Slowly wading back into the dating pool

It’s been two years since my last relationship and I’m finally ready to start unpacking some stuff I’ve been avoiding. I finally started seeing my therapist again and it’s so nice having a therapist that has known me since I was 18 years old. She knows my trauma. She knows my family dysfunction. She has seen my evolution on and off over the years. There was at least a seven or eight year break at one point as she kept moving farther south and I kept moving farther north making scheduling impossible. Then the pandemic happened making virtual therapy an option that didn’t exist before. And I’ve been seeing her on and off ever since I started graduate school. She was also there with me through the rise and fall of my last relationship and somehow finds a way to tie it all back to the core wounds of my youth.

This time around, I’m ready to start dating again, but I’m fully aware there’s a part of me that’s terrified for an overwhelming amount of reasons I won’t even bore you with that that’s how overwhelming it feels to my brain to my body.

I recently attended my first matchmaking event in nearly a decade since 2017 was the year I became celibate for three years until my last relationship started in 2020. I drove home crying not because I had a bad time but because I had become painfully aware of a limiting belief that keeps me stuck in perpetual singleness for 65% of my adult life to be exact.

And I became painfully aware of the ways I blocked myself from the possibility of love to mask the deeper truth within that the more love I have for someone, the more painful the loss. And this was the thought that had me crying on my way home from that matchmaking event because that led me to reflect on my relationship with love ever since that first loss when I was 20 years old. I remember feeling dead inside. I remember feeling like I wanted to die because I didn’t know how to survive in a world where that person no longer existed. That’s my biggest fear — to fall in love with someone only to lose them in a tragic accident.

I got myself back into therapy so I can start facing that fear again. The good news is that I’ve already done it once before and doing that work within helped me land my first relationship in 15 years since the biggest heartbreak of my life. But there was something missing in that relationship and I didn’t know how quite to articulate that without hurting my partner’s feelings no matter what angle I tried to take with it. I got labeled as impulsive and wanting too much.

At this point, now I’m debating whether I should delete my Hinge dating profile because every time I come close to going on a date with someone, I completely shut down and I disappear. Why am I even on here?

And then recently, someone asked me out on Facebook dating and if I was okay with a seven year age gap. We were having a lovely conversation until he wanted to take it offline, understandably so, but I froze. I don’t think I would’ve even entertained the conversation if I wasn’t mindful of that age gap. Truthfully, I was exploring the possibility and the verdict is still out. I ultimately flipped the question on him and asked if he was okay dating someone in a perimenopause phase of her life. 😆 It was my way of acknowledging that a young man like himself might want to have kids someday while also assessing his maturity level and understanding of women’s bodies.

But I recognize that that’s all a cover-up! It’s one example of the insidious ways that I block myself from experiencing love in my life. Because I really like my life. I worked really hard to have the life that I have and I will be damned if I let any man ruin it. I will protect this life and my peace as if my life depended on it because it does. The truth is I don’t know if I can survive another heartbreak like the one I faced in my early years. So that’s why I’m back in therapy to remind myself that I’ve done it before and I can do it again. I know I am capable of a deep love, but I don’t feel safe to love that deeply when that depth is not reciprocated.