Sherell Williams-Shiro: "Grief changes every part of you including how you view life and how you view love"
My best friend talks to me about not wanting marriage or children, the importance of security and trust in relationships, and how family and friendship are prioritised over romance
My best friend and I are sharing a bed like we have done many times over the past 18 years that we’ve known each other. We’re in Belfast, here to celebrate my birthday a week early. We’ve come to do trips together over the years since I moved to London and she still lives back in my hometown in Virginia. I knew when I wanted to start speaking to people about love and romance that I would have to start with the most ever-present love in my life, my best friend, Sherell.
Name Sherell Williams-Shiro
Age 37
Relationship status Single
Monogamous/ENM/Poly? Monogamous
I feel like you and I need to start with something that I think sets you apart from a lot of women that we know, personally as well as anecdotally and that’s the fact that you don’t want to get married and you don’t want children.
Two true statements.
True facts. How did you come to this realisation? Have you always felt that way?
So when I was growing up, a lot of the things when I thought about the future, it never really involved marriage, family in that kind of traditional sense. I think because I come from such a big family – I've got three other siblings who are older and then my mother had me when she was 39, so she was a bit older. And considering the age difference between myself and my siblings, they were all sort of entering the workforce or they were going to night school. They just were kind of at that point in their lives. And because you typically want to be your siblings, I think I just sort of saw what they were doing and was like I want that…
But also just that where I grew up, I just knew that I wasn't going to stay in Brooklyn. I just knew that wasn't going to be the end all, be all of my life. And becoming a rapper or an athlete was the only way to get out of Brooklyn at that time…and I wasn’t going to be either of those things. College was always the goal. And I saw so many people I know get their life derailed before we even got to junior high school [because they got pregnant or went to juvie]. So really for me, it just became about the fact that I wanted to get out of Brooklyn and marriage wasn't going to get me that. So therefore it wasn't the priority. It just became something that never really ranked that high on the needs list.
And for so many people marriage is seen as the safety net. For some people they might view that as their ticket out or a path to a certain life, and with a partner you feel like,” oh, I've got my person for life” — you’ve got someone by your side.
My mom through most of my life was single, my parents were not together. Shortly after I was born, they broke up and they weren't in a relationship throughout my life. I also just did not grow up around a lot of coupled people and I think that probably also influenced me as well, because it wasn't something that I had a lot of examples of. And the examples that I did have, again, they weren't in my primary unit of family... Here in Brooklyn, here in New York, all I see are single women.
You grew up in a very matriarchal household as well, single women looking out for each other and the kids.
I did, yeah. And men were present. My dad, despite the fact that my parents weren’t in a relationship, was always very present. I grew up with my father. I've got some kind of example of what a relationship could potentially look like, just seeing the friendship that my parents had. But it's also probably the fact that neither of my parents before they got together, had a good marriage either. So even hearing them speak about their former relationships, likely influenced me because neither one of them wanted to get married again. It never really was talked about like it was a positive thing.
How have you found the fact that you don’t want to get married and have kids has impacted your dating life?
It's definitely limiting. I found that early on in dating when I wouldn't own up to the fact that I don't want those things, and then I sort of noticed it would become an issue later on if I really didn't just kind of stand ten toes down on it. Because a lot of men will say that they want marriage and they want kids and then you'll kind of have the conversation about it and maybe you're not really seeing it in the same sort of way of what the reality of it looks like… But the reality is that, I just don't want to do this. It did make my dating pool a lot smaller once I led with the fact that I don't want kids and I don't want marriage. Because by default, a lot of people, including men, think they want that. And so if you don't, it seems as if there's no future.
A lot of people in general have never really interrogated that perspective or the other possibilities for themselves in terms of what a future looks like with someone.
Yep. And that's the difference. That lack of interrogation.
Marriage and children are viewed as the endpoint. There’s a lot of fear of uncertainty and if you don’t have the labels of “this is the father of my children” or “this is my husband” it feels as if you can just disappear into the ether…
My grandmother had a boyfriend my whole life and we called him “Uncle”. We weren't allowed to even call him or acknowledge the fact that he was clearly her end of life partner. He was a boyfriend… I don't doubt that she loved him, but even just sort of the role that he played in her life, the romantic part wasn’t prioritised. He helped her around the house. He did partner things. He helped to fix the car. He helped with getting groceries. He helped to do the shopping. He would, run errands for her as it related to us. I could see the ways in which the things he did for her were clearly in partnership, it comes from like a good place where someone who loved someone wants to do those things for them.
