You Don’t Have to Love Yourself Before You Can be Loved
Self-love is a conversation, not a monologue.
It was summer and the plan was simple.
I would join a dating app, go on enough dates to quench my thirst for kissing at golden hour, and I would work on myself.
Nothing would get serious because I wasn’t ready. I was a mess. I didn’t know how to love myself. I didn’t know how to be alone—or, I knew how to be alone but not in the “intentional living” way influencers seemed so breathless about.
I chose OkCupid because I already had a profile from 6 years earlier when I’d smiled through approximately 2,456 painfully average first dates. I didn’t update it, even though it was try-hard and I was wearing fancy-dress in every photo like an overgrown child. Who cared? The point wasn’t to find a partner.
Someone I matched with 79% who looked maybe handsome asked me on a coffee date. 79% was a fling, not a soulmate; 79% was perfect. Besides, I could see he liked heavy metal: there was zero chance of anything serious. “Why not,” I shot back and closed my laptop with a snap.
The short coffee date drifted. Before I knew it, we were sharing beers and laughing as the sun sank, and I was unable to shake the eerie feeling something important was happening.
