I’d Rather Be Lonely Than Date Someone Who Dilutes Me

Recently, I was scrolling on TikTok and one of my favorite influencers, Samantha Reihl, said this quote: “I’ve never met a man cooler than me. When I do, I’m going to marry him.” Samantha has spent the last year really turning toward herself, becoming the woman she wants to be, and filling her life with the things she wants to do before her life partner arrives. This quote probably couldn’t have come at a better time for the place I’m at in my twenties, trying to practice self-preservation, stick to my values, and wait for the right person to add to my life, not take away from all I’ve built.

It reminded me of Lauren Conrad on The Hills, season two. She found a cute guy who really liked her, but instead of choosing to date him, she felt in her soul that he simply wasn’t hers. People looked at her like she was absolutely crazy because he was perfect in every way, but she didn’t budge, even if it meant continuing to be the single girl.

She said to Whitney Port, “I’ve waited too long to pick the wrong guy. You don’t settle.”

My parents have been together for 30 years. It has set me up for success, but it has also set me up for absolute failure, if you define “failure” as the unwillingness to ever settle.It is ingrained in my head. I didn’t even settle in high school, and I refused to date in college because I knew, with the men around me, it would be doing myself a disservice. Growing up around loving parents, and now some of my friends who are in beautiful relationships, has made it absolutely impossible to tolerate mediocrity. But with that self-preservation and inability to desert my values, sometimes my life becomes quite lonely.

There are moments when I wonder if I am too idealistic, too high-maintenance. Women are judged relentlessly for having high standards, as if, God forbid, I don’t want to date someone who makes me feel unlike myself. Recently, a great guy friend of mine told me I could probably date anyone, but my standards are extremely high. He said he respected it, but that my self-isolation is not something happening to me, but something I am choosing out of respect for myself. Because of that judgment, I sometimes question myself. I wonder if my discernment is actually intuition, or just fear dressed up as standards. I wonder if I’ve spent so much time protecting myself from the wrong love that I’ve accidentally become avoidant of the right one, too.

Last month, I gave myself the task of dating around New York City to see if I was becoming avoidant, and let’s just say, I am not. All of the dates felt spiritually… flat. With some, I felt like I was performing. With others, I felt like I was underperforming. Some dates felt so misaligned that it was almost as if I had left myself at home before I arrived.

I have sat across from men and felt myself editing in real time. Speaking softer. Holding back intensity, curiosity, humor, and ambition, all because I could feel them becoming uncomfortable with the fullness of me. And maybe that is what I mean when I say someone feels spiritually flat. Not that they are bad people, but that I leave the interaction feeling further from myself instead of closer to myself when the date is over.

I felt lonelier leaving the date and walking back into my apartment than I did walking into it.

Having the ability not to settle for just anything, and understanding what you deserve through discernment, is an extreme superpower that I notice more and more women are beginning to possess. We all deserve love that does not require self-abandonment, and it takes one hell of a person to wait for that instead of choosing something that is merely convenient. Waiting for something that feels right in the depths of your bones, so much so that you don’t even have to try.

However, I have been there before, too. Trying to fill the void with temporary feelings, dates, and promises. It got me absolutely nowhere. I have tried to outrun one kind of loneliness with another by choosing temporary closeness over genuine connection. Every time, I left feeling lonelier than ever. Yes, lonelier than having no one.

Because yes, within that self-preservation and unwillingness to settle, there is also a particular kind of loneliness. A loneliness different from the one that comes from choosing temporary validation.

When it’s Sunday and the clock strikes 6 p.m., and all you want is to share a glass of wine with someone you love and connect with. Someone who has taken the time to understand you and chosen you. When you head to a wedding alone, or to family reunions and gatherings. When you watch your friends pair off into relationships, or see people posting their engagements online. Making a dish you wish you could share with a partner, or wishing they were beside you on a walk. It can be isolating.

Romantic love is something we all crave, whether we want to admit it or not. We are human, after all. So admitting you are lonely sometimes is not a crime. And through that loneliness, I don’t know anything that could be more isolating than being in a relationship that is not meant for me.

Maybe waiting is lonely.

Maybe discernment costs more than we admit.

But I still believe there is something worse than loneliness: Becoming unrecognizable to yourself in exchange for companionship.