Fear of Missing Out on Love

Dating sucks right now, and everyone knows it. I knew the moment I first made my Hinge profile I was entering a world I never wanted to be a part of. These days you don’t really have a choice. If you want to meet someone the easiest way is to get on those damn dating apps.

It’s such an unromantic way, swiping around on my phone to find love. Trying to decide just based off a few photos and dumb prompts if we are compatible.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, and it makes me angry. I blame my romantic expectations on the many love stories and the love songs I have heard of since I was young. Beautiful words written of romances that make my heart hungry. The guy is always perfectly flawed, the girl is always chased after.

I have fantasized so much about who my person is, and the love we will have that maybe I have ruined it for myself. The truth, I know is that I can’t predict what that love story will look like. But this mind of mine she loves to make scenarios up.

Unfortunately, as a writer, I can come up with some incredible stories.

I’ll run off with someone and we live in a van, take photos of trees, and can’t keep our hands off each other. Or that guy who comes into my coffee shop finally confesses his love for me. Then we move in together and he wakes me up each morning with fresh pastries from a nearby bakery. Or I’ll be in love with a woman and we will share a closet, our outfits will coordinate and everyone will stop to say how cute we are. Or that person I always hoped was into me comes around. And we share stories of all the times we never said how we felt.

None of the dozens of stories I come up with include, “We matched on a dating app.” Because there is simply nothing romantic about that, and I am speaking from someone whose last relationship that’s how it started. We matched on Hindge, dated for nine months, and broke up last September.

I will never regret our time together because he was a lovely boyfriend. He did all the right boyfriend things, bought me flowers, cut my grass and told me I was beautiful. But I was depressed, just lost my job, and was grieving. He had his own issues to still work on and I couldn’t handle worrying about him on top of what I was already dealing with. I only realized this in hindsight, at the time I felt something was wrong with me for not being happier with him.

I also learned last year what it’s like to be loved when you feel awful about yourself. I compare it to as if he was telling me he loved driving over black ice. This is a ridiculous statement, no way can you love black ice, and no way can you love me with how horrible I was.

I have worried that maybe I will never be satisfied with how I am loved. Maybe the bar I have set for my future love is not achievable.

But then again don’t I deserve to have high expectations?

I have outgrown the desire for a roster, a sneaky link, or a casual hookup. I have tools in my bedside table to satisfy myself far better than a meaningless two minutes will get me. I don’t want to meet my person in a sweaty club, with beer breath. I want to be excited to tell the story of how we met, which often feels unachievable.

I know It’s not very sexy to sit down on a first date and ask their intentions but that’s where I am at. I am not interested in wasting time anymore. I am almost twenty - six but often feel forty - six. I have given time to men who never deserved it, I really don’t want to do that anymore.

I hardly ever am impressed with what I see on the apps.

A recent pet peeve is when I see in someone’s profile a statement about red flags. It’s like we have forgotten that people are multidimensional. Everyone wants to put people in a box of good or bad. Instead of just getting to truly know each other. What might be a “red flag” in one person, is something you can overlook in another. Of course, there are obvious things that are unacceptable. But most of the red flags I hear about are just so superficial.

I want to not be writing this. Instead tell you that I don’t need a partner to be satisfied in life. But people in love do seem better off than me, how could they not be? This world was designed for partnership.

I want to write about how I am very happy being single, but I am not. I do still find pieces of joy in my everyday life. The wind kisses on my neck, and the birds sound more beautiful out my window than before. As I notice these things I know, I am not depressed anymore. I didn’t notice the beauty in the world for most of last year.

Every time I pay my rent, I think “Wow this would be so much cheaper with a partner.” Or when I have to carry in my groceries, walk my dog, or take out the trash in the rain. Being single is hard for a much deeper reason, it’s a disadvantage in life.

