Is It a “Hoe Phase” or Are You Really Just Self-Destructing?

I woke up, reacting to the rain hitting my windows in the dark. Anxiously, I twisted in my sheets, letting my hands fan through my bed, searching for my phone. Finally, I grasped the metallic device and winced as the bright light hit my face. It was four AM, and I had to go to work soon; I had an early shift. But I still felt the urge to check if I had gotten any matches. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the bright light, and I swiped to an all too familiar yellow app with a hive fixed to the front. I rolled my eyes as I pressed it and was not surprised that I hadn’t gotten any matches. Dating apps were complex for me. I know they are supposed to be the easiest way to meet people; you swipe, swipe, look, swipe again and settle on a cute face. But I felt nothing when I swiped through the empty faces on the screen. I knew that the men were attractive, but I just wasn’t attracted to them.

I had features I looked out for, a list of qualities that makes me feel an inkling of something for a complete stranger. I liked smiles, and laughs. I liked men who looked happy, looked at ease and almost comfortable in their profiles. Something about it drew me in. I wanted to know the source of their happiness; to get to know them. I liked it if they had nice hair, usually darker, I liked the way it almost framed their face like a halo. And that is where my list ended, so basically, if you were a man with nice hair and a smile it should have been easy to swipe on you, right? Sadly not, because I still felt nothing. I never looked at a man and felt that excitement and attraction until I got to know them.

I have never had sex. Well, actually all forms of sexual intimacy can be defined as sex. But I have never had the heteronormative patriarchal definition of sex. Not to say I am not interested in it, but I have only ever wanted to have it with one person. Because I cared about him, I knew him inside and out, and his flaws only drew me closer to him. That is what love is supposed to be, isn’t it? Seeing someone for who they truly are and choosing to accept them. All my other ‘situationships’ were not about how I felt, but how I wanted them to see me. I wasn’t capable of caring about them yet; I needed more time and reassurance. But the men I had interacted with were not privy to my existence on the asexual spectrum. Nor did many of them care, as long as I served them, how I felt never came into question.

But that’s what life is like identifying as a woman. When you are young, the world doesn’t properly prepare you for how men will perceive you. It doesn’t prepare you for the unwanted sexual advances, the constant discomfort of being in your own skin. They don’t prepare you for the constant swiping you do through dating apps to feel something. How I have felt with some men can only be described as isolating. I can be in their company, yet still feel so alone. Searching for their validation is never enough. It’s as if we are so busy trying to form connections with others that we forget about ourselves. We forget about the one person that will always validate us and give us the love that we crave and deserve; often, that person is us.

So why am I back on this silly, little dating app? I know clearly it doesn’t work for me. Why am I in a place that makes me feel lonely and lowers my self-esteem? It’s because I want to be validated, I want to be loved. Male validation is the ghost that haunts most people, it infects your thoughts and even your way of being. I want someone to look at me and think I am the most amazing girl in the world, the less they know about me the better. Because here is the problem with validation; you aren’t living for yourself, you are living for others. Maybe you can get a stranger to love you, but that may come at the cost of not loving yourself. The need for validation makes you change yourself for another, and that is not love. Love in its purest form is loving someone completely as they are, not who they have become in an effort to please you.

At the beginning of the year I took a sabbatical from dating, it was a complete mess. Weirdly it was as if the less interest I had in dating, the more men seemed to swarm around me. It was what I wanted, that complete love and adoration. But it was never authentic, and it didn’t make me happy like I thought it would. I broke my sabbatical by hooking up with a guy I hadn’t seen in a year, although he continued to plague my DMs. Always liking my Instagram stories and giving me that validation I was constantly seeking. I thought I would be happy hooking up with him again, but I ended up feeling empty and slightly disgusted. Not with myself, but because in the end, my search for validation did not bring me satisfaction. I told him that was the last time I would be seeing him, and when he inevitably messaged me the next month, I told him that I was done with hookups and that I was searching for a genuine connection. Humans strive for connection, we are social creatures. Searching for something that should come so naturally to us has been difficult, because we have also inherited this fear of being open with one another. We are so scared of being hurt that we forget that pain is something we can control.

I stopped swiping and moved to the settings part of the app, I deleted it without a second thought. This was not the place for me, I didn’t feel a connection with any of these men, I just sought validation. I felt that anxious knot untie in my chest, immediately feeling lighter and free. There is someone for everyone, and maybe I won’t meet them today or tomorrow, but in the meantime, I am going to treasure the friends and family that are around me. To make sure they know that they are loved; truly and completely.