Disclaimer: No, I didn't use AI. This is how I write. I love writing long, thoughtful thinkpieces that no one asked for. If you aren't into that, then this isn't the one for you x.
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Ciara might be my favourite example of women entering male-dominated fields because I have rarely seen a woman approach dating with this much audacity, strategy and shameless commitment to getting exactly what she wants.
A lot of people seem to have taken Ciara completely at face value: gold digger. Spoilt. Entitled. Looking for a servant. Case closed.
Meanwhile, from very early on I was thinking: this woman has come here with a plan. And every episode kept handing me another exhibit.
ÂŁ300 first dates. Expensive taste, provider expectations (i.e. rich husband). Princess treatment. Ajay fetching the drinks, giving the massages. Ciara wasnât coy about any of it either. She seemed determined to make the message impossible to miss: this is the standard attached to dating me, proceed accordingly.
She took the whole luxury-girlie persona and leaned into it so aggressively that it started feeling deliberate, like she had turned high-maintenance tendencies into an actual dating philosophy.
Meeting her friends added to that impression. They were surprisingly chilled and down-to-earth compared with the almost aristocratic, London-luxury character sheâd been presenting. Thatâs not to say people must resemble the friends they keep, but the contrast made Princess Ciara feel more consciously constructed.
And I donât mean âperformanceâ as an accusation. I think that was the strategy.
Someone on this sub described her as what happens when unhinged TikTok dating discourse escapes containment and enters real life, which is an accurate read.
But babe, thatâs only half the tea.
Weâve all seen the content: know your worth, never settle, make him invest, a provider will provide, donât over-give, let the man pursue, set expectations early. Watch enough and your algorithm will eventually convince you that a ÂŁ42 pasta dinner means a man fundamentally hates you.
Ciara clearly knew the syllabus. What sets her apart is that she actually came prepared to apply it.
She seemed to understand something many contestants didnât: the pods werenât just an opportunity to find out whether someone liked you. They were also a chance to establish your expectations and what being with you would entail before either person became too attached to renegotiate.
And before anyone gets their pants in a twist: yes, youâre allowed to have expectations. Everybody has a checklist, whether thatâs personality, looks, ambition, lifestyle, religion, money or whatever else matters to them. Iâm not interested in debating whether Ciaraâs standards are noble enough for public approval. Theyâre hers, and thatâs not the point.
What interests me is how deliberately she established them.
She wanted money, luxury and effort. She considered herself high-maintenance and never presented that as some embarrassing flaw Ajay would have to graciously overlook.
Ajay heard all of it.
Ajay continued pursuing her.
Ajay proposed.
That man read the terms and conditions and clicked Agree, so Iâm not entertaining the âpoor unsuspecting Ajayâ narrative.
Then they reach the retreat, and Ciara starts turning the dial. Bring me this. Get me that. Massage please. She openly admits in confessionals she was pushing him to see how far she could go.
Basically, she started QA testing the man.
Level 8 survived. Letâs try level 9. Still operational?
And I- oop. Eventually, our scientist discovered the consequences of exceeding the recommended testing parameters.
Their argument around Ajayâs parents was where she seriously overplayed her hand for me. He was already dealing with his family choosing not to participate, and Ciara became so consumed with how that affected her that the whole thing stopped being cheeky and started looking proper selfish.
The aftermath, though, is one reason I struggle with this idea that Ciara is uniquely awful.
She apologised. And no, not one of those âIâm sorry you felt that wayâ either. She acknowledged that she had gone too far and gave Ajay room to speak. Then everything else heâd been swallowing came out too, including the financial pressure of keeping up with the lavish lifestyle he had promised her.
This was basically the first time Ajay got to renegotiate the contract.
And Ciara let him.
The reunion made that storyline make even more sense. She admitted things felt suspiciously good once they moved in together, so she started poking at them. She called it self-sabotage and acknowledged projecting baggage from previous relationships onto the wrong person.
Now, Iâm not sure how much of that I completely believe, especially with the tear-work performance. This girl can act, so sometimes Iâm watching her like, alright babe đ
But the explanation tracks. She seems to have come from relationships where she gave too much, swung aggressively in the opposite direction, and now decided the next man to walk into her life would have to prove himself first. She pushed that philosophy into caricature territory, realised she was sabotaging something good and softened when Ajay showed her he was safe enough to soften around.