But I don't have a memory of her telling him that she loved him… she would say he's reliable. She would say that she he's dependable. That he stuck around when she didn't expect him to. Little things like that I think come back to me and I realise that the ways I think about a happiness [in a relationship] comes from things I wouldn’t want to have to worry about.
I want to have a place to live. I want to have food to eat. I want to be able to buy clothes that fit. And the solution to getting those things was never marriage. Because getting married didn't equal having money. You could be married and be poor. You could be married and have kids and still not have enough food to go around to feed everybody. I think I just always never really thought about it as something that would give me what I wanted because all the things I wanted were so practical.
You're probably the most independent person that I know. And that's something I've always admired about you. You don’t save anything for best. If you want to go out and do something, you're gonna do it and you'll do it on your own. You'll travel somewhere, you'll go out to eat at a certain restaurant or see a particular artist that you want to see in concert. And I think that's something a lot of people still aren't willing to let go of, like the hope of one day being able to do something as a pair. How did you get to that point?
It wasn't without trial and error. It’s really hard because so much of what we see and the examples that we have, even from just something like going out to dinner is always seen as a social activity, which by default means other people. It's never just you solo. There’s now a lot of emphasis on solo travel and solo dinner dates and taking yourself out. For me it really came from a place of recognising that I already enjoyed my own company. I was already perfectly fine being on my own and I didn't find anything odd about that. I don't need to wait for someone to go with me. Eating with someone else is more fun, but I kind of was just like, I don't always have to eat by myself at home. I know how to sit at a bar. I can ask for one table. It is weird the first couple times you do it. You do get the person looking at you like, “just one?” They do take the silverware away from you and it feels a little bit like they want to give you a pity look, but after you do it a couple of times, it becomes a bit normal.
Can we say you were an early adopter of dating apps?
Oh God, yes. Yikes yes. [We both laugh.]
Can you talk about your experience of that and how they've evolved?
So you know this about me. I did not really date a lot in college.
Neither did I!
No, you didn’t either! We had stuff going on, we were busy being journalists! After college in 2010 and when I had my first job working as a journalist in a newsroom, I knew that I wanted to date. I just didn't know how to do that and balance my schedule. And of course, the dating apps were the natural way to do that… So at that time it really was limited. You had Tinder, you had OKCupid and Match.com. I think that was it. Tinder was an app and everything else was online dating… so I've been doing this for a little while now. I distinctly remember when Bumble became big and people were using it more because it was one of the very first.
So around like 2014, I remember I was on Bumble and I had met the German. [Ed note: It’s a truth universally accepted that no woman who talks about a man that she dated or slept with calls him by his actual name.]
The apps have really changed in terms of features with new technology, but the biggest shift has been people’s attitudes. You went from having a brand new thing and we're all kind of having fun with it, but now no one takes it seriously and a lot of it feels very performative. A lot of it feels like people are creating this illusion of the kind of person that they think somebody wants to see on an app versus sharing who they are. Everyone is just out here doing nothing.
And apps go through cycles of popularity… like with social media apps, all the dating apps morph into each other. If one app had a feature that was unique to this specific app, then they all bring in that feature that made it special and then dilutes the dating app pool.
Why do I need to use three different dating apps? You just choose the one that's getting you the best result. And for me, for a long time it was Bumble. Aside from the control it gave me as a woman, it was a combination of men I was actually finding attractive and whose profiles felt authentic and men who would actually make a plan to get off the app. It was checking those three boxes for me, until it wasn’t.
What happened when you decided that you were going to just down tools on dating apps?
It will be three years in November since I left the apps. Aside from feeling like the old lady at the party still hanging around, after being on the apps for about 13 years, I kind of felt like it was just a lot of the same. I was seeing a lot of the same answers. I was seeing a lot of the same photos. I wasn't really feeling excited about the process anymore. And by that point, three years ago, I was also trying to rig the system, like a lot of people, right? I had my own little ways of doing things. I'll match with a certain number of people, each day, and then that way, if I start a conversation with seven of them, but only three stick around because some of them do disappear, at least I won't have zero.
