaphor contribute to the novel's argument about self-love? Mami rejects the butterfly as too fragile to represent women who survive repeated losses. The hornet can both love and sting, suggesting that self-love includes the capacity for fierce protection. This metaphor frees Soledad from the expectation that self-love must be soft or passive. Instead, it becomes a form of strength that allows her to love others without losing herself. Mami's journal also reveals that she considered herself "the love of my life" before anyone else—a lesson Soledad finally embraces.