Why I Gave Up Dating

My dating life (romantically and otherwise) skyrocketed during the Pandemic and I had such a blast, but after some time with Venus in retrograde last December, it flatlined.

Mind you, this had a lot to do with my mindset on dating and relationships shifting. I liked keeping things casual, and only seriously dated one person during COVID. At the time, I had been ready to get serious but he wasn’t. Sometimes it really does come down to right person, wrong time.

I wasn’t a stranger to blasting all of my dates and anyone I talked to via tweets because hey, I was having fun and being adventurous. I linked with a guy in a rooftop hot tub, got plenty of good food, traveled all the way to a desert casino, and so much more. I’m not sure I have any real regrets.

Dating that first guy vs all of the other dates made me realize exactly what I didn’t want. I knew I didn’t want someone who would annoy me, someone who was condescending, or someone who took their anger out easily after a hard day. I didn’t want someone whose personal ethics didn’t align with mine either. Religion still isn’t that big of a deal to me, as long as you’re a good person beneath your beliefs and allow me my spirituality without teasing me for it. I can’t tell you how many people I muted on Twitter alone based off of their condescending interactions on my astrology takes.

Another big one is someone just expecting me to hook-up with them because “Tinder is a hook-up site, it’s implied” because it’s not, no matter what these dudes had to say to make themselves feel better. I’ve noticed a lot of guys fall into this mindset that if you sleep with them on the first date, that’s all it will ever be, which devalued me. Why is it that men who put out just as quickly, are better than the person they slept with?

Still to this day, I miss having someone that I feel connected to and safe with, someone who loves just how unfiltered and goofy I am. But I fell into the habit of accepting the bare minimum – and once I realized that, everything else was blown out of the water.

I realized that I deserved the whole nine yards, someone to learn my love language and speak it fluently to me, someone to randomly give me a rose just because he thought of me, and someone who says when asked what their plans are, “you are my plans”.

Now I have no intention on downloading Tinder again for a good long while, nor do I plan on prioritizing dating at all, but if it happens organically and someone puts in the effort to surprise me sans red flags, then I’m game. Let’s go.

Until then, my peace and passions are my main focus moving forward.