Dating : On Love In Your 20s — Struggling To G-A-F

I love love. I think it’s a beautiful and powerful thing. I think crushes are fun, sex is fun, romance is charming and with a relationship comes an opportunity to get to know yourself intimately through getting to know someone else.

Despite this, relationships and dating have never been key pillars in my life. I don’t write about boyss, I rarely read romance and I find the single minded ambition to be in a couple really confusing.

Recently, my head got a little flip-turned-upside-down when, as often happens in a good pop-song, I fell.

For really, only the second time in my life, I was totally consumed by thoughts of another person.

This meant obsessively turning my phone on and off flight mode trying to tackle the wide-eyed screen staring, waiting for incoming messages. It meant listening to the lyrics in every song finding parallels in some way between my emotions and theirs. I felt like the only time I wasn’t in two places was when we were together.

Unfortunately, this love was far from hand holding on a Pier feeding one another candy floss. It actually was very messy and became part of a trigger to me crying every day for 6 months. EVERY DAY. Like brushing my teeth and putting foundation on, crying became a habit. I got very comfortable crying in public places, trains included. And I would like to point out that I ain’t a cryer. In fact in the early days of getting to know this person, I remember openly sharing that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried — not even Titanic would make me weep.

Well hohoho Mr Universe was chuckling somewhere knowing what was coming.

So yeah… It didn’t work out between us. At least not in this lifetime and while there is no resentment in me, there is a slight sadness.

My poor, loving, friends are very ready for me to move on which is understandable given what they’ve witnessed, but where it gets a little difficult for me and where I’m wondering if there are more of us out there, is that I won’t move on to someone else. I have to move on to nothing. To being very single.

You see, I suffer from a rare condition known as ‘I-either-feel-everything-or-nothing-at-all’. It’s a terrible pain sometimes, and it’s got worse with age. The harder I work, the more I know myself, the less I’m moved by a majority of people. I’m just so totally disinterested in dating pretty much everyone; something which quite possibly makes me a narcissist. But there it is.

I have dated, and I’m a capable flirt. But if you asked me to name any of the people I’ve been on dates with this year, I couldn’t. Not because of the vast volume (about two hands worth), but because I don’t think about those people ever.

I have no ‘type’ that I can define. Except I suppose that I seem to fall for an air of independence and streaks of brilliance, which aren’t currently filters on Bumble. The typical categories such as ‘similar background’, ‘wants a family’, ‘traditional’ (or not), aren’t things I can use to determine whether I’ll fancy someone.

Stood in a London pub, chatting to good friends about dating made me feel pretty down, because hell! Most people seem to date and find a new Mr Right Now with ease. They’ll be planning for a life in the countryside with two kids and bake sales quite happily; I just cannot understand how they fancy people so readily.

I’m not being critical. I’m actually quite jealous! If all I wanted was someone with good basic morals and a sensible job, there would be a feast of options for me. But my heart doesn’t work that way.

If I’m not in raptures, I’d so much rather be alone with my book (and maybe a vibrator) 🤷.

Whilst I don’t think this is a bad thing, I do like the feeling of being in love, and sometimes I wish I would feel it more regularly. Or, if I’m only going to feel it once, that’s cool but then can that at least be with someone who wants and knows how to be a good partner?

When you feel so rarely, your options are significantly reduced.

The single nature of the independent career woman is one it is easy to look at from the outside and see it as a choice; that she ‘always put her career first’. But did you ever think she may not have felt much choice in the matter? I don’t need anything from a partner bar love and finding that seems harder than finding diamonds in a tin-mine. Yet, the idea of plugging away with people who tick boxes, in case I might one day feel something, really weird.

So I guess what I’m wondering is, am I alone? Or are there loads of us? All struggling to G-A-F, until suddenly we do. And then when you do, how do you let go when it obviously isn’t right, if it’s the only thing that stimulates those parts of you?