We often criticize why couples who fight all the time, don’t just break up. It’s not that easy when you realize once you’re single you’d have to start to do more things on your own. I have great sympathy for those who feel stuck living with a partner they no longer want to be with. Getting out of a toxic relationship is so freeing but also is an incredibly difficult life alteration. Plus, if you have kids or pets you share, all of that will become harder. It’s not impossible to overcome, I did it, but you can’t deny that their lives will become harder before they get easier.

I wish doing life alone was exciting and more affordable.

When I was in a relationship last year I was reminded of how nice this is to have someone to help, someone to lean on. I stayed in my last relationship for so long partly because of the convenience of it all. I needed someone, I was scared and I didn’t want to face the world on my own.

I don’t just want to be in love, I want to live with a sense of ease everyone else has.

I want to have someone pick up cat litter on their way home when I am too tired to get up. I want to get kissed on the forehead and for people to see around me I am adored. I want someone to know what I need to cheer myself up before I do. I want to have two kinds of cereal in my pantry, one for each of us. I want my great-grandma to approve my partner before it’s too late.

There is something about being in a relationship that shows the world, ‘Hey look I am lovable.’ This means something of value in our society. Those who have been single a long time are not looked at as highly as those who have been dating someone for five years. I wish this wasn’t the truth but I believe it is.

I do greatly admire those who have made being in a relationship work for years, I know it’s not easy to do. Or maybe for some, it is easy, it’s never been for me.

I could post a selfie saying “Single for one year!” and it’ll get not even half the amount of attention as a “Dating for one year!” would get. We look down on people being single too much. Without the lenses of empathy of the grand picture of all they are missing out on.

I am not a bitter single woman just because I don’t have someone to sleep with. I am bitter because I am missing out on a reliable partnership. I am bitter because I feel behind my peers. I am bitter because life is hard, and I want someone to rely on.

I know friends can step up in many ways to fulfill some of the partnership duties. Despite that, it’s just not the same as someone who is truly in love with you. They have a deeper longing to do everything they can to make you happy.

If you have read my other essays, then you’ve seen me say I like being alone. And I truly do, maybe too much. The idea of someone else always in my space genuinely doesn’t sound enjoyable in the slightest. But I dream of a partner who would understand my desire for solitude. Give me the space I need, when I need it.

There are only so many new experiences I can have on my own without wishing for someone to share them with. My best friend since high school moved away, a few years ago. While my other friends are busy being in love. I don’t have that person to call on a random Tuesday afternoon to come read in a field with me like I used to. My best friend was that person, and if I was writing this when she lived around the corner. I likely wouldn’t sound as desperate for partnership since she filled so many of those gaps that I know have open again.

I want to not just claim to be a hopeless romantic but to be apart of a true romance.

How nice it would be to wake up and feel loved before you even get out of bed? Maybe I had that last year, it’s unfortunate how numb I was, and how dissociated I felt most of that year. I can’t remember what being in love with him felt like. It’s a feeling I have never been able to keep around.

Like catching a firefly in the summertime. I have tried to keep love in a jar but over time it keeps dying. And there are many fireflies in the sky and I know I am capable of catching them. But it’s the keeping the wings flapping, keeping that little light glowing, that I haven’t been able to accomplish.

I am proud of myself for not settling, and I am proud of myself for still believing in finding love. Somedays I want to give up, and stop the search. The dark parts of my mind tell me I am too damaged to be loved. I don’t just have one bag of trauma, I have a whole conveyor belt of baggage. Yet, I still believe that I am destined for a beautiful life, and a beautiful romance that will be worth writing love stories about.

So here I am, single for almost a year now.

I will keep on swiping, I will keep daydreaming and I will keep reading of love. I see love around me everywhere I go, I know it’s there. I know one day I will be able to hold onto it, and likely it won’t be anything I predicted.

Or maybe it will be, who knows? All I know is that I hope when they show up at my door. I am ready to let them in, and that they appreciate all the love I have to give.

Until then, I will be okay, the birds will still sing and the wind will still kiss me.