Hello wonderful ladies! Throwaway account. I (29F) joined FDS early this year and needless to say it has changed my life for better. Reading posts and listening to your stories has greatly helped me identify my own toxic behaviors. I've always had poor luck when it came to dating (getting ghosted, lying and disrespectful men, me not acting on red flags, having sex too early) thanks to my pickmeisha ways that I was totally unaware of until FDS happened. I joined this sub around the time COVID struck which was also co-incidentally when I broke up with the last guy whom I dated for about two months. I've been working remotely ever since. I am normally limitedly social, with work comprising about 75% of it. So working from home gave me a lot of time to be by myself and reflect on my dating patterns. The stories and experiences posted here resonated with me and I made a note to not date for a while until of course Corona was over and until I was able to fully work out what it is I keep on doing wrong. It's been about 6 months now, and I am now leaning towards not dating ever. I have been content by myself and I definitely do not miss having to recover over and over from mental trauma and other pains these men cause. I have wasted so many tears and so much energy in the past over these men with zero rate of return and I am just not about that life anymore. I was thinking one day and realized that almost nothing has caused me such deep level of pain and disappointment as men ever since I entered adulthood and started dating not to mention how much energy and time I wasted on them and it hit hard. I am still passively active on a couple of dating apps since a small part of me is still hopeful that the right guy is still out there. Anyway long story short, I have had a few nice conversations with potential but now every time a guy asks me for my number to advance the conversation to text, I start freaking out and ghost or breadcrumb them till they drop out. I do this because I start to get flashbacks of my bad dates from past (I am completely over all of them btw) and have thoughts of what if this too leads me to same trauma as before. I now have a fear of wasting my precious time and being vulnerable again with a man. If I find myself enjoying a conversation, that part of me that has gotten comfortable being by myself wonders what if this actually works out for a change and I have to give up the comfort of my single life? I feel so conflicted. Should I just give this time? Have any of you ever experienced anything like this? If so, how did you navigate it? Thanks so much!