Dating : You Can’t Speedrun Self-Improvement

I realized I might be into a guy and I am sorely unprepared for what that entails.

I haven’t been in a relationship as an adult. Well, I have, if you count every guy who went on two dates with me before ghosting me. But a committed relationship where you call them your “boyfriend” and take pictures together and introduce them to all of your embarrassing relatives? Nah, can’t say I’ve done it.

But the prospect is real, and I’m really worried.

I thought I had myself all figured out. C’mon, what 21-year-old doesn’t? I knew my strengths, my weaknesses, and what I needed to do to maintain a healthy relationship. Sure, I’d never taken those skills for a test drive, but…

Then I was faced with the possibility of actually using the skills I thought I had.

It’s like telling everyone that you’re a survival expert, except all you’ve done is watch Bear Grylls and camped out in your backyard a few times. In theory you know some survival stuff, but in practice? You’re useless.

That was me. Except instead of watching Bear Grylls, I was watching Guy Fieri — that is to say, I was even less prepared for life in the wilderness than other fakers (yet reassuringly more prepared for a trip to Flavortown).

I had no clue what I didn’t know, until I knew I didn’t know it. Say that a few times fast.

A small sample of things I didn’t know includes:

• My attachment style (the polar opposite of “secure”)
• My poor self-esteem
• My deep-seated abandonment issues
• My fear of intimacy
• My lack of trust in others

Etc., etc.

Like, holy hell. How do you just not know these things about yourself? Again, I’d never taken myself for a relationship test drive. I could pretty easily pretend that I’d kill a bear with nothing but a half-eaten bra because no one ever said, “Prove it.”

Well, here I was. It was time to prove myself and I was emotionally braless. Also, afraid of bears.

What frustrates me is that all of these issues take time to fix.

I’ve identified that I struggle with trust in relationships. Great. Now, I will trust people. Right?

If it were that easy, therapy would be a lot cheaper.

Changing your behaviors and default thought processes take time.

Unfortunately, humans don’t work that way. Intellectually, I understand that I struggle with low self-esteem and that there are steps I can take to improve it. And honestly? The steps seem so simple that it feels like this should take an afternoon. Accept your own inherent value. Embrace things you’re good at. Find traits you love about yourself.

Done. Give me my self-esteem badge, please.

But actually, fundamentally believing I have worth? Believing I’m good at things and that there are traits about me worth liking? I can write those things on a whiteboard all day, but that doesn’t mean I’ve taken them to heart.

Changing your behaviors and default thought processes also take time. I can’t magically wipe my brain’s well-trodden pathways for how to handle certain situations. I have to consciously and manually rewire my brain every single time I encounter them. It’s habit-building, and that doesn’t happen overnight. It can’t, no matter how hard I push myself to make it happen.

So, I’m resigning myself to the long haul.

I’m reading as much as I can and taking small steps every single day to become the person I want to be.

I’m not doing it for this guy, either. I’m doing it for me. Because whether it’s him or someone else, I want to know I’m capable of having a healthy relationship.

And even if I stay single for the rest of forever, I want to be healthy for myself… even if it takes longer than I want it to.

I suppose I’ll add “patience” to my list of things to improve on.