Online Dating and Mental Health
HELLO! I haven’t posted on here in ages, but I recently started a blog. Here’s the first post with a link to the blog if you’re interested (please feel free to follow and like the post as well on WordPress- it’s appreciated. “It’s a nice house, but we’d have to move when we outgrow it, ya know?” I said I didn’t know, but I knew exactly what he meant. “Well, it only has the two bedrooms…” “So? We only take up the one room and the other is for Minerva and for guests.” “Well yes, but… I mean for kids. We’d need to move when we have kids.” Oddly enough, this was the conversation that sparked our most recent and final fight. As innocent as the conversation was, as we were driving through his hometown after a hockey game and before visiting his family, I felt nothing but chagrin and hatred towards him and his suggestion of a family with me. You see, my dear readers, by this point I had already found out that he had “back-up” girls in place if we ever broke up. He joked about these girls to his friends, saying lovely comments like “worst case scenario, I’d hit that up,” in reference to one of these women. It is this comment that I have to keep circulating through my brain in moments that I find myself missing him. These moments are fleeting, even a month after the break-up, but are still in existence nonetheless. I know in the depths of my heart that I should not be missing him. He’s the one that was in contact with other females, he’s the one that left me, he’s the one that constantly belittled me and guilted me for my ever-depleting mental health. I should not miss him. Yet I find myself thinking that if I had done something different, that if I let him get away with those comments and never brought up that I knew about them, that he would still be mine. Why would I even want someone like that to still be mine? Why would anyone miss an ex that not only treated them poorly- but then ended up being the one to leave in the end anyways? I understand that the common and most accepted answer is that we miss the routine, we miss the safety of even being in a relationship, we miss having someone to tell everything to and do everything with. But what else draws our brains into the black hole of missing a toxic person months after losing them, even if we have already moved on? I bring up this conversation, taken place at a time when my anxiety was through the roof, and my depression had brought me so low so as not even to find this conversation uplifting or hopeful in the slightest, to highlight just how much of a toll poor mental health can take on a seemingly-otherwise-perfect relationship. This is what I want this blog/memoir/self-help book to be focused on. These are all topics that I hope to explore in whatever these pieces of writing turn into. I don’t know if anyone reads blogs anymore. I don’t know if my thoughts would transfer well into a self-help book or memoir. But I do know that after years of joking with friends about me doing something like this- it’s finally time (what better time to write than when you’re single and unemployed?). Author Introduction I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to introduce myself to my readers (if I even end up having any) for a while now. Do I want to act like this is a book, and slowly introduce aspects of my life as they come up naturally? Or do I write one of those corny biographies that entails my education, background, where I was born and raised? I don’t know. For now, I will just keep it as such: I have had more than my fair share of break-up horror stories. The common ones (they cheated, they couldn’t handle my depression and anxiety anymore, etc.) the less common ones (they told me it was going to be a ‘break’ but they ended up never returning, or they actually did return, but I had already moved on by then, etc.). I hope to share these stories so that others who are going through the same thing can understand and hold onto the fact that they are not alone. I also hope to include in some posts my horror stories with the lovely world of online dating. As the title I picked last week, ‘Online Dating 101’ suggests, I hope to give girls (and even men) some advice and insight into how best to navigate the apps, rule out those who are not meant for them, and how to come off as flirty and mysterious. I have my dear friend Katelyn to thank for most of this inspiration. After helping her respond to odd texts, create a new dating profile, and the best way to suggest a meet-up in person, I realized that I had been doing this for so damn long that I shouldn’t keep all of this bountiful knowledge to myself. So here’s to you, my awkward and fragile females. Let’s talk to some guys and learn how to handle relationships and our mental health all at the same time! Edit: please do not let this come off as condescending. I know most of you are more than capable of roping in your own men, I know you are more than capable of handling situations and dealing with your mental health. But for those of you who don’t have a lot of experience here, have not yet had a chance to reflect on your mental health, or haven’t had your mental health destroy a relationship before- please keep reading. Second Edit: if you know me personally and fear that your secrets, your name, anything you have ever done wrong to me will be spilled here- fear no more. I will only be using first names with no other details than are relevant to the story or to the post (for example, my friend Katelyn). However, I cannot stop someone from connecting the dots and figuring out who I am talking about or what they did. Sean Wilsey in his memoir, “Oh the Glory of it All,” did not change any names, even when he bashed his family members and friends. Joan Didion, in a recent work about grieving the loss of her husband in “The Year of Magical Thinking,” did not change any names, not even the names of the doctors she did not trust. I plan on following suit. Link to blog: https://www.theonlinedating101.wordpress.com
