Forever Alone | Chapter 7: Stories & Skyscrapers (Part 2)
In which I consult with a fictional Board of Directors, download Hinge, go on a date with a hot man, and finally answer the question I posed at the beginning of our tale.
I published Forever Alone: One Introverted Millennial’s Half-Agonizing, Half-Hopeful Journey Through Singledom in 2021 as a 7-part podcast miniseries. I’m re-publishing it here on Substack for the first time in written form! Start reading from the beginning here.
In a stroke of what might have been—I’m just gonna say it—genius, I asked my Board to facilitate a conversation between 16-year-old me—that girl I was before my first heartbreak—and Adult me. In the interest of time I won’t give you the whole play-by-play. But here’s a little snippet:
Young Me: I hate this so much. It scares me. It makes me feel absolutely desolate. I don’t want to be with ANYONE who I don’t feel attracted to. I’m trying so hard to STOP HER from doing that to me again. I KNOW WHAT I WANT, AND SHE SHOULD TRUST ME!!!! I don’t EVER want to feel like I did with Patrick or Stephen again. For YEARS I was put in situations that my body straight-up recoiled from. I know this is going to sound dramatic … but I … it’s kind of like the traumatized mothers who are married to men who abuse their children, and they do nothing? They just allow their children to be taken advantage of? Even though the children, on some level, are clearly crying out for an advocate? She abandoned me in that way.
I know it’s possible to feel differently. I want to go back to when I was head over heels in love with Luke and everything in me was leaning in. I WANT TO FEEL THAT WAY AGAIN. I’M TIRED OF NOT FEELING THAT WAY. I NEVER EVER EVER EVER WANT HER TO BETRAY ME AGAIN. I DON’T TRUST HER NOT TO BETRAY ME!!!!!!!
Adult Me: She’s right. I did abandon her. We were the same person up until 16. She stayed true, but I veered down a path that got us nowhere except hurt and angry and rigid and depressed. And I’m so sorry. I wish it hadn’t been that way. Young Me has become a fierce protector. And I love and thank her for that. She is VERY clear about what she wants, and she doesn’t apologize for it. She wants what she wants, without explanation or justification. It’s admirable.
As our dialogue went on, it became clear that Adult Me found it hard to want what Young Me wanted, unapologetically. Where was the line between fantasy and reality? It did feel unrealistic to want someone of, well, my Board’s caliber. An exceedingly tall, handsome, brooding, smart, emotionally intelligent man with healthy masculine energy? Who can make me feel taken care of, and who ignites my sexuality in a way I’d never known possible? Good lord, that sounds like a romance novel. It’s almost embarrassing to say out loud.
It doesn’t help that conventional advice is just, “Give them a chance! You can’t know if you’re attracted to someone from just a profile.” In other words, we’re constantly encouraged to dismiss our intuition—we’re told we don’t know what we want, or that we’re too picky—that our standards are too high. I was playing right into the Dating Industrial Complex’s agenda, if there is one: This pool of people you see in front of you is the totality of what you have to choose from. What you see is a reflection of your worth. If you don’t like what you see, you must not be seeing yourself correctly.
I, a grown-ass woman of 33 years, with a gorgeous brain and hard-won wisdom, with the intuitive powers of a damn witch, was still riddled with fear that what I craved was silly, unrealistic, and frankly, impossible.
My Young Self—who’d never been sullied by heartbreak or internet dating, had every right to be angry. And she made no bones about it. Here’s another excerpt:
Young Me: NO. FUCK RIGHT OFF WITH THAT SHIT. You’ve never gone wrong when you lead with your intuition; with your body! Where you went wrong is using your mind. Trying to convince your body to feel something other than what it feels. Why can’t you just lead with your body for a while??? You’ve led with your mind and look where that’s gotten us! Also, you are not and have NEVER been one of those girls who throws away all of their judgment and discernment because some guy is hot. Hotness isn’t what you crave. It’s ATTRACTION. You’re looking for someone who makes your life force PULSE and THROB—everywhere, all over. Mind, body, soul. You’re not even just looking for “chemistry” or “a spark.” You’ve HAD chemistry with people that weren’t right for you. You’re looking for ATTRACTION. And for god’s sake, how can you believe you wouldn’t be able to feel that?? Or the potential for it, at least?? Be honest, this Elijah guy is giving you absolute wet blanket vibes. There’s no attraction or pulsing life force. So why fucking bother engaging if your life force isn’t throbbing????
