I’m not going to give a complete background on my dating history. I assume no one would want to read all of that. But if anyone is interested, I will write it out in another post!

To start off, I was kind of an ugly duckling. Boys either ignored me, bypassing me and going straight to my friends. Or they made fun of me. I was really convinced that I would never be attractive enough for anyone. I really thought there was something wrong with me. I was depressed and suicidal. Another post of here detailed a pretty similar teenage experience.

I enmeshed myself in my interests and hobbies (music/art/fitness). I became pretty good and even competed, still do. Then something happened in my late teens/early twenties. Suddenly, men didn’t bypass me for my friends anymore. Although, I attracted men, I was still deeply insecure. This made me a ripe for predators. Considering I was deeply involved in a Christian community/concert venue, there was no shortage. My first serious suitor used me as a sort of decoy as he groomed young girls in the background. My first boyfriend, a youth group leader, drugged and raped me. A boy I briefly dated after high school, stalked me for years. These are just a few examples of my horrible dating life. For my safety, I began vetting ruthlessly.

Eventually, I met my ex-fiancé (I could write a whole story about him). I wasn’t attracted to him ,but my friends convinced me to gIvE hIm a cHaNcE. 🤡 He was from the same country as my father’s family. He swore up and down that he did not subscribe to the machismo of that culture. That he was a nice guy who women just never gave a chance. In the beginning, he seemed high value. Slowly he proved to be an abusive compulsive liar with a substance problem. He manipulated all of my friends and family into believing I was controlling and untrusting. That I was making him pay the price for what other men had did in the past. Which was odd, considering I had never expressed untrusting, controlling or jealous behavior. Turns out, this was all preliminary efforts to manipulate the people around me before I caught all the cheating. Fast forward; he had an entire girlfriend in another town that he had been seeing for years, he had an additional girlfriend whom I caught him with, as well multiple hook-ups and purchasing sex from prostitutes.

He was confused when I wouldn’t marry him.

I was absolutely devastated, humiliated and demoralized. In my time of darkness, after everything he had done, he still made me out to be the bad guy. This effected my friend group, family, and job. As he made sure to be enmeshed in all of those things for control.

I felt just like I did in high school. If unattractive/unsuccessful men could treat me this poorly, then clearly this really was the most I deserved. There really was something wrong with me. My grades plummeted that semester and I ended up dropping out. Then, someone I considered a role model, gave me the best advice I had ever received in my life at that point,

“OP, why are you wasting time on these jokers? Focus on your career and future. Because one day the one is going to walk into your life, and if you’re dating some loser at that time, the one is just going to walk on by.”

So that is exactly what I did. I began focusing on the skill that is now my career/business. I blocked all of the people in my life who chose my ex over me. Surprise, once he couldn’t use them to get to me, he ditched them too. If I did date, which was rare, I only dated men who went above and beyond to get my attention. Flowers, gifts, and planned dates were a minimum requirement for me to even consider giving someone the time of day. After all, I was a busy woman. Time spent on a man, is time taken away from building my future.

Then one day, I was hanging out with an old friend. She brought up a boy she introduced me to a few times before I started dating my ex. He was nice enough and expressed clear interest in the past. He also kept in contact on social media. But he was on the soccer team, majored in STEM, did martial arts in the off season, played in a somewhat popular band, was attractive, popular, and super fit. Basically, he was too desirable to not be a fuckboy. After all, less attractive men treat you better. Right?

She insisted. She would not let it go. She even said that he hasn’t entertained any women’s advances and suggested that he had been waiting for me. (To clarify, the ex was a clear train wreck that everyone else could see from a mile away) So I started talking to him more to appease her. To my surprise, we actually had a lot in common. We texted and talked on the phone daily. I began to look forward to hearing from him and getting his insights on things. I wasn’t really entertaining a relationship at the time ,but I knew I definitely, at least, wanted him in my close friends group. Then he invited me to hang out and to my surprise it was an entire planned out date. Following the date, as he was driving me to our meet up spot, I noticed something that I had never noticed with any man before. We just clicked and it was effortless, easy.

In the upcoming weeks came more dates. The communication never slowed down, either. Although this felt like something from a romcom, I was still reserved. I had preconceived notions about what attractive, seemingly well adjusted college boys on sports teams were like. One night, he took me to a party where I met most of the team. I began to lose faith as I saw some of his teammates behave as you think they would with locker room talk. But I also noticed that he dismissed these men as assholes and tended to gravitate towards those who were more academic minded.

Dates continued and, again, communication never slowed. As we became more comfortable with each other we began talking about the hard subjects. How he grew up in a somewhat religious family and was never comfortable with hook-up culture. That his mother and sisters became interested in feminism and he agreed with most of their viewpoints. How he used to occasionally use pornography but was against it after his sister brought up the clear human rights abuses within it. Then, which was the most important to me, he only had two girlfriends prior and was only sexually active with one of them.

Yet, still, I was on edge. My ex was able to pull the wool over my eyes. How do I know this man isn’t doing the same thing? So I continued to vet. But every test, he passed.

Then, at week 6, he asked to define the relationship. He had been seeing me exclusively and wanted to know if I was interested in doing the same. I agreed. Dates continued and communication never slowed down.

Month 3 he said he loved me and he introduced me to his family. On month 4, I finally slept with him. Wouldn’t you know, sex is a lot better when your partner doesn’t use porn? Month 8, he asked about establishing a rough timeframe for engagement and marriage. I continued to vet, I still vet. He continued to pass, because he wanted to, so he did.

The biggest thing I learned in all of my dating experience is that men know what they’re doing. They know what they want to do and who they want to do it with. My husband zeroed in on me and courted me. He didn’t kill time with a dozen women waiting for one to seem worthwhile to pursue more.

In the end, I’m overjoyed to have my husband. Yet the blatant abuse, assault, and rape that I had to endure just to sort through the dating world until we crossed paths, is abhorrent. This shouldn’t be baseline for women who are just looking for love. That is what brought me to FDS.

Vet ruthlessly. Vet for you safety. Dating is like a deck building game (sorry, I’m a nerd.) You want to find a way to burn through as many shitty cards as possible so that you are only left with good options. When you feel demoralized. That all you do is burn through cards. That maybe you should lower your expectations so that you can have a bigger deck with more options. Remember, that in the end, you are only looking for one.