I can’t see you, you can’t see me!

“For you, I was a flame. Love is a losing game. Five-storey fire as you came.Love is a losing game” - Amy Winehouse

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Dating Detox

3 min readSep 1, 2021

One reason I am single and undergoing this Dating Detox is because I don’t understand many codes that seem to be part of dating.

Flirting and dating to me are like a language whose grammar I don’t understand.

This already starts with girlfriends always telling me that if I like a guy, I should make that clear in my behavior. Tilting the head slightly to the side and finding small physical contact on small occasions. “Excuse me, I’m going to freshen up” and while running to the bathroom my hand would touch his shoulder.

At such suggestions, I liked to contort my face into an expression of incomprehension, much like in math class when letters crept into the formulas. Letters that didn’t realize they belonged in literature class and not in math, which was already far too complicated.

Amy Winehouse sang about love being a game you can only lose. Maybe she’s right, because too much I tried not to make love a game, I’m still here now writing about life as a single.

When I like someone, I act like I am and touching someone on the shoulder while going to the bathroom is not part of my habitus. If I think of someone or miss someone I say so. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with responding to a text as soon as you get it, as long as you’re being yourself.

But it seems quite obvious that I did not receive the chain email with dating instructions.

After a date, don’t immediately tell him how you liked it.
Let him miss you
Let him write first
Don’t reveal too much about yourself, but don’t reveal too little either
Be casual, but don’t send bro vibes

How complicated dating has become can be seen quite well by the fact that suddenly there are words like ghosting, benching, love bombing, roaching and orbiting describing exactly that toxic behavior people display when they don’t know who they are or what they want.

And don’t get me wrong. I have played this game.

I artificially withheld messages because I didn’t want to be seen as “too much” and I also starved many man on the outstretched arm because I could neither let go nor allow.

But this has nothing to do with love, but with the things we don’t know or don’t like about ourselves.

To put people we’ve been out with ten times on a track when we have no interest is not setting a boundary, but a coward running away from responsibility.

Artificially touching someone is not building closeness, it’s maintaining your own insecurity.

Holding back what we feel is also not an act that makes “everything more exciting”, but an act that results from the fear that what we have to say will not be understood or liked by the other person.

Love is the most natural thing in the world and any artificial behavior harms it.

For example, I’m just not a mysterious vamp who gracefully sneaks past you when she wants to wash her hands. I’d rather give a high five than a kiss on the cheek as long as I don’t know what I want myself.

I am extremely slow when it comes to love and it takes me about 10- 15 years to understand that we are not friends but maybe lovers. I tell people when I think of them, even if I have not waited for them for 4.3 months.

Love is not a game.

Love is life.

And the moment we think love is a game may be the moment we need to acknowledge our pain. It is the moment to take responsibility and not project our pain onto other people in the face of closeness.