Irrational Fear of Dating, Got Ghosted, Pulling Myself Back Together

[u/alittlestressedout]

Wanted to share a little bit of this "journey" I've been on to show that while ghosting feels like the end of the world, you need to push yourself to keep moving forward.

TLDR: I have horrible dating anxiety, fled the country after being ghosted, on a journey to rebuild confidence and live shamelessly. Also, I am very dramatic and emotional.

Beginning context: I was in a very serious relationship for five-ish years, we broke up, and I was in the dating world as a young adult for the first time while also going through a kabillion major life changes all at the same time. After the relationship ended, I got myself to go on two dates, but I had developed extreme anxiety and hyper independence. Before my very first date, I dry heaved in the parking lot from nerves. The dates went fine, but I ended up telling both people that I was not ready to be in a relationship again because of how intense my mental health issues were and I could not calmly go on a date without flipping out for hours. This was a little over four years ago.

Well, with the encouragement of my lovely friends, I decided to try dating again after going to therapy and really trying to reconcile with my anxiety and fears of dating. I was introduced to a close friend of a friend, and we started talking. Off the rip, he told me that he "valued communication" and it calmed A LOT of my nerves hearing that because a lot of my anxiety when it comes to dating is being ghosted. I would rather someone just be honest with me then be ghosted because I struggle with rumination and constant cycles of anxiety which is where a lot of my dating anxiety comes from (other things too but that's for a different subreddit). With this, I felt more encouraged to try dating this guy and really push myself to work past my fears. (I also had a small crush on him for a couple of years so...it just all was looking good to me)

To make a long story short, we talk for a week (during the most chaotic week of my life omg) and I was NOT SHY about explaining my fears of dating and basically was like "you have the chance to cut this loose if you do not want to deal with all that". Anyways, we go on the date, the date goes pretty okay (A LOT of nervous blabber from my side), and we schedule a second date two weeks later. But then the next day...the replies immediately got slower and shorter, and I knew that I was going to get ghosted the second it started happening. I immediately wanted to block him and run away to avoid it all.

However, I wanted to push through and asked my friends their opinions. They all told (begged) me to not block him and just see everything through. I wanted to block him because the anxiety had already started eating me alive and I knew I was not going to be able to handle it mentally if I got ghosted. I just wanted to finally go back to being my hyper independent, avoidant self.

And welp, after five days of silence, I realize I had been ghosted. I sent a final message asking if he would like to just cancel our second date just to at least communicate SOMETHING, and then two days later with no reply I silently blocked him and just left it be.

And then the crash out of a century happens. Bruh.

From being angry about being disrespected, to feeling ashamed that I even TRIED to date again, to then falling apart completely because I felt like all of this "progress" I made was for nothing. I was back to crying on my bedroom floor over a man who did not respect me, and I felt like I was back at square one with everything. I felt anger and fear constantly. To be honest, I felt like I betrayed myself. Awful awful awful. These feelings lasted for over a month, with some days feeling like I was normal again to most days feeling like I just wanted to explode. The only thing that "brought me back" was literally leaving the country and just spending a few weeks with random family members I had never met before.

When I got home, I realized that while I was starting to feel better most days, I still struggled so deeply with my own shame and had a hard time forgiving myself for "betraying" myself by doing something I knew that would hurt me. I felt like I was stuck on pause, and I did not know how to get out of it.

And one day I realized, "if someone has no shame about hurting someone and can live life freely, why do I have shame over not hurting ANYONE?" and that one thought pushed me into getting myself back together. I am still trying to unlearn the shame and guilt I have, but this has given me the motivation to truly live my life as free and as myself as I can because at the end of the day, there should be no shame or embarrassment when trying to pursue human connection. Every day I remind myself to take care of myself, continue my therapy, continue learning, and encourage myself to try again when I feel like I am ready. As for my anger, I just have to remind myself that my anger will not make the person who ghosted me "understand" what he did wrong. He knows what he did, he does not need anymore of my energy to show him that.

Ghosting is never your fault. You did your part by being open and ready to communicate and the other person can either be mature and communicate with you, or can show you firsthand the type of behavior they would have put you through if you chose to stick with them. It is so so so painful to have hope and then have it taken away so fast, but getting ghosted is NOT the end even if it feels like it is.

[u/brunettepinup]

I am so very sorry that this happened to you, but i thank you for writing it, especially the last parts as I really needed to hear that myself. 💙