This is What Dating Yourself Looks Like

The first time I took myself on a solo date, I dressed up in a silk black shirt, a plaid green skirt, and wore heels. I bought myself a cactus because I thought I could be a plant mom (LOL.), and went to an Italian restaurant.

And when I got home, I cried for an hour. I didn’t want to go on a solo date. I didn’t want to date myself. I wanted someone else to date me.

The past three years of singleness and celibacy have been largely intentional, but also a little accidental, because I was going through some things - untreated bipolar, a spiritual awakening, a Ph.D. I knew I wasn’t emotionally available; I knew I couldn’t give myself to someone the way I wanted to. But I still craved someone. I still cried for them desperately, hoping I wouldn’t die alone. I’ve been on dating apps intermittently, with next to zero success, and try as I might, no cuties have ever approached me in bars or bookstores like those meet-cute romcoms suggest. But I knew, at the beginning of everything and at the end of my last pseudo-relationship, that I needed to do The Work. The Hard Work. The Dark Work. The Painful Work. The one where you dip your fingers into your soul, and it hurts to remember every trauma, every bit of broken glass from your fragile heart, every time you gave yourself to someone and they did not give back.

Here’s the thing, though - what you resist, persists. And when you resist dipping your fingers into that murky mess that is you and all your unresolved pain, you find yourself going through it all over again. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung said some profound words, once upon a time. In essence, he explained that when you do not address your fears, they direct your fate. Scared of being alone? Well, girl, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you need to confront that shit before you do, indeed, end up alone.

For what scares you about being left with your gorgeous, radiant self? What scares you so much about your own company that you would rather be in messy, abusive, toxic relationships than sit in your own self-worth?

I get it. I’m a hopeful romantic, perenially so. I daydream about the day I walk down the aisle to the person who loves me completely, irrevocably, and I have baby names saved up in case I ever decide to have one that looks just like me and my significant other. I get it. I don’t want to be alone, either.

But I realised that even in my three very short-lived relationships, I was alone. That I was often lonely and angsty in the company of the boy sleeping next to me, wondering if I was truly loved, if I was truly valued.

And once heartbreak hit - as they did all three times - I understood that I never wanted to go through that again. That I never wanted who I was and what I gave to be in vain. So I set out on a muddling, confusing, often angry journey of solitude, and despite my cries the night of my first solo date, I knew I had to keep doing it.

Because - if nothing else - I learned something about myself. I learned that I hate pasta with blue cheese. I learned that - hahahah - I’m a terrible plant mother. I learned that I like being wined and dined, even at the expense of my own purse.

And as I continue to go on dates with my own gorgeous self - red lipstick and sex appeal in tow - I continue to learn things about me that come together as magically as puzzle pieces that were always meant to be together.

I’ve learned that I love to travel. Even walking through town on my lonesome, or taking a tour bus around a city that I’ve never really seen, fills me with the most inexplicable joy and satisfaction.

I’ve learned that I like trying new shit. That I like the taste of novel foods on the tip of my tongue, even if I don’t like them once they leave strange aftertastes on my palette.

When you date yourself, you have virtually no limitations on the things you like to like. You can like everything. You can try everything. (Do I have to tell anyone how much money you have for yourself when you’re not dating somebody else? It’s fucking mindblowing. I am unbelievably rich when I’m single. It’s great).

But the fun doesn’t stop there. When you’re dating yourself, you find the things that make you whole; you create a life that reflects your soul and innermost desires. I am a hippie child, through and through. After dissing people you had crystals (maybe because I was dating someone who thought they were stupid. Who knows?), I am now a crystal bitch, out and proud. I buy tapestries and little statues of monks and I cleanse my chakras. Because I like it. Because, now that I don’t have anyone to impress, I like doing things and pursuing things that make me idiotically happy, like incense and floral pyjamas. I’ve learned that I am deeply feminine; that I adore my femininity. That maxi dresses and beads in my locs bring out parts of me that I didn’t know I had.

It’s going to sound predictable, but when you date yourself, you come to know yourself. And it’s so much more profound than you could have ever possibly realised when you were snot-crying into your pillow about so-and-so, that asshole. Because dating yourself isn’t just about the material things, like having that spa day because you have cash dolla and no man to spoil. Dating myself has meant therapy, in the presence of a psychoanalyst, and even in the absence of them. Dating myself has meant finding healing through art and tarot cards and journalling. Dating myself has meant being accountable to myself, because who the hell else is going to take care of me? Dating myself has meant accepting my bipolar. It has meant accepting and forgiving myself for the moments when I am not the best that I wish to be. Dating myself has meant that, when I’m unkind to me, I have to apologise to me. And that has made me understand all the things that I need from someone else.

The way I like to see it is this - as within, so without. What you do to you, you allow others to do to you. Your brain takes all the data it collects from how you treat yourself, and projects that out into your environment (no shit, huh?). When you demand accountability and trust and communication from yourself, you start to expect the same from others. When you accept treatment from others that is less than amazing, you treat yourself as less than incredible. As less than breathtaking. As less than worthy.

But until you start looking into yourself, until you take that time to submerge yourself into everything that is you, you will always be begging people to date you. To love you. To see you. And how can you take anyone’s word that they say they see you, when you don’t even know what the fuck you look like?

Date yourself. It looks uncomfortable, and it looks lonely, and it looks like a lot of nights wondering if this is your forever. But date yourself anyway. Because when you come home from an evening at the cinema with no one trying to steal a handful of your popcorn, and you step into your home that is everything you’ve ever wanted it to be and nothing of anything else, and you laugh at your own jokes as you climb into bed, as happy as anything, with your crystals and books and your sage on your bedside table, dating yourself feels dope as shit.