This Is Me Saying Goodbye To Modern Dating

This is me saying goodbye to modern dating; this is me saying goodbye to that rush of adrenaline when someone decides to swipe right on my perfectly selected photographs, this is me saying goodbye to awful chat-up lines, sleazy intro messages and small talk about what I do for a living. This is me saying goodbye to ‘just talking’, to that first date anxiety, to that rush as a not-so-handsome stranger who looks nothing like his photo, touches my leg and laughs at something mediocre which leaves my lips. This is me saying goodbye to wondering how many other dates he has been on this week and if he will disappear from my Whatsapp and life, when this night comes to an end.

This is me saying goodbye to waiting to be asked out on a second date, to wondering how long I am supposed to leave it before I text him- especially when I haven’t heard from him. This is me saying goodbye to trying to figure out when it’s okay to sleep with someone and what that says about me (like, this should not even be an issue in 2019 and yet, it still is!) This is me saying goodbye to playing our date over and over in my head and trying to figure out if he did actually like me or he was just caught up in the excitement of me sat so close to him, of the smell of my perfume on his skin, of the thought of him taking me back to his apartment and screwing me.

This is me saying goodbye to constantly trying to work out what is going on for him, whether he likes me, whether I am just a ‘for now’ girl, if this is a ‘situationship’ or has the potential to become something more. Does he even want something more? This is me saying goodbye to texts which stop and start again, to those three dots which appear and disappear, to those last active time stamps which haunt me because he just isn’t responding and I’m here wondering whether it’s too soon to double text. This is me saying goodbye to those ‘I’m not sure’ and ‘I don’t mean to be sending you mixed signals but I am, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon’ conversations. This is me saying goodbye to putting up with less than I deserve with the reasoning of ‘but this is the world we live in now’ because you know what? It doesn’t have to be, we don’t have to accept that it is. We can fight and wait for more.

This is me saying goodbye to always settling for less than what I want and need because I really really like the idea of someone rather than who they are telling me they are, and I just don’t want to hear it. This is me saying goodbye to waiting around for someone to get their shit together, this is me saying goodbye to not being able to express how I feel when I feel it, for fear of pushing someone away. This is me saying goodbye to feeling afraid of setting boundaries, this is me having the courage to say goodbye when someone isn’t willing to respect them. This is me saying goodbye to having to filter myself out of fear it will mean being ghosted or being left bread-crumbs. This is me saying goodbye to having to pretend I am not someone who gets attached to people easily, of having to pretend that if I like someone, I focus all of my energy on them- I don’t continue dating others. I am not a ‘keeping my options open kind of girl’, of having to pretend I am cool and chill and so freakin’ millennial that I will just accept whatever half-assed effort someone is willing to give me because they think I’m going to wait around and just put up with it.

This is me saying goodbye to a dating fad which I honestly have zero interest in. This is me saying goodbye to trying to fit myself into a world which I don’t belong in, this is me saying goodbye to giving up on the fairytale, old-fashioned, serendipitous kind of love that the sixteen-year-old me used to waste time thinking about. This is me saying goodbye to men who send dick-pics, ‘you up’ texts, who don’t want me but don’t want anyone else to have me, who like the way my body feels and the way I touch them, but don’t like everything which leaves my lips. To men who can’t fall in love with the passion which crackles inside of me, or the way I don’t just keep my mouth shut when something pisses me off. This is me saying goodbye to settling, to second best, to not being willing to wait for the magic, the fireworks, the story.

This is me saying goodbye to modern dating and choosing to wait for a love that makes me feel as magical, as empowered, as lovable, as amazing as I know I am.

Because that is what I deserve.