Third and possibly final observation about online dating:
After my complete nervous breakdown (mental health crisis) in 2018, I self isolated for a year and quietly tried to piece myself back together. Then started what has been 6 years of therapy. With certain issues, I held fast to my boundaries and blocked the person. The first time someone asked me for nudes, I had a panic attack and cried for an hour. The majority of people I really vibed with lived too far away. Keeping up with all of those conversations is maddening. I have, for the most part, been very careful about my word choices, the length of my responses, and trying really hard to relate like a neurotypical. But in the week or two leading up to this coming weekend, I have grown increasingly dysregulated. My life will be completely uprooted and in disarray for several days to a week. My ADHD/CPTSD responses were sometimes in full effect. Thinking clearly and being clear on emotions has been a struggle. I still need to figure out what all of my triggers are.
While I still stand by what I have always said that no one owes anyone else the most precious gifts of their time and attention, ghosting culture is terrible. Matching with only a few people at a time seems to be a good way to avoid unintentionally ghosting someone. It hurts and then desensitizes you to other people's feelings and eventually, your own. One person ghosted me for a week and came back with a perfectly valid reason for silence, which I responded to with a story from my own life like an idiot. My responses were only more awkward after that and reading back through it I was like 'WTF is wrong with you!? You're a trained mental health first responder!? Seriously?' So I have that to add to my list of things I'm going to internally beat myself up about, which I should. There were other awkward conversations, but that was the icing on the cake of those. I have to wonder if I wasn't self sabotaging because it was only with people I really liked. Topic for my next therapy session, yay.
Clearly, I'm not ready for this, so I deleted all of the apps. I feel like I'm not fit for human consumption and have a strong urge to crawl back in my cave of self isolation. But my friend that gently coaxed me out last time would probably drag me out by my ear this time.
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
stormborns
vaporwave
titsay