Dumbledore once said, “Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty, if they forget what it was to be young.” And I, an … older, if not old, woman, had made the mistake of assuming that because I’d grown up, I knew more than that girl. But adulthood … it often just makes things harder, shittier, and more confusing. The person I was before the world beat me down knew what she wanted, with complete conviction and zero shame.
I wanted to be her again. I really, really wanted to allow my body to take the lead. I wanted to honor the desires and needs that, for so long, went unacknowledged and unfulfilled. I wanted to set 16-year-old Rachel’s pure heart and unencumbered body free and allow her to get exactly what she, and I, have always wanted.
But before I could integrate those two disparate parts of myself back into one whole being, I had to make amends:
Adult Me: Young Rachel, I’m so sorry for abandoning and betraying you. I’m sorry for all of the doubt and confusion I’ve harbored; for withdrawing a bit from life out of fear of falling into this pattern all over again. I was trying to protect us from future disappointment, and I did the best I could at the time. It’s very understandable that you’ve been so angry with me. Thank you for constantly speaking up and making your feelings known. You just want to love and be loved; see and be seen; explore your desires and needs, and I want you to have all of those things. I trust you, and I hope you can re-learn to trust me.
Young Me: Thank you. I think I can re-learn to trust you.
Adult Me: Is there anything you need from me to help with that?
Young Me: I ask that you consult me when you need to make a decision. When you’re doubting yourself and unsure about how you feel. When you’re caught in your head, and need to get back in your body. I think you’ve mistaken me for someone naïve and, therefore, out of touch with the world. But, like most young people, I have a better sense of what I want and less baggage than older people. You and I have always known what we wanted. Our desires have been so pure and consistent—like an arrow, pointing us in the right direction! If we follow that, we’ll end up happier than we ever could have expected.
I ask that you not look down on me as someone lost in fantasy, but as someone whose desires are so pure and true that she can’t lead you astray.
That one conversation made sense of fifteen years of history. All the times I’d frozen with guys, and why something as seemingly innocuous as a dating app had me freaking the fuck out—it was a trauma response. If you’re in a physical encounter with someone and you say, “Stop, I don’t want to do this,” and he ignores you, that’s assault. But what happens when you’re the one saying stop and the one forcing yourself to continue? It’s not assault, but it is traumatic.
Making peace with my younger self helped me release so much of that trauma, which made Hinge immediately easier to navigate. Before, both on Match and then Hinge, I’d really wanted the PERFECT man to sweep me off my feet from Day 1. I just wanted to see someone’s profile and know they were “the one.” Which is a pretty tall, if not impossible, order. But I don’t need that anymore. I’m not required to know whether someone is marriage material! But I DO have to want to reply to their message. I DO get to find them attractive! I DO get to be intrigued—in fact, I must feel very intrigued, or else it’s a no. And I don’t have to be afraid that I’ll get it wrong, because if I really believe in the power of the Universe, then what’s meant for me can’t miss me, anyway.
And in fact, now that I’d worked through that old trauma, I didn’t really need to stay on Hinge, if I didn’t want to. I never believed, and still don’t, that you have to be on an app—or date, period—to find love. But I’d been afraid that belief was a cop-out. In putting that theory to the test, I’d had to confront my intense discomfort, which ended up healing some really old crap and ultimately neutralizing most of my energy around dating, in general. I was sure now that, if I chose not to date, it wouldn’t be because I was avoiding it from a place of fear, but because it just … wasn’t my preference, plain and simple.
But because I was feeling way more neutral about Hinge, I figured there was no harm in sticking around. My strategy remained mostly the same. I still wanted to stay in the feminine, receptive mode, but because I was no longer afraid that I was going to retraumatize myself by ignoring my body and forcing myself into a situation I didn’t want any part of, I wasn’t as rigid or uptight. I didn’t need hard-and-fast rules of engagement to keep me safe. I was safe because I trusted myself to say no to anyone who didn’t make my life force pulse.
