Don’t Be Fooled Into Thinking That You’re Not ‘Good Enough’ to Date

The other day, I was tapping in my code for the gym when a guy introduced himself on his way out. I thought he must be asking me for directions or something because I looked like shit. I was wearing this puffer coat my ex stole from a club that has white paint splattered all over it. I did have a cute green gym set on, but he couldn’t see that. My face was puffy from a bad night’s sleep. I was still wearing my bike helmet. He wasn’t asking for directions, though; he was chatting me up.

“I’ve seen you around,” he said. “I wanted to say hi, but I didn’t want to put you off your workout.”

I gave him my number and then turned to walk through the doors—or tried to. We’d been speaking for long enough that they closed on me and I had to yank myself back out. 

“Sorry,” he said, “that’s my fault.”

I was bright red.

Part of me loved what had just happened. I walked around the gym like that meme of Kylie Jenner where she’s strutting off a private jet, tucking her hair behind her ear. Another part of me felt exposed, like I’d been caught at the wrong time. I wanted to tell him, “Wait, I can do better—I’m not ready yet!”

This is how I’ve felt about a lot of encounters with men recently. I ignore their messages. Dumb ones, like when a friend sent me a video of a guy holding up a sign that says: “Send this to someone you want to sit on your face.” And normal ones, like when a guy I got with after a night out texted me asking if I got home safely. Hinge stays deleted. I keep setting myself these deadlines—promising I’ll put myself out there again when my skin clears, when I’ve gotten back into a gym routine, when I’ve gotten rid of the peach fuzz on my face, whitened my teeth, written more words, when I’ve gotten better at communication, when I’m not so tired, when I’ve reached the bottom of my to-do list. 

I recognized the flaw in this thinking after speaking to that guy. I’m treating attraction as if it were something logical, as if the better you are, the more likely you are to meet people you’re into, which I guess should be true, but isn’t always. I can’t be the only one who’s looked at old pictures of themselves and wondered how the hell anyone fancied my younger self. I have all this glittery eye make-up, my hair is thin from bleaching, my lips are dry, my eyebrows are too dark, and yet I was meeting loads of people. How hot or interesting you are has much less correlation with how well your romantic life goes than we think it does. In fact, believing that it does can hem us in, close us off, turn us away from good things as they land in our laps.