I FEAR I AM DONE...

24 Feb, 2025

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Trigger Warning: This blog entry contains themes relating to emotional, verbal and physical abuse.

Yesterday was a rough day for me. I was supposed to go to another singles event, but when my friend got sick, I couldn't bare the thought of going alone. That decision sent me spiralling into a pit of sadness. To make matters worse, I overslept and took my meds way too late in the day and I'm pretty certain this messed with by brain chemistry. My Mum randomly called me and as soon as she asked "how are you", I burst into tears. Thanks for listening Mum.

I've been searching for my husband for 10 fucking years now, a decade of relentless dating with little to no success. I can't help but envy those who found their life partners before dating apps took over. You have no idea how lucky you are. In my opinion, dating apps are the worst thing to ever happen to modern romance. They have drained the spark from relationships, shattered self-confidence and given some people an excuse to be indecisive, disrespectful and emotionally unavailable.

Every man I have ever had a relationship with (meaning 'Facebook Official'), has been someone I've met online. This feels both astounding and disheartening. I've never experienced a relationship that blossomed from a friendship or began with a 'meet-cute'. It makes me feel like I'm missing out on something magical, and worse, it makes me constantly question if I'm ugly or intimidating. Both? Daily pondering continues.

After such a crap day yesterday, I woke up this morning in a reminiscent mood. I'm feeling as though I want to just get it all out, see all the crap on paper (screen). Maybe this will pin-point where I went wrong or maybe it will just add to my existential dread. Who fucking knows... One thing I do know for sure though, my relationship trauma began with my first boyfriend when I was 21.

I met my first boyfriend on 'Plenty Of Fish', an app that is practically redundant now. We matched, started chatting and discovered a shared love for the same band. When I saw they were playing at the Tivoli in a few weeks, we decided to meet there. From the moment we saw each other, the connection was instant. We went on a date the very next night and within a week or two, we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. We were together for just over two years. The first year, I only have happy fond memories of. The second, has scared me for life. He waited nine months to say "I love you," and I felt like I was losing my mind because I wanted to say it at around the two month mark but I didn't want to be the first. I ended up begging him to move in with me because travelling 60km each way every weekend was just too much and having to be around both our parents all the time sucked. When I first asked, he hesitated, which hurt. I was 22, he was 27, still living with his parents and had never had a serious relationship. The red flags should have been obvious but this was my first time doing all this. After months of subtle hints, I did something I truly regret. I gave him an ultimatum. "Move in with me or break up with me". It's clear to me now that he just didn't have the balls to dump me so instead, we spent thousands furnishing our new rental together.

Living with him unearthed some of my deepest relationship traumas. When we met, I had just had my gallbladder removed and had lost a lot of weight so he fell for skinny Madison. Over our two years together, I gained about 25kg and while I acknowledge that that is significant, he never once tried to be supportive. What he did actually actively made me get fatter and fatter. About a month after moving in, he quit his job to start working night shifts without even asking how that would impact me or our relationship. At the time, I was working as a receptionist from around 10am-7pm. He would work from about 7pm-5am and would get home and go straight to sleep leaving no time for us. The next six months saw me alone almost every night. I was so depressed that I resorted to ordering Uber Eats or Dominoes almost daily. To avoid criticism over the fast food packaging in the kitchen bin, I started sneaking them out to the wheelie bin in a garbage bag. But one day, when he took out the trash, the bin toppled over, exposing every single McDonald's bag, pizza box and ice cream tub. He rushed inside… “What the fuck is this? No wonder you’re getting fatter! Look at you, this isn’t the person I signed up for!” That moment cut so deep that it eventually became the reason that I decided to have weight loss surgery, not for my health or to fit into smaller clothes, but because my piece of shit first boyfriend made me feel utterly unlovable when I was fat.

He broke up with me just five days after Valentine’s Day in 2019. I’ll never forget him coming home from his night shift, shaking me awake as he cried, “I don’t love you anymore and I can’t love you when you look like this.” I was shattered. The pain in my chest was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. We had even bought a dog together a few weeks earlier, the only companion I had during those turbulent times. In the end, I moved back in with my parents and took Honey with me, while he stayed behind.

Five weeks later, he met someone new. Within a month, he posted a picture of them together with the caption “I love you so much.” A year later, they got engaged, and now they’re married with a child. I’m still incredibly pissed that he got his happy ending.

After that breakup, I retreated from dating entirely. I locked myself in my bedroom, binge-watched TV, went to work, ate junk, over and over again. I gained more weight, and then Covid hit. I saw this as my time to get my gastric sleeve. Although I did it for all the wrong reasons, it remains one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Still, the notion that being skinny would magically secure me a husband turned out to be utterly incorrect.

My next relationship was with a narcissistic guy who gaslit me repeatedly and lied when I expressed concerns about another girl in our friend group. He was cheating on me the entire time, and as it turns out, he’s still with her. They have two children together. Love that for me.

Then came a phase of complete self-disrespect, where I dated numerous terrible men who only wanted me for one thing. I found myself out every weekend, feeling like a hollow shell just to be with anyone who’d give me a minute of their time. I had lost all sense of self-worth. After surgery, my stomach was so tiny. I’d have cigarettes for breakfast and one small chicken tender for lunch and dinner and then would post on instagram about how it ‘feels so good to finally be healthy’. I was skin and bones, utterly confused as to why no one wanted a serious relationship with me now that I was considered “pretty.” I became a serial dater, going on dozens of dates, until one incident, where I was slapped in the face at a man’s house after we went out for drinks. I stopped dating for a while after that. I felt so weak and frail that I began to fear I’d never be able to defend myself if something worse were to happen in the future.