So, I replied to a couple messages here and there from guys who would have sent me spiraling a few weeks earlier—intriguing enough to spark my interest, but who I needed to know more about to get clear on whether they had real potential. It was a lot easier than I expected to separate what my friend Catie Beth and I call the “Knights” from the “Kings.” That’s both a reference to Tarot—Knights and Kings are types of cards in a traditional Tarot deck—but also to Alison Armstrong, who’s a writer, speaker, and general expert about men, women, and how we relate to each other. She talks about the development of men in four phases, two of which are “Knight” and “King.”
Hinge is FULL of Knight energy. Young (physically, but more so mentally, regardless of age), immature, unsure of their purpose or direction. More interested in having fun and exploring than settling down or being super serious. Probably haven’t been through anything sufficiently difficult yet, or if they have, haven’t allowed the struggle to wake them up or transform them. Generally aren’t thinking about their own growth or personal development. Usually lacking in depth. I can always spot them when they say stuff like, “I want someone who’s chill but also spontaneous and down for any adventure.” Translation, “I want someone who acts like a dude but looks a woman, and doesn’t bother me with too many feelings or complexity, because I’m not evolved enough to handle that.” There’s nothing wrong with the Knight phase, unless a man gets stuck in it perpetually, but it’s not something most women my age are interested in anymore. It’s fine when you’re 21, not so much when you’re 33 and looking for a serious partner.
King energy is SUPER rare on Hinge, and honestly, everywhere. For a guy to have reached that place, he’s got to have gone through some real shit and learned from it. He’s grown enough as a person that he’s open-minded and humble—he doesn’t think he knows everything, and isn’t triggered by differing opinions. His integrity is through the roof. He knows who he is and what he wants, without a shadow of a doubt, and wouldn’t waste his or your time beating around the bush. He’s consistent, steady, stable, and reliable. He does exactly what he says he’s going to do, when he says he’s going to do it. He doesn’t just say he values things like communication and growth; he actually walks his talk, and owns his side of the relationship. He’s already gotten the desire for adventure and spontaneity out of his system, for the most part, and now he’s looking for something real and serious; someone to build his kingdom with. Not only is he cool with your feelings and complexity—he wouldn’t be interested in anything else.
As if it wasn’t easy enough to spot Knight energy on Hinge, it turns out the ones I took the time to engage with ruled themselves out pretty quickly without me having to do much work. Either they were bad conversationalists, or never once made me laugh, or took 24 hours to reply to a single message. Regardless, it was always clear within a day or two that I wasn’t interested in an actual date.
I even trusted myself enough to send some likes and messages to guys I found intriguing. My rule of thumb was, “If I’d be annoyed that this guy didn’t know I existed, I can like or message him.” There weren’t many I felt that way about, and most who I messaged never replied, anyway. Usually that didn’t bother me, but every once in a while, it’d piss me off. Like, that time I messaged this guy who seemed like a real King—Exceedingly tall, dark, and handsome with striking blue eyes. Satisfyingly older than me. Had quit his unfulfilling corporate job to build a series of Airbnb cabins on this beautiful land he owned. Land that had mountains and a river running through it!! My friend Stacy joked that Scarlett must have manifested this guy, because it sounded like her dream scenario, too.
As Jane Austen herself said, “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” And damn, this lumberjack hunk and his 200 acres inspired me to thoughts far beyond matrimony, real quick. I was already planning to move my parents into one of the cabins and have my dad do handiwork with my husband all day, while my mom helped me with the kids! But alas, he never replied. To quote another classic, Pretty Woman, “Big mistake. Big. Huge!”
Mostly, though, I was kind of … amused by just how much I was getting stonewalled. It was confirmation that the real reason I’d gotten on Hinge was to work through my trauma. In consistently getting zero response from anyone I thought had potential, it was like the Universe was trying to do me a solid: “Trust us, you’d rather not talk to these guys. If it’s just going to go nowhere anyway, it’s more efficient if you don’t have to engage, period.”
That is, until I met Will.
This was Chapter 7: Part 2 of Forever Alone. Read on for Chapter 7: Part 3!