Or deciding I'm going to try and match with someone before the weekend and try to have a date lined up on a Friday or a Saturday or something. There are all kinds of dating strategies that people started sharing on how to game the algorithm and even just doing that, it started to feel like work. It took so much of that initial enjoyment of the meet.
I mean, it's very unsexy and it's unromantic.
It’s very unsexy! It was just like, there’s no point. It just didn't make me feel good anymore. Nor did I feel like any of the dates I was actually going on were enjoying it either. Every date just devolved into us just talking about how terrible dating is.
Oh god, we’ve all been through so much that we can’t even focus on possibly connecting with the person that’s in front of us and we just want to rehash what we’ve been through.
Everyone's just so traumatised. It’s sad. And so I just decided to call it, you know, even knowing the possibility of meeting someone in person was very slim. I just was like, I'm not getting what I want out of this anymore, if I ever was. I don't know that I ever did get what I wanted out of it. I haven't been in a relationship in many, many years now. I had a couple of good dates here and there. But in general, the connection that I wanted to find in another person just never manifested.
And is this something you’re still hopeful for?
It is! I want to be very clear, I’m not anti-love. I think love is beautiful. I think partnership is beautiful. I think it's really hard to find someone that you connect with who you can also trust. And I think in a lot of ways we've lost that magic combination where you can connect with people now. You can genuinely like and enjoy each other, but I think all the other things that for me, like that kind of trust, that security, the things that I think would make me feel very comfortable and actually attempting to build a life with someone, I do think that's harder to find.
Which I think used to be the point, right? Love is this coveted, wonderful thing because it used to be so rare. And if you could find that, how beautiful could that be. So I still want that connection, I'd still like to find it, but I had to sort of get used to the fact that it might not happen. And while I think I always did accept that, I do think I sort of wasn't realising how sad that may be.
And so over the years it's been more about just telling myself that it's okay if it doesn't happen. And I'd rather it not happen than for me to fall into a relationship or a connection with someone that I don't see being genuine.
This is a conversation you and I have had a few times. The possibility of it not happening. The possibility of not finding someone. Years go by and we may have our dalliances, we may have our good dates, we may have our situationships… And it's the sitting with the uncomfortable truth that not everybody finds someone.
It's a hard thing to think about. It's difficult to prepare yourself for, especially when you have examples in either your friends or your family or people in your general orbit who are clearly finding it. People are falling in love around me all the time. In one year I went to seven weddings. Seven weddings!. Somehow I knew seven people that all got married within the span of three years. The previous year was four weddings and one of them was yours! So love is all around as they say. It just wasn't happening to me, and that’s OK.
You do recognize the absence of it. And you can do that without it being that devastating, but I was fully aware that it just wasn't happening to me. And so it became a thing of me doing that interrogation. I had to to sit down with myself and ask, how do I really feel about that? And am I actually okay with it? Because if I’m not okay with it, that's also fine, I can do something about it.
You know me, I'm very action oriented, I'm not just gonna accept it. I do think it freed me up a little bit. It did change how I was using those apps near the end. Because then so much of the stuff that happened or didn't happen rolled off my back. It was like, okay, like I really enjoy talking to this guy. He didn't ask to see me in person. [She shrugs.] When he ghosted, OK his loss, moving on to the next one. Or I went on this date, I thought from the conversation it would go well, but we had no chemistry in person. That's a shame on to the next one. It really freed me from dwelling on what wasn't happening.
It’s really important that you don't internalise those things or the actions of other people as a reflection of you or something that you're doing wrong. That you might need to change, or think that “if only I was like this, then this person would stick around.”
Things to know about me, I like being in control. I am an overthinker so it would be extremely easy for me to go ahead and say it's me. I'm the problem. But because I overthink so much and because I like being in control, I'm also aware of things that I can't control. And if a guy doesn't want to see me, or if he doesn't want to respond to me or if he doesn't indicate that he wants him to go beyond this, I can't do anything abut that. He’s grown and so am I. I can’t change that, that’s out of my control.
I don't think I've ever left a date since I was in my 20s feeling like I didn't say what I wanted to say or I didn't ask the things that I didn't want to ask. And that's largely me also saying, well, I did all I could to get the outcome I wanted. It just didn't happen. So I can live with that.
