I QUIT!: No Dating Diaries
Quitting dating and letting go of romantic partnership
I read this article in The Atlantic recently that reaffirmed a conversation that I had with my therapist earlier this year. I, like the people featured have decided to quit dating.
Read The People Who Quit Dating article here
I am letting go of the idea that I will experience long term romantic partnership at this point in my life, and I am going to document my journey through ambiguous loss and building a healthy attachment to myself.
Learn more about ambiguous loss here
This isn’t a knee-jerk decision. This is something I have been considering for a long time. Historically, it has come from a place of hurt. I cannot count the number of times I have yelled, “I give up,” after being hurt by past romantic endeavors, relationships, and even the act of putting myself out there—I have wanted to “quit dating” 100 times before.
This time I am doing it because I have noticed how much it negatively impacts so much of my life. I think my piece, Rejection Sensitivity is killing me and the fight to stop abandoning myself, offers some serious insight on how derailing dating or even romantic attraction, can be for someone who internalizes everything. I labeled it the prologue because it truly sets the frame work for why I have made this decision.
Through the No Dating Diaries I plan to share the who, what, and why. Some of that will include grieving, real time processing, and prompting a series of really hard conversations. I want to encourage serious self reflection on how we (the large, society we) center romantic partnership so much that we undermine community and the intimacy of platonic relationships.
What’s the TLDR; version of this? I am giving up. I am letting go of the concept, the hope, and even the desire for romantic partnership. I am accepting that my reality could include me being single for the rest of my life.
Whether you’re single, looking, in a relationship, poly whatever your dynamics I hope I can offer a point of view for you that encourages you to reconsider how you treat your single friends, how you discuss and frame romantic partnership in your life—and how letting go can make more space for more expansive relationship building.
Song of the week! I know Jade wrote this about fame and the music industry, but I find its powerful lyrics can apply to most things we deeply desire in life.
If you want to get into some nitty gritty number & statistics backed information around singleness check out this Pew study thats stated 1 in 4 adults will be single their whole lives.
Note: I imagine this study is influenced by heteronormative patriarchal beliefs behind the nuclear family, childrearing, and more but I still find it incredibly insightful.
As long as I keep moving…