After taking a break from dating, I returned to the apps and matched with a guy I dated for about three months. He turned out to be emotionally manipulative, justifying his behaviour as if it were everything I deserved. Whenever I shared how badly I’d been treated in the past, he would overcompensate with grand gestures. Eventually, his actions became overwhelming and he expected me to reciprocate favours I never asked for. He would show up unannounced at my workplace, sitting for hours until I finished a five-hour shift, only to get angry when I was too exhausted to hang out. One time, he lied about hanging out with “the boys” instead of keeping our date plans, and then showed up at my house exclaiming, “Just kidding! Are you surprised? I lied so you’d feel surprised.” I was pissed. I had planned a quiet night for myself, only to have him hover around. This was the first time I was the one who was the dumper. I felt suffocated by his need to know my every move. When I finally told him I wasn’t happy, he stormed off and drove away. I turned my phone off to have time to myself and later, when I turned it back on, there were 46 missed calls from him. I had messages on Facebook & Instagram too. He even emailed me. In the end, he now has a long-term girlfriend and seems happy and I can’t help but feel frustrated by it all.

In an effort to rebuild my self-esteem, I turned to fitness and healthier eating. I even started dating a man from my gym, but he disrespected my boundaries and pressured me into things I wasn’t comfortable with. To make matters worse, he cheated on me with a man at a porn cinema, and then acted confused when I ended things with him. I stopped going to the gym shortly after.

After some time to recuperate and after moving in with my best friend Ellen, I returned to the dating apps. I ended up seeing someone who was dating another girl the entire time unbeknownst to me until it all came out. He kept me hanging for weeks, claiming he couldn’t decide between us, and then, surprisingly, he chose me. But that same night, after declaring his choice, he kissed another girl at my gig, at my workplace, right in front of the security cameras just one day before I was having Endo extraction surgery. I was busy on stage singing and had no idea what was happening until the bartenders filled my best friends/bandmates in. They waited until after my procedure to tell me, and I still feel terrible knowing they carried that burden for an entire day/night.

In the midst of this hurt, I received a message from a man I’d matched with a while back. He wanted to go on a date because he’d seen my profile pop up again and had spare tickets to a comedy show. This man quickly became the absolute love of my life. I had never experienced love like this before. He was kind, smart, funny, had a stable job, and an amazing family. He was the whole package. He loved me fiercely. He gave me thoughtful presents, remembered my favourite things, sang silly songs to me, danced with me in the kitchen, attended my sister’s wedding with me and told me he loved me every day. Then, one day, he came over, looked me in the eyes, and said, “I know what it’s meant to feel like to see someone in your future, and I do not see you there.” And just like that, he left, leaving me utterly broken. My housemate Wren picked me up off the street after I ran to his car and then sat with me for hours while I just sobbed in confusion. Two days later, I went to his place to collect my things. Ellen drove me to his unit, and I’ll never be able to thank her enough. I cried my heart out in her car, clutching a cardboard box of my belongings. After nine long years of dating, I felt completely done. If he didn’t love me, how could anyone? If the perfect man could change his mind so easily, maybe it was simply never meant to be.

I threw myself into work and gigging, restarting smoking to dull the gaping hole in my chest. I barely slept, spending many late nights wondering where I went wrong. Two months later, I returned to the apps and matched with someone I already knew in real life. We went on a date the very next day, but to cut a long story short… he used me, lied to me, went overseas and ignored me, then returned as if nothing had happened, confessing that he was in love with a girl overseas, but since she was so far away, he’d settle for me in the meantime. I left him, and I’m proud of myself for refusing to endure any more insults. Not long after, I found something out that I won't share here for privacy reasons but basically, I discovered that he had lied to me for months about something that was very damaging towards me and when I confronted him about it, he gaslit me and said I was wrong, even though I had proof. Without context it sounds confusing but just know, this behaviour was not only hurtful, it was downright psychotic.

So here I am now, trying to attend singles events in the hopes of forming a genuine connection without the interference of an app because history shows that meeting people online never works out. I feel utterly defeated. I’m surrounded by happy couples, and I even live with a beautiful couple who share a respectful, loving relationship. Their example gives me hope, but it also reminds me of what I’m missing. I don’t see children in my future, and that too creates a barrier. Many men in their early 30s want kids, but I refuse to have children just to have a partner.

I’m not entirely sure how to conclude this, but I do feel better having laid it all out. Writing this exposes a serious issue with how men behave. While I’m far from perfect and I’ve definitely said and done hurtful things in past relationships, I never deserved any of the mistreatment I received. I deserve to be loved. Whether that love comes one day or not, I’m now turning 30 this year and beginning to accept that that may mean a life of being on my own. With friends by my side, yes, but still on my own. I'm not saying I have given up, I will search for my person forever but I am accepting that I need to start planning. For example getting a house deposit organised alone because the possibility of having a dual income seems quite slim. When I was 20, I truly believed I’d have a husband and a house by now. My life isn’t what I planned, but I take great solace in knowing that, friendship-wise, career-wise, and family-wise, I am deeply loved and incredibly lucky. I have everything I need to function, survive, and enjoy life. I even stopped smoking and am 174 days smoke-free now. I’m proud of that, proud of eating better, and proud of getting up every day to keep going.

Thank you for reading. I promise that future blogs will return to a lighter tone, I just needed to get this one off my chest.

Wishing you all an exceptional week, or perhaps just an average one. Average is perfectly fine.

Song recommendation of the week: Conceited by Lola Young

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