dating anxiety

It's no secret that I have anxiety. When it comes to dating, my anxiety spikes like crazy. Everyone in the world has to date at some point, but I don't understand how they all do it! Sometimes I feel like I'm doing my head in with all this overthinking.

Why hasn't he responded back yet? Was my response not worth responding to? I wonder how many other people they're talking to. Is he genuinely interested in me, or am I just wasting my time? Am I coming across too eager?

The endless stream of thoughts throughout the day gets exhausting.

It's something that's been a reoccurring topic with my therapist. Is there a way to get over these thoughts? How can I overcome these feelings of insecurity I get whenever I start talking to someone new?

Let's not even talk about how much worse the thoughts get once I'm genuinely interested in them. I almost have to convince myself to not be as interested in them as I actually am. If I keep mental walls up, it'll hurt less if it doesn't end up working out.

I think it may come down to the way people date now a days. The modern way of dating is stressful! Because of dating apps, we have an endless supply of options. People constantly showering you with compliments, and the moment you get bored of them? Onto the next one. It's an endless revolving door of women/men (whoever floats your boat).

Most of the time I feel like I wasn't built to date in the modern world. When Tinder, Bumble and Hinge came out, it was exciting to get the chance to talk to people I 100% would have never met if it wasn't for the app. The shine of these apps wore off quickly once I realized how many people didn't really want to get to know me.

They were impressed by my appearance, and didn't really care about getting to know who I was behind the face and pretty pictures.

There's so much pointless small talk, it gets boring. I'm a person who genuinely wants to get to know someone's likes/dislikes. Their passions, dreams, & goals. I want to know their dirty secrets, and what makes them tick.

But it's so difficult to get to that point when people talk to you for three days, only for you to never hear from them again.

Now, you eventually get to a point where you have vetted out the people you're not interested in, and you're consistently chatting to 2-3 of them that have potential. I either try to chat through phone calls, facetime dates, or in person dates to see if we click in person.

Most of the times, these are disappointing as well. Either the vibe isn't the same, they're totally different when we're face to face (I could tell you the horror stories), or on the rare occasion everything goes amazingly well.

Even if you make it this far into talking to someone, you have to squash the hopefulness you feel, because 9/10 they're also going on first dates with a handful of other people . Not only do you have to figure out if you're feeling them, but if the feelings are being reciprocated.

This can be difficult mainly because most people aren't very forthcoming with their feelings (myself included). In this day and age, it's seen as a weakness to be open about what you're feeling right out the gate. Some people like the "game" of getting someone interested, and once they know they caught you, they lose interest. Other people are scared off by people being too full on right off the bat.

So it's definitely tricky.

I've been talking to the same guy for about two months now, and I don't feel any more secure than I did when we first started talking. While I have dropped all the other people I was talking to earlier into our "relationship", I have no guarantee he's feeling me the same way I'm feeling him. He could literally drop me tomorrow without any explanation.

It's no wonder I have dating anxiety.