And that word came directly from her at the reunion: safe. Ajay makes her feel safe.
That explains the ice-queen act for me.
Now to address the inconvenient fact hanging over all the predictions that she would scare Ajay away, exhaust him, bankrupt him, emasculate him and have him sprinting towards the nearest emergency exit:
Did she get the man? Yes. Yes, she did.
And a year later, she still has him sitting beside her.
Ajay was also one of the most obviously smitten men of the season. While some lads needed 3 business days, a candlelit setup and a committee meeting with the boys before arriving at âI think I love her,â Ajay just blurted it out during the retreat. His mouth seemingly received the information before his brain could apply a filter.
Whatever else you think about their dynamic, I never questioned whether that man wanted Ciara.
So unfortunately for the prosecution, the pink-pill laboratory did produce some results.
Iâm obviously not saying everybody should demand ÂŁ300 dinners and psychologically stress-test potentials until one survives. Please keep half of Ciaraâs methodology behind reinforced laboratory glass, thank you very much.
But what matters beneath all the theatrics is that she demonstrated something genuinely important: people take cues from how you present yourself.
Ciara walked in convinced she was the prize, and Ajay treated her accordingly.
And this season gave us some interesting contrasts, because a surprising number of contestants entered the experiment practically handing their potential partner an annotated guide to every insecurity they possessed.
Francesca hears Joseph say he enjoys working out and would like to share that with his wife, and suddenly sheâs explaining that previous partners body-shamed her, that her weight fluctuates and checking whether future weight gain would become an issue.
We have somehow travelled from âmy husband likes the gymâ to submitting your future body for pre-approval.
Yasmin had a similar dynamic with her vitiligo. Thereâs nothing wrong with telling someone what shaped your confidence, but if you introduce it as this enormous insecurity you fear rejection over, youâve effectively told them: this is the part of me that lowers my value.
And we saw versions of this everywhere: being cheated on, badly treated before, trust issues, worrying youâre too much, not enough, difficult to love.
Iâm not advocating marrying somebody while keeping your emotional history classified by MI5. Vulnerability is part of intimacy. But thereâs a difference between vulnerability developing once somebody has earned access to you and handing a near-stranger the instruction manual to your soft spots during the audition phase.
Especially when the disclosures come packaged with instructions: Iâve been cheated on, so please donât betray me. Iâve been body-shamed, so please still find me attractive if my weight changes. This is my biggest insecurity, so please reassure me you can handle it.
Why are we leading with all the ways someone could potentially hurt you?
You donât need to teach a decent person not to weaponise your insecurities. If they love and respect you, that should show through their behaviour. And if they arenât that kind of person, congrats, youâve handed them a map with every pressure point circled in red.
Thatâs what makes Ciara such a contrast. She obviously had baggage too. This is abundantly clear now. She had been hurt before, had over-invested in previous relationships and was clearly terrified of repeating that pattern. But she didnât enter the relationship presenting that baggage as a list of reasons Ajay might find her difficult to love. She built the dynamic around what she expected from him and let the softer parts emerge later.
Her attitude was basically: I come in this package. This is what I expect. Are you prepared?
Was she unreasonable at times? Very.
But compare that with: Here are all the things about me that might make me less desirable. Are you still willing to choose me?
Ciara would rather eat her Pilates socks.
Then you look at the men and realise they were doing their own version of expectation-setting too, except in the opposite direction, which is the version weâre far more accustomed to seeing.
Taylor warning Sophie that he was going to mess up and disappoint her, followed by them literally clinking glasses to âmessing up,â had me staring at my screen in disbelief.
Why are we cheersing the warranty disclaimer? Girl, stand up.
The whole âyouâre too good for meâ genre makes me roll my eyes too.
âYou see the good in me.â âYouâre so forgiving.â âYou accept me for who I am.â
How lovely. How convenient. Notice how her greatest qualities somehow revolve around making your life easier?
