Before You Date Me, Unfollow Me

Being a writer is hard because you get to expose your deepest thoughts and feelings to the public, being a writer who writes about love, relationships and heartbreak is harder because you run the risk of ruining your chances of dating anyone who actually reads your stuff because they’re going to think that everything you write is either about them or about someone else.

The truth is writing is a very personal and heartfelt form of art, but like art, it doesn’t mean that the artist going through these emotions right now or going through them at all! Sometimes it’s just a thought, an imagination, a memory, a line that inspired you, a song that took you back in time or even a situation that happened to someone else and you decided to live it, to feel it, to write it as if it happened to you because this is what writers live for. Stories.

Writers live many lives, they live many stories, they could channel all kinds of emotions and they could make everything in their imagination sound so real because at some point, whether it actually happened to them or not, they lived it and they know exactly what it feels like.

And in the age of social media, writers promote their work on their pages, they put their most honest work out there, they literally pour their hearts out for the world to see because they want people to know what kind of writers they are and what kind of topics they write about so they can attract the right people.

THEY DO NOT ALWAYS POST THINGS THAT REFLECT WHAT THEY’RE GOING THROUGH AT THE MOMENT.

They do not post things to send a message to someone they like or someone they’re dating and they don’t post things to pull you closer or push you away. It’s their JOB and they try to do the best they can.

I’ve personally been a victim of guys running away when they read my articles or my poems because they think I’m still hung up on an ex or that I’m indirectly telling him how I expect to be treated or what kind of man I’m looking for.

So to all those thinking about dating a writer, do yourself a favor and unfollow them!

If you’re going to read too much into what they write, unfollow them.

If you’re going to judge them for their heartbreak or their relationship choices, unfollow them.

If you’re going to read everything they write and find a way to make it about you, unfollow them.

If you think that when they write pieces about missing someone or the one that got away means they still think about them, unfollow them.

Unfollow them if you’re going to make assumptions instead of directly asking them.

Unfollow them if you’re going to make them feel like they’re a hot mess because they write about anxiety or heartbreak or being lost.

Unfollow them if your source of information will be their work instead of themselves.

Unfollow them if you truly want to get to know them. If you want to figure out their hearts without reading about it. If you want to know their minds without comparing it to what you’ve read.

If you want to truly love them, you have to forget about the essays they wrote, their vulnerable words, their contradicting thoughts, their conflicting emotions and their secrets that find a way into their work. 

You have to let them do their thing without making them feel that what they love the most might be getting in the way of something beautiful. You can’t hold their work against them even if the rest of the world does.

If you don’t unfollow them, then try to understand them, try to talk to them about a piece you were curious about, ask them questions and try to let them know that even though you’ve seen pieces of their heart and soul, you still want to see them through your eyes, not through their Instagram posts.

If you don’t unfollow them, please understand that if they were to write something about you, they’ll send it to you, they won’t let the world see it before you do, they won’t try to send you a message through their writings, they’ll just text you. 

And if you find yourself in their words, don’t freak out, don’t think they’re getting ahead of themselves, don’t try to read their minds because you’ll get lost and you’ll never find a way out. Because all it means is they admire you, it means they find you beautiful, it means they’ve seen your details and decided to make art out of them.

If you don’t understand art, unfollow them.

If you’re afraid of falling in love with them, please unfollow them. 

Rania Naim is a poet and author of the new book All The Words I Should Have Said, available here.