I do feel like that is a rare attitude for people to have in general but especially in dating, because everyone is afraid of spooking the other person. To your point about profiles becoming more generic or having vague or generic answers to cast a wider net just to be able to have someone sat opposite you, so when you finally get to the date you don’t say anything because you don’t want to scare them away…
It's hard to find that balance and I think this is where we all struggle in some way and it does require you to sit with it and figure this out what this looks like for you. We all struggle in some way to show up as our most authentic selves without revealing all of our flaws. I remember dating in my 20s, I was doing the stuff that you hear from a lot of dating sites for women. I was maybe dressing a bit differently than I would dress normally. I was applying makeup, and you know I don’t wear makeup. I was trying to order a salad or order something light so I didn't eat anything messy. There are all these sort of the structures that I was like putting myself into in order to put what was supposed to be the best foot forward on dating. But what made that really difficult then is I'm spending so much time on that date trying to be this thing or trying to present myself in a certain way that I didn't really feel like I was showing who I was.. And for me, that's really hard. Like when I am not being what feels like me, it genuinely messes me up.
As someone who isn’t actively pursuing partnership in the way that most people are, are there ways that you are pursuing love and romance outside of that? And what and what does that look like for you?
Yes, I like to joke that I'm involuntarily celibate now. [We both laugh.]
But I feel like the way I approach casual dating to get one result is different from the way when I was actively seeking a partner. I will shout out my therapist because she really helped me create language for myself to help me understand the distinction between those two things.
For me the thing about casual dating is wanting to be able to find someone that I still vibe with, but understanding that that connection has a clock attached to it. Or it's got a very defined lane versus the partnership one. But they can overlap if I want to have something casual with someone that makes me laugh, that is still a trait that I could want and desire in a partner. There are going to be these lines that went across both of those columns as I kind of built it out. But I think the approach to the casual is I will ask a couple of questions up front that I won't lead with in the partnership. So I might want to understand more about what you're looking for or like what you're attracted to, specifically what you're attracted to because I want to understand if we're compatible in that same way. What are the things that kind of like you vibe with, do I vibe with them too? I might ask more questions about your sexual history. And how you feel about things like consent and protection. And again, those things for me always go across to the other column for a partner as well. But with the partner column, I think we have more time for that. It genuinely is like we're marinating and getting to know each other about those things. And while I would still love to know the answers to those questions up front, I'm okay if that takes a little bit longer for us to get there.
It feels as though romantic relationships and partnerships take the top spot when it comes to the pyramid of relationships. How have things maybe shifted for you when it comes to the other relationships in your life, with friends and family?
I don't think my hierarchy has ever changed. Wanting that connection or wanting a potential future partner has never shifted where I view the non-romantic love in my life. As you know, I consider you to be my life partner.. That's that's where it is. Thatyou are above any man person that comes after this, you will still rank above them and they will just have to deal.
But I think why romantic love gets to be so low in my hierarchy is because of the fact that I have never felt like I have been lacking love. My familial love is my foundation.
Everything else that comes on top of that is only possible and sustained because of that. I can only love you the way that I love you because of that familiar foundation of love that I have. Any friendship I have, the ways in which I love my friends, the way that I feed that relationship is all stemming from that.
I think those things make me a better person capable of loving a future partner in a very particular way. You don't get a fully realised partner in me without those two things. I think for me the hierarchy will not change for those reasons because I don't think I get there without that. If those two things don't exist for me, I'm a completely different person to a partner.
Yes, I can see that it’s less of a hierarchy and more of like a flow. Like your well starts right there in the family and flows into the other types of love, and I feel very similarly to you. Obviously my desire and the way that I may prioritise wanting romantic love is different but my self-concept when it comes to loving another person is the same as yours in that it comes from the family and how I learned love from them and how to give it.
Absolutely. That's what makes it so easy for me to spot the kind of love that I don't want. It makes that gap so clear to me when it exists. And how easy it is for me to be able to say that's not what I'm looking for. Which makes the dating and not having success with it go down a bit easier because it doesn't feel like a loss. Maybe the absence of the connection at a time did feel like a loss, but not having it look like what I wanted to look like that's not the real loss. It’s okay that it didn’t happen.
You’ve revealed that we are best friends and life partners. [We both laugh.]
But I was married. How did you feel when I told you that I was getting divorced?
I was shocked. I think I just felt really sad for you because again, for as long as we've known each other, I've known that that was important to you, that marriage was something that you desired, having that partner and in the future having children was your dream. I felt really sad that a dream of yours that had been realized was now gone. And honestly for me, I think it just became another example of why I think I view love the way that I do. My mother used to say, “love don't pay the bills.”
