“What are you looking for?” This is the question I get asked most often on dating apps.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what I’m looking for. As a consequence, I find myself giving vague responses like “I’m just looking to see who I connect with here” or “I’m taking it slow and eventually looking for a relationship."
I’ve been connecting with a lot of guys on the dating app I’ve been using, and it’s true—I do want a relationship eventually. The problem is that the connections I’ve been making haven’t led me anywhere, and it’s highly possible I won’t be ready for a relationship anytime soon. In fact, I could be a few years away from being in a place where I could sustain a healthy, committed relationship.
How do I figure out what I actually want now and where to look for it? I’ve decided the first step is looking in the mirror, and the second step is taking a deep breath and removing the dating app from my phone. After some mental preparation and last-minute messages, that’s exactly what I did.
Tired of the dating game
I knew weeks ago that I was starting to reach my limit: one too many times being ghosted, one too many guys I had to “unmatch” for saying crude things, one too many guys taking two days to respond to my messages. I was losing interest, partly because I wasn’t connecting with anyone who seemed genuinely interested in me.
We attract what we put out into the Universe. I realize now that whatever I’m looking for isn’t waiting for me inside a dating app. If anything, spending time on the app has been distracting me from the things I could be doing and the places I could be going to have a better chance of finding something good and real.
To be fair, I’m not sure I can handle “good” and “real”; if I could, maybe I wouldn’t have gone on dating apps in the first place. Dating apps are starting to feel like the realm of the desperate and shallow—maybe not for everyone, but apparently for me. It’s on dating apps that I’ve been faced with the most desperate and shallow side of myself. I have compassion for that side, so I’ve decided to pull her out of the digital space she’s been drifting in. All it’s been doing is feeding into her insecurities, loneliness and sadness. I need to let it go.
Time to unplug
I didn’t want to ghost the guys I’ve been chatting with, so I let them know I was going to be leaving the app in 24 hours. Some of them I gave my number; others I gave my Instagram handle. When the 24 hours were up, I deleted my account and removed the app from my phone.
It was a relief to finally get rid of the app. It felt like waking up from a spell. How important it had all felt—the guys, the conversations, the hopes, the rejections—just evaporated into thin air, and I realized that so much of it had been sound and fury signifying nothing.
I can’t make guys like me, no more than I can make myself like them. Also, I can’t make myself ready for a relationship or even hookups when I’m nothing of the sort.
Now that I’ve woken up from the alternate reality that exists inside the dating app, I see a clearer reflection of myself in the mirror. I wasn’t genuinely interested in most of those guys, maybe in any of them, because I wasn’t genuinely interested in meeting any of them in real life. I just wanted to chat. While I was upfront about this in my conversations with them, I was still leading them on to a degree—leading them to believe that it was possible we’d get together. I realize now that it wasn’t. I didn’t want that. Wishing doesn’t make it so.
My relationship with myself
I’m struggling with my mental health, as many people in these strange and overwhelming times are. I’m simply not in the right headspace to date and trying to convince myself that I am is sending me backward fast. So much time and energy have been lost on that dating app that I could have spent doing things that would make dating more of a viable possibility for me.
The irony is that being on the dating app was likely making me less ready to date than I was before. It eroded my confidence to get rejected over and over again, and to have to present a curated version of myself, leaving out some of my most essential attributes for fear that they may lead me to get rejected even more.
I lost myself in my ongoing efforts to be found attractive by the men I was chatting with. I didn’t like the person I was becoming. I realized that if I couldn’t see myself as attractive, it wouldn’t matter how many guys gave me a “hey beautiful” or “you’re so pretty.”
I’m beautiful in my own eyes now for recognizing that I was on a digital dating road to nowhere. I know I’m going to miss the self-esteem boosts of flirty messages, but I’m going to benefit immensely from no longer feeling the sting of messages left hanging in the air.
My message to myself is this: You need no one’s approval more than your own. Deleting the dating app has already strengthened my relationship with myself, and at this moment, that’s all that really matters.
«VERWANDTES LESEN» DATING IN THE DIGITAL AGE: Attraction depends on more than a profile or questionnaire»
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