I’ve never been in a relationship.
I’ve never been in a relationship. Ever. Never even went on a date. Now, while I have shared what I consider to be some very private and personal stories, I consider this, by far, to be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to share, and the most vulnerable side of me that I have chosen to reveal. So please, tread kindly. If you ask, “BUT HOW?!” or “WHY?!” or anything along these lines, my honest answer is that this is not the result of my choices. I have been on and off dating sites for four years. You would think something would have happened by now, like a date at the very least but no, this has not been the case. I’ve had friends who have had some great relationships from being on these sites, friends who got engaged and went on to get married and are very happy with their spouses. But none of this has been me.
My experience on dating sites has been like this – 70% of the messages I get are about some sort of interest in my body, the possibility about being an FWB, of being the third, or of being the other woman. I don’t know if I was so naïve that I didn’t know better. I also don’t know if this is the result of a post-Tinder world because the number of “Wanna Netflix and chill?” I get seems to be steadily increasing over the years. Messages range from “Never thought I would find a brown girl gorgeous until I saw you!” or “I didn’t think I would be into curvy women until you hahawinkyfacegrinningface” to “You look so hot and gorgeous I don't mind making you my mistress and cheating on my wife” These are actual messages I have gotten by the way. Yes, I’ve been explicitly told not once but twice by married men that they don’t mind making me their mistress. The way you would walk into a store, pick up a jumper, pay for it and claim it’s yours. Sometimes it’s just too hard to come up with utter absurdity. Of the remaining, 20% of the messages eventually prove to be from “nice guys” who will tear you down the minute you disagree to or with something and a whopping 10% pan out to be great conversations but never into a date due to circumstances (e.g., the guy lives in a different country) or it just faded out.
Here’s the thing. I’m completely used to being that girl who has never been liked. I’m completely used to being the girl who has never been found physically attractive based on any beauty standards. I’m completely used to being the girl who has never been in a relationship in her group of friends. “Friends” who would make fun of you for it. Which is why it has been fairly easy for me to explain away the very intense, one-sided crushes I had on the four pretty great guys I chatted with on dating sites that never went anywhere. Nursing the heartbreaks is an entirely different story. Relationships happen to be a completely normal and natural experience that almost everyone goes through. And to me, the stories always seem so effortless. “We were in the same class for History! We worked in the same company just different departments! We met on Tinder!” Meanwhile, it feels like this rite of passage that I have not gone through – like the girl in an all-girls school who has still not started her period. And the older I get, the weirder it becomes. Because it doesn’t take very long for people to wonder if there must be something wrong with me. Well-meaning people ask to take a second look at my dating bios to see if they could help out while those who have just known me for a short period squint their eyes, tilt their heads and try to think of something kind to say. You can see their brains working at twice the regular speed to fill the silence with something polite. The topic about relationships has become a minefield for me in recent times simply because a) I don’t want people to judge me based on my lack of a relationship and b) it just has this ability to turn a perfectly normal brunch awkward and uncomfortable in a matter of seconds. Which is why for someone who’s pretty opinionated about everything, you might have noticed that I have not said anything about dating on this site.
And the truth is, unlike my freelancing career which I’m more than happy to explain to people or own, the fact that I’ve not been in a relationship is something I am completely insecure about. I get very anxious when I have to talk about it. I don’t even have any funny jokes to diffuse the situation. You can be confident and say, I’m a good person, I have good qualities. You can convince yourself that the most important relationship to have is the relationship you have with yourself. You can tell yourself “I just have to keep looking.” But not having experienced something that almost everyone else in the world has, starts to feel, especially for me, as suspiciously odd. Something that in theory, should be happening naturally.
It’s the same cycle of questions that go through my head since my hormones kicked in about the lack of an ex or a current relationship. Is it the size? The skin tone? Should I have dumbed it down a little? Is it something on my profile that is actually some sort of coded term for sex that I didn’t know about? And that’s what bothers me the most – the fact that the bulk of the messages I get are simply for sex, and that most of the time, the online chats don’t pan out to become something real. It makes me curious whether people are okay to be with me in private but simply do not wish to be seen with me in public. When some girls say they like the chase but not the work of a relationship, I know what they’re talking about, but I don’t know what they are talking about. Whenever someone says “I met someone!”, I feel this pang in my heart. I’ve never felt like I was admired or desired by a guy. I’m 27 and I’ve never been in a relationship. And I don’t know why.
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