Why I Stopped Actively Dating

I’ve been mulling this topic over for the past year after going through a breakup and 3 severe depressive episodes. I don’t really like the conclusion I’ve come to, because it makes me face some truths about myself, my circumstances, and the world I live in that are far from comfortable. It also shatters a hope that I’ve had since I was young and I’ve been avoiding facing that a lot of my desires from when I was younger were aspirational at best and delusional at worst. I just won’t be actively seeking to date anyone any longer.

We all know the most common reason that so many of us lament dating, particularly women who date men, is that our dating pool is basically the same as the dirty puddles of melted snow in NYC crosswalks during the winter. Lot’s of men believing the bare minimum requirements of being a functioning adult are what attracts potential mates. Yes, it’s great that you have a job, a car, and your own place. However, can you spell (more than likely, no)? Was the last book you read assigned to you in high school English class? Do you have hobbies outside of “chilling” or “vibing?” Judging by basic interactions, no matter if they were initiated via a dating app or in-person meeting (yes, those still happen) a whole lot of men that are eligible bachelors are because they forgot to develop a personality over the years of crafting how to hide their height (that they will unabashedly lie about), their receding hairlines, and bare-bones living quarters in selfies. 

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask just about any single, college-educated woman over the age of 28 and they can regale you with war stories of the dating landscape. If you really want a wild ride, ask a single, college-educated Black woman over the age of 28 how dating has worked and strap in for a wild ride. I could go on and on about how patriarchy has groomed boys to become men who either feel that money makes up for lack of emotional intelligence and any semblance of entertaining personality or who believe romantic relationships are just a less taboo version of an Oedipal complex, but this post is about me.

What you should have guessed I would mention if you’ve been following me or my blog for even a short amount of time is that my mental illnesses are a HUGE barrier for me in regards to dating. I don’t particularly care about the people who flat out say they would never date someone with a mental illness, because I wouldn’t date them either. It’s those that think that dating me is one way, but it turns out that it isn’t. Resentment will grow, and eventually, I’m going to feel like a burden. I don’t ever want the reason that someone stays with me to be because they would “feel bad” or they would be “scared of how I would handle it/what I would do” if we were to split. Love can only take you but so far, and I feel that love wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the negatives of being with me. 

Another reason I have decided to step away from actively trying to date is that trauma has informed far too much of how I few relationships and men in general. From the stereotypical “daddy issues,” having been in an abusive relationship, and being in just plain bad relationships I feel far too damaged at times to be a suitable partner to anyone. Yes, you can have “daddy issues” even if your dad never left. But that’s going to take me quite a few more therapy sessions to fully break down and flesh out.

Vulnerability is required to build trust and intimacy in a relationship. However, as it pertains to traumatic experiences in my history, being vulnerable is not something I can do anymore. Psychological walls are very easy to build, but much harder to break down and I don’t believe I should be tasking anyone else with the work of demolishing my emotional barriers. It’s not fair to them and it’s not healthy for me. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when you stay heavily guarded so that people will not hurt or abandon you and when someone tries to break through that but can’t, they leave (as they should), but now you have “proof” that everyone always leaves. It leaves both me and the person who tried feeling awful and I don’t want to put any more broken hearts out into the world.

Now, for probably the biggest reason I have decided to stop actively trying to date. I’m disabled. Not physically, not even noticeably at first.  But having a mental illness or 3 really, really stunts the possibility for romantic pairings if you are categorized as disabled by the U.S. government and receive benefits. I know the trend now is to say that you don’t care about marriage, and “it’s just a piece of paper,” but it is something I would eventually want if I could miraculously get past all the other hurdles of dating and relationships. But getting married would more than likely leave me worse off regarding both my mental and physical health and also leave my spouse and me in financial peril or leave me open to abuse with even fewer escape routes. 

What many people don’t know is that if you marry, or sometimes even just live with your partner, they consider the income of the non-disabled partner as your income. So you are no longer eligible for Medicare (which is more widely accepted than Medicaid) and you lose the meager monthly benefits you were receiving due to not being able to work. So you essentially become a dependent of your spouse, as if you were a child. Most people would not be able to afford to carry a household of 2 adults alone, including the costs of medical bills for someone with a disability. For those that hypothetically could, how does that change the relationship? How can the disabled partner feel on equal footing with the partner who covers all the expenses? Best case scenario is that the non-disabled partner is a good, loving person who would never shove it in their partners face that they keep the household afloat and doesn’t try to control them via their money, but their partner still feels like they are a burden because society measures our worth in the labor we perform for the sake of the economy. Worst case scenario, the non-disabled partner does a complete 180 and becomes abusive. Without a financial safety net, even one that is a small as monthly disability income, an abuse victim has almost nowhere to go. But if they do succeed in leaving the costs of divorcing and the time and energy it would take to reinstate disability benefits would leave them for dead.  

The topic of looking for romantic love is one that weighs on me just as heavily as the topic of being able to work as someone with a disability. So much of how we are taught to measure our own worth is through the markers of who we are attached to and what we do for a living. In an ideal world, these wouldn’t matter and we could all see the inherent value in just being us, but that’s not where we are. So at this exact moment, I struggle to find my worth in the world and the prospect of dating would only exacerbate these feelings of inadequacy. So I choose to opt-out completely. Can my feelings change on this? Sure. But as of right now, I’m okay with my decision.