We're All Fearful of Dating

I was seeing someone from late August into September. Let's call him...Henry. A few weeks into seeing Henry, something felt off.

Sexually we weren't totally jiving. Conversation had gone from flowing to somewhat stilted. Nothing specific had gone wrong. I was having that vague, nebulous feeling we sometimes get when we're a few weeks in and the place we thought the train was headed is no longer where the train is headed. I had no idea where the train was headed now, but I had a sense not to long term partnership.

Gone are my days of sitting on those feelings. Instead of leading with a vague "Hey so like how are you feeling about all of this?" I speak from my heart. I get vulnerable. Vulnerability begets vulnerability. On what would turn out to be our last date, my heart said "Hey. I'm...I'm not really sure how to say this...but well, I want to be more affectionate with you. I want to hold your hand and kiss you more, but I don't feel comfortable doing it, because I feel like you don't want that? I don't know what to do about that...but it doesn't feel good. What are we doing?"

Henry wrapped his arms around me, assuring me he really, really wanted those things. He reiterated how he'd been feeling flat the last few weeks (he was, in fact, dealing with a virus) and that made it so his libido was next to nothing. I leaned into him and pressed my head to his chest, but then said "Alright but just know...I'm not fishing for compliments here. I'm seeking a relationship and if that's not where you're at, I think we should deal with that."

Henry pulled me even closer this time around with a defiant "I want that, too." We snuggled a bit more on his front porch, and then I got up to head home. He hugged and kissed me goodbye, gave my butt a squeeze (this still confuses me, in all honesty), and we loosely touched on both being free that weekend. I got in my car and drove home.

That was a Wednesday. On Friday morning I shot him a text based on a previous conversation we had. Two hours turned to 10 hours turned to two days, and there we were. Well actually, we were no longer we at all.

You might be thinking... But he was sick! You shouldn't have said anything! Everyone deserves a second chance! And again..why the hell did you say something?! You scared him away. You came on too strong. You should reach out....lightly.

I knew even before I sent that last text the words coming out of Henry's mouth weren't genuine. My body knew. Ironically, doing this work has actually made me more compassionate for people who ghost. My narrative is never "WTF?" and now always "Oh. I see. You couldn't say it. You couldn't say the hard thing you were actually feeling."

There is no greater prison, in my mind, than not being able to honestly express what you feel (be it in a relationship, at work, etc). And yet so few of us actually can bring ourselves there, especially when we like someone. In Henry's case, his caring nature turned out to be a bit of a double-edged sword—he wanted to comfort me, to make me feel better in the moment, even if he couldn't commit to his words.

It still hurt. Not so much the ghosting. More so not having someone to make dinner and watch old Nickelodeon shows with. He had a farm upstate and I got a total kick out of the animals. It was sweet. He was sweet. And smart and sexy and witty. But the worry of doing something wrong, a worry that used to eat me alive (that was the true pain of ghosting), didn't even cross my mind. The desire to reach out hovered a bit, but I knew it was only my ego playing tricks on me.

Despite the fact that I do this work, I'm not impervious to ghosting (i.e. someone else's actions). While it rarely happens because I've gotten better at sensing (and listening to!) flakey behavior from the outset when it does happen it doesn't send me into a shame spiral. Becoming fearless around ghosting wasn't about figuring out how to avoid it happening ever again, it was about releasing myself from the self-loathing, judgment, and anxiety that comes with it. In the case of Henry, it doesn't even cross my mind to consider I did anything wrong or something fatal to have messed everything up, because I didn't. I just was.

Our fears about dating hold wisdom. If we unpack them—if we can get beyond the belief we're doing something wrong— they can serve as a guide to where we need to do the real work on ourselves.

This article was previously published on my old website.