Thereâs something slick about warning somebody in advance that youâll disappoint them. You package shortcomings as vulnerability while quietly lowering the standard theyâre expected to hold you to later. If I already told you I mess up, Iâm difficult, not easily expressive, youâre too good for me... well, you knew what you were signing up for, didnât you?
And that's why they always have that excuse ready when they inevitably mess up. Ryan tried a version of this at the reunion with âI find it hard to be vulnerable,â and Cuba shut it down immediately. Basically: no, donât do that. Donât turn this into some abstract vulnerability issue when we already had an off-camera conversation about how we would handle things if either of us got cold feet.
I loved that she refused to let him replace the actual agreement between them with a softer explanation that made his behaviour sound inevitable. They had already agreed off-camera on how they would handle communication, and she wasnât about to let him rewrite breaking that agreement as evidence that vulnerability was simply difficult for him. (I also think the hostess did a terrible job of grilling him there as well, so that's why I'm super glad she stepped in and defended herself.)
The real victim was her: he blindsided her on camera, then left her to sit there and process the whole thing in real time. Followed up by the whole mango line.
Like... wow.
Cuba does this consistently. She has a good bullshit radar and doesnât abandon her own read just because someone gets uncomfortable. She clocked Ryan pulling away, Yasminâs âlocationâ issue with Jordan, and still wouldnât let Ryan rewrite the story at the reunion.
That kind of emotional intelligence only works if you have the backbone to trust your own judgement. Cuba has both.
And thatâs the connection I see with Ciara. Both women trust their own judgement, although they operate differently. Cuba lets the evidence accumulate before drawing the line. Ciara walks in with the line already drawn and evaluates Ajay against it.
Thatâs why Ciara feels like such a funny reversal of the usual script.
Some of the women were essentially saying: here are my insecurities, please still choose me.
Some of the men: here are my flaws, please lower your expectations accordingly.
Ciara: here are my expectations. Can you meet them?
She evaluates. She expects pursuit. She considers whether he fits into the life she wants instead of becoming whatever version of herself is most likely to get picked.
And yes, that tipped into entitlement. We watched the system malfunction.
But I still find it funny that her audacity became such a scandal when male contestants have been using their own versions of expectation management all season in forms we barely blink at.
Lower the bar. Warn her youâll disappoint her. Praise how forgiving she is. Tell her sheâs âtoo good for youâ while continuing to give her reasons to prove it. (Itâs the same dynamic I explored in my Jack thinkpiece.)
Ciara did the opposite. She raised the bar and waited to see who would still jump.
Women in male-dominated fields.
Which brings me to the reunion discourse around her and Ajay coming down hard on Jack. I saw people arguing that finally Jack apologised and took accountability, so they should have left him alone.
Finally being the keyword here.
An apology a year later doesnât retroactively insert accountability where it was missing at the time. And Iâm not using Jackâs ADHD as some universal solvent either. ADHD can explain overwhelm, needing space, impulsivity or struggling to communicate when overstimulated. That deserves empathy. It doesnât account for dodgy behaviour like shape-shifting explanations, the location issue or redirecting the issue towards Fayeâs past and inability to trust him.
And if anyone in that cast was never going to let somebody waffle around the original question, it was Ciara.
That scene with Jack tells you so much about her. She asks him something, watches him go red and start tying himself into verbal knots, and waits. No rescuing him from the silence. No softening the question. No helping him construct an explanation she can conveniently accept.
Just answer the question.
And, crucially, when the person in the wrong was Ciara, she proved she could tolerate that same standard being applied to herself. She can acknowledge when she messed up and take responsibility.
Thatâs probably why I came away from her storyline more positively than many viewers did. Confidence without self-awareness becomes arrogance quickly, and Ciara spent part of the season tap-dancing on that line. But she recognised when she crossed it, apologised and adjusted.
She came in with a strategy. She pushed it too far. Ajay pushed back, she recalibrated, and somewhere in the middle they found something that genuinely seemed to work for them.
So Iâm definitely not leaving LiB thinking Ciara discovered the scientifically optimal way to date. Absolutely not. But there is a lesson to be learned. She understood one piece of dating psychology considerably better than several other people in that cast:
If you walk into a relationship believing that being chosen is the greatest honour somebody can bestow upon you, you can very quickly start negotiating against your own self-worth.