She used to remind me of all the ways in which she and my father loved each other And despite that, it didn’t allow them to sustain a romantic relationship. They never stopped loving each other up until she died. My father would say that my mother was still one of the biggest loves of his life. I wouldn't be here if he didn't love her in that way. I'm his only child. And none of that kept my parents together… I think that used to always stick in my head. So as sad as I was for you, I think for me that was another example of that coming to fruition. I know how much you loved your husband. I know how much you loved that relationship. I know what you put into your marriage, and I know the work that you put into it. And unfortunately it wasn’t enough because sometimes it’s just not enough.
I’ve certainly felt that loving someone enough would save any relationship and a lot of us don’t go into relationships considering the work we have to put into them. It's just as simple if you love the other person enough, the problems that you faced when you were dating, when you were engaged, when you first moved in together, they will all kind of dissipate and fade into the background because you love each other. Or despite the fact that you love each other and that's not how it works.
And some of that is not our fault, right? We were sold the fairy tale. We always hear about the happily ever after. No one gives us the ten years later epilogue that details the blood sweat and tears and the glue keeping that relationship together ten years later. Our parents don't let us see those things. You don’t know what it is that you’re signing up for. But I think that's that's why prioritising friendship is always important to me.
I don't think you and I really have ever really had a genuine argument, but I do think we have been through some things. And we've managed some of those things and some of the changes to our relationship. The distance of course being the biggest one, we are in a long distance relationship and it hasn’t stopped us having to fight for it. It's prioritising communication, prioritising seeing each other in person and carving out that time for each other. And I think that is what the expectation is in romantic relationships. Me copy pasting, what I do with you with the person would be ideal, but the other person has to be the other reciprocal part of that equation.
You and I say this all the time that we only work because we're both intentional about making it work. And as soon as one of us stops feeling that way, this will crumble. But it hasn’t because we choose each other.
I’ve been avoiding this topic because it’s the hardest thing to talk about, your grief. The loss of not only your family, but the most important members of your family. How has that impacted your outlook on love now?
Oh it has changed, 100%. I feel like it took me a really long time to get out of the early grief stage.
After I lost my mom, once I felt like I had my feet on the ground again, we lost my sister. And then after that, it was the same thing and then we lost our brother.
I wished someone could just take away what I was feeling. I wished I could just pour all of this love I had that now had nowhere to go into another person.
I can recognise how easy it would have been for me to have just sort of accepted whoever could have walked into my life at that time, if I could have even noticed them, but if that had happened, I could see very easily how I could have just accepted any kind of love and affection coming at me to ignore the deep pain I was feeling from my grief.
It was a reminder that my family is not forever. And no relationship is, but my family is such an integral part of that foundation. I never had to think or really worry about it being gone in that way.
As you know, my mom was sick most of my life. I knew I would lose her. I knew I would lose my parents, but I always expected to be the last of my siblings, and be the one to bury them many years from now. And the fact that that timeline got sped up, it did change my outlook… I don't have as much time as I thought for certain things. Maybe this really all is even more fleeting than I realised.
I need to think about that partner differently because how nice would it have been to have had someone there with me through all of that? How much support could I have had beyond the remaining members of my family if I had had a person that I could have gone home to and just fell apart. I had to deal with it all on my own.
And I think it made me realise again, the absence of it. How much I would have loved that it had been different. And then the other part of that is that any future partner I meet can't meet those people. They will never get to meet those people who were so integral to creating this person that they love. I can't show you who they are because they aren't here anymore.
I do think it changed the way that I viewed romantic love. It didn't remove it from the hierarchy, but I though, I would like to not do this alone again if I can. So that’s why I didn’t give up entirely.
I thought that I could get through any bad thing in my life if I just had my sister. any break up, any job loss, whatever it is. It would suck. But my sister would be there to help me pick up the pieces. But now that person is gone. Grief changes every part of you including how you view life and how you view love.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
About me: I'm Nicole, the writer of A Crumb of Romance. I’m the co-author of The Half of It: Exploring the Mixed-Race Experience, a content creator and the co-host of the award-winning Mixed Up podcast. Having been chronically online since the age of 13, you can also find me on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Pinterest.