6 Lessons on Dating and Boys

It’s always a bit of shock when someone you haven’t spoken to for months messages you out of the blue. It’s even stranger when you dated that person and had to lie to get them to stop messaging you. It’s even worse when they send you a single dot to see if you’ve blocked them.

This was the peak of excitement for me on a Tuesday night, 12 weeks into lockdown.

While this was a uniquely odd experience, the strange reality of lockdown was that I was contacted by the majority of the men I had dated over the past year, in one form or another. And I had found myself wanting to reach out to the men I had let go, just to see how they were coping with the reality we were stuck in.

As I slowly approach my fourth year of being single — with small hiccups in the middle — and 13 weeks into lockdown, I find myself sifting through the men that have come into my life romantically over the years. My mind, when bored, tends to enjoy going through my past decisions to look for lessons I may have missed.

It’s no secret that I have made mistakes when it comes to my romantic life, some of which are publicly narrated and exist for the world to read in the form of blog posts. Some of my mistakes were small, some not so small. Some mistakes I made once, some I repeated many many times. Some mistakes I made and let go of immediately, and a handful still haunt me.

So I write this both as a reminder to my future self, who is undoubtedly going to repeat some of the mistakes I’ve made, and as a guide to the young girls in my life soon to become women, to my cousins, friends and their friends. While no words or blog posts can save you from the pain of heartbreak, I hope this serves as a guide, and a reminder, that even when you think your mistake is colossal, someone else has done the same and has survived, and often come out the other end a better person.

So here are the lessons I’ve learned from the men I’ve dated:

1. You are no one’s saviour.

In your life, you will meet people, not just boys, who inherently want to be miserable. I am sometimes, one of these people. They enjoy putting themselves in difficult situations, they are slightly masochistic and they are, at their core, afraid of happiness. They do not think they deserve it. You cannot change these people. Your inability to pull them out of whatever shit they’re dealing with is in no way a reflection on you. They are just who they are and they will find their way out — maybe — on their own. They may repeat behaviors that cause them pain and you will struggle to understand why. Leave these people alone, do not waste your time or energy. Your energy is more valuable than that, it should not be wasted on someone who wants to torture themselves. Leave.

2. Healing happens at its own time.

The length of time you know someone will have no impact on how long it will take you to get over them. Some men will always stay in your heart, regardless of how many hours you spent with them or how much of their heart you hold, and that’s fine. Your heart is big enough to love them and everyone else who comes after them. Healing has its own process. Sometimes you need to put on a tight dress, drink gin and dance the night away with your friends, sometimes you need to sit in your pyjamas, scoop ice cream out of the tub and cry until you can barely breathe. Accept these times, they will pass. Sometimes your ghosts come back out of nowhere and knock you off your feet, that’s OK. And sometimes, as strange as it sounds, you just wake up and forget someone ever hurt you. Those are good days.

3. Trust your gut.

If you are lucky enough to have a dog, trust them if they don’t like someone. But don’t always trust them if they do like someone. It’s a one way system. But if your gut feeling is telling you that someone isn’t good, they’re not. Do not stick around to find out why. You don’t need to know.

4. Teach them how to love you.

This is by far the hardest lesson I’ve learned, and potentially the reason I have been single for so long. People love you the way you love yourself. You are responsible for that. Love yourself first and foremost. That doesn’t mean be selfish, it actually means the opposite. Only through loving yourself, genuinely loving yourself, even the ugly sticky parts of yourself, can you let someone else love you, and only then can you love them back without needing anything from them. This may not be easy. Put the work in, nothing worth having is easy.

5. Do not let anyone dictate how you’re supposed to feel.

Some people will try and decide for you which of your emotions are valid. They will manipulate you. They will toy with you because they cannot face their own emotions. This is their insecurity, not yours. BIN THEM. No one gets to decide for you if what you’re feeling is valid or not. If you’re feeling it, it’s important. And if they are decent and mature — which not all are — they will listen, acknowledge and accept. They may not respond in a way you want or in a way that pleases you, that doesn’t make them a bad person. But there’s a difference between someone listening and deciding you’re just not their cup of tea and them deciding your emotions and words are not worth their time. Respect breeds respect. If they decide they don’t want you, let them go. You should not have to fight for someone to stay in your life. They were simply a footnote in a chapter, make sure you are the main character of your own story.

6. You will never run out of love.

If you love someone, and it doesn’t work out, for whatever reason… or if you just care for them and they turn out to be a shitty person, do not spend days and weeks beating yourself up. You loved them for you, not them. You will not run out of love. You will not run out of fucks to give — even if all the memes suggest you will. Love is free, remember that. Be a constant reminder to people that caring does not make you weak. Vulnerability is not something to be feared. And being hurt is not the end of the world. You are human and by nature, resilient. Utilize that.

The reality of the situation is that love, dating and being vulnerable is messy business. You will hurt people, and you will be hurt by people. You will love and you will lose. You will meet some very amazing people along the way and some people who you want to send one of those confetti cards to (https://boomf.com/boomf-bomb ). You may repeat some mistakes, and you might beat yourself up over it but you will move on. And you will be a better person because of it.