happy pride to those over dating (for now)

it’s saturday, it’s pride, and i’ve said “i’m not interested” so many times this week that i finally heard myself.

it’s raining in houston. it’s pride. and something shifted this week.

this is my first pride not caring about finding someone to date. ugh I used to be a lover girl but that…. that has paused. i kind of throw up in my mouth by the idea of dating right now.

sick of it actually.

multiple people have come around. and i’ve told every single one the same thing: i’m not looking to date. i’m not looking to do anything that doesn’t feel natural to me right now.

and somewhere around the fifth time saying it, i realized i wasn’t just turning people down. i was declaring something to myself.

i’m not dating anyone but myself.

i spent my entire twenties in relationships. ten years. on and off, in and out, looping through different versions of the same cycle. and at the end of every single one of them, i felt the same thing. lonely. not seen. and so i’d overreact, because being unseen makes you loud — you start performing the version of yourself you wish they were paying attention to.

i didn’t realize until recently how much childhood trauma i was hauling into every relationship i walked into. i never put it down. i just kept showing up to dynamics with a duffel bag full of unhealed shit and asking other women to help me carry it. that’s not fair to anyone, including me.

so i’m done. not done with love. done with reaching for it before i’ve poured into myself.

moving to asia is not just a business move

i need to say this part on my substack because i don’t think i’ve said it clearly enough yet.

me moving to asia in a few months is not just about building my apps. it is not just about the money math working better. those are real reasons, and i’ve written about them. but they are not the whole reason.

i am moving because i need to rediscover who i actually am.

you guys have seen one version of me. the founder. the builder. the substack writer. the woman with a portfolio and goals and a plan. that version is real. but it’s not the whole me. and i don’t even know the whole me anymore, because i’ve spent ten years being whoever a relationship needed me to be, in a city that won’t stop reminding me of bills and rent and the cost of just existing.

i can’t figure out who i am in a country that has its hand around my throat. i need quiet. i need cheap. i need an ocean i don’t know yet. i need to wake up in a place that has no memory of me so i can build a new one from scratch.

this is a journey for my business, yes. but also for my sense of being. my sense of living. my sense of me.

the things i don’t even know about myself yet

here’s what’s wild. i’m thirty years old and i have never sat down and asked myself basic questions about what i actually want.

what do i actually want in a partnership? do i even want monogamy? open monogamy? polygamy? something else nobody’s named yet? i don’t know. i’ve never had the space to even consider it because i’ve always been in something, processing something, performing for someone.

what do i like? not what does my partner like and i tolerate it. what do i like? in food, in conversation, in how i spend a saturday, in the dynamic of a relationship?

what kind of love am i actually built for? not what kind have i been told to want.

i don’t have answers to any of these questions. and i’m starting to realize you can’t find good answers while you’re inside a dynamic. you find them in solitude. you find them by being so far from everyone else’s expectations of you that yours finally get a chance to speak.

i want to be clear about my exes

i’m not running from broken relationships. i’ve actually been really lucky.

my last few years romantically have not been a horror story. i’m not writing this because the women i was with were terrible. they weren’t. me and my most recent ex don’t talk often but we have nothing but respect for each other. some things happened between us that neither of us are proud of, but i wouldn’t say we regret them, because they reshaped what is now a real friendship. she’s someone i could call if i needed her. and she has told me, plainly, that i need to pour more into myself. she’s right.

every woman i’ve dated, when i’ve told them this, has met me with disappointment but also understanding. because most of us know. most of us have felt it. most of us have been the person who needed to step back and pour into themselves and either did it too late or didn’t do it at all.

if i can do it now, i should do it now.

the business reason, since i’m being honest

let me get into the second half of this because i’d be lying if i pretended it was 100% spiritual.

when i’m coding, when i’m writing, when i’m in flow on something i love — i don’t want to be interrupted. i don’t want to make anyone dinner. i don’t want to switch contexts to ask how someone’s day went. i don’t want to be the warm hand on someone else’s shoulder when i’m trying to build the thing that will change my entire life.

and i get annoyed. i get really annoyed when people want my attention in those moments. because i am in my bubble, and i want to stay there.

the reality is i don’t want to hang out with somebody daily. i don’t want to see someone three times a week just because that’s what dating looks like. i don’t want to explain my schedule, my mood, my silence, my disappearance for two weeks because i’m cooking on a project.

i want to be in my bubble. and i don’t want to apologize for that.

in a relationship, you’re supposed to be sacrificial. that’s the whole deal. and right now, i don’t want to sacrifice anything for anybody but myself.

my thirtieth birthday almost broke me

i’ve been in some dynamics in the last few years that have done real damage. one in particular — i had an emotional breakdown on my thirtieth birthday because of how heavy a dynamic had gotten. yet another year i wasn’t seen by someone i was dating and then spent the majority of my birthday week catering to her emotional outburst to my reaction and decision instead of space. don’t get me wrong, she’s an amazing woman. the outcome was not her fault entirely. but the situation had built up like a pot boiling over, and i exploded, and then i had to apologize for exploding even though the explosion was the symptom of months of holding too much. even though our business was shared with far too many people when i asked for the opposite. it was then i knew i will keep going through the same thing with a different woman until i choose myself, even if it hurts someone i care about.

that was the moment i clocked it. i am out of commission. i am out of capacity for anyone or anything that isn’t me.

my twenties were everyone else. my thirties are going to be me.

what i actually want everyone to hear

i’m not anti-love. i’m not anti-women. i’m not anti-dating. i hope everyone who’s been interested in me finds exactly who they want and exactly what they deserve. i mean that.

but the reality is this — if you have not done the work of really knowing yourself, you’ll be attracted to things you don’t deserve. and you’ll turn your head away from things you actually do. that’s the trap. that’s the loop i was caught in for ten years. mistaking familiar pain for chemistry. mistaking a person’s potential for who they actually are. mistaking the absence of conflict for love.

i don’t trust my picker right now. and that’s the most honest thing i can say. so i’m putting it down for a while because i either pick someone who doesn’t pour into me the way i yell and scream for it (eeeeyuck Bree pls omg) OR those who make me their center, happiness and core, and that’s scary and dangerous grounds.

for now, actually, forever, i deserve me.

i deserve to hug myself. i wish i could kiss my own forehead. some days i wish i could jump through the mirror and tell her it’s okay, you’re doing it, you’re allowed to rest, you’re allowed to be alone, you are not behind.

i can’t quite do that yet. but i can treat myself the way i wish someone else would have treated me at twenty-two. and twenty-five. and twenty-eight.

and that’s what i’m doing.

this isn’t forever. one day i’ll be ready again. one day i’ll meet someone who walks into the version of me i’m about to build, and i’ll have something whole to offer instead of a duffel bag of hope. but that day is not today, and it’s not in the next year, and i’m okay with that for the first time in my entire adult life.

happy pride to everyone reading this who’s also figuring it out. all of us are. some of us are just finally being honest about it.

cheers…to dating myself. ❤️ kisses my own forehead!