The Real Reason I Don't Date
I thought I should make something clear. Something that didn’t even occur to me until within the last six months.
The fact that I don’t date is not because I’m an asexual. My asexuality has little to do with it. I used to think it was the reason. But on deeper introspection, I discovered I was wrong.
I don’t date because I have a fundamental opposition to the practice of dating.
Now, I’m not saying I think there’s something inherently wrong with it. That’s not it. What it is, is a personal inability to handle the downsides, plus my general principle of self-authenticity. The first reason dominates. I’ll explain briefly, in a way that will hopefully enable you to see it through my eyes.
Traditional dating presents itself to me as the ultimate form of emotional masochism. It’s a game - a completely irrational game, where I can never win as much as I lose. I hate social games. I hate social superficiality. And to me, that’s what dating is above all: a superficial game. The standard process goes like this: you meet a stranger, you experience sexual attraction, you flirt, you somehow end up going on a date or having a sexual encounter, followed by a series of dates or sexual encounters, until finally deciding to officially become exclusive sexual partners. You engage in this monogamous sexual relationship for as long as it suits you, creating memories together, emotionally investing in each other, spending your time, energy, and effort trying to make the other person like you while he or she does the same for you. And the whole time, you both know deep down that at some point, you’ll break up from any of several reasons: boredom, conflict, infidelity, drifting apart, etc. Then you break up. You take some time to mourn. Then you go out and find someone new and start the process all over again.
To engage in this process is impossible for me. It feels totally senseless. I have no need or desire for sex - although I’m not incapable of doing it or doing it for someone else’s sake - so dating for me would then become solely about emotional investment. And when I emotionally invest in someone, I do it with such extremity, that the inherent transience of the sexual relationship would devastate me - every time.
The transience is what makes dating feel like social insanity to me. Why-why-would I allow myself to truly love someone, if that person is only going to be in my life for six months? Or even a year or two years?
Anything short of forever, to me, isn’t worth it.
I have made it a point to cultivate long-term relationships all my life. Every single one of my intimate friends, I’ve known and loved since childhood. The one I’ve known the shortest amount of time, I’ve still known for six years now.
Sure, I knew many other people besides my intimate friends throughout my life. But I never emotionally attached myself to them, and they never attached to me. And that’s why they’re no longer around, and I’m okay with it.
Love is the most serious entity in my life. I don’t fuck around, when I love someone. I commit forever. And I expect the same.
But dating-especially at my age-is by nature, transient. I can’t accept that. I couldn’t accept that even if I were 10 years older.
And shit, as far as I’m concerned, it takes at least a year of knowing someone to even reach actual love, to get to the meat of a relationship, whatever kind it is. The concept of going from meeting a total stranger to making that person number one within weeks or a few months, only to have it all destroyed shortly thereafter is fucking ridiculous to me.
Maybe if I were an actively sexual being, I could date by making every relationship emotionally shallow and primarily about the sex (as some people do), but even that would be unlikely, based on my character. The fact is, I would have to possess an entirely different emotional makeup to practice dating without experiencing it as a whole new level of self-mutilation.
And fuck knows, I would always be the one dumped, never the dumper.
How could I ever justify doing it? What would I get out of it? If sex is irrelevant to me and the long-term emotional experience would be primarily damaging, then what’s the point, you know?
I refuse to be used over and over again for such relatively short periods of time, to volunteer myself for the same kind of loss that already haunts me where it lies in my future within the relationships I already do have which aren’t even sexual - but that will suffer because of the sexual.
Then, there’s my general principle of self-authenticity: meaning, that I live my life with a stubborn allegiance to my own beliefs and identity. I have never been willing to conform for the sake of conforming. And since I was a small child, I’ve known what I wanted out of my social life. I’ve known exactly what I believe to be possible, or once possible. It’s the one thing that hasn’t changed all these years.
I shouldn’t have to change who I am in order to be happy. And I know I never will be-that the best I can hope for is neutrality and professional gratification-which is powerfully unfair. But even if it means this solitude, this dissatisfaction, I’m never going to force myself to be someone I’m not. I could date and have sex and maybe even get married and pretend the whole time it’s what I want, but it isn’t. Not because I lack a desire for commitment or have an insurmountable aversion to sex but because going through that whole process is not what I want. I don’t want to be someone’s girlfriend. I want to be someone’s eternal, primary love. Sex or no sex. I want my friendships to be twenty times more than what they are. I want real meaning to the relationship I have with my sister and each of my cousins. I have never, ever believed in this practice of a single sexual relationship possessing more intimacy, love, and overall value than a person’s friendships or family relationships. I never will. And to live like that would be the worst kind of violation of everything I feel and desire for not just my own social life but everyone’s.
I’m not going to just give up those ideas, those intrinsic elements of my identity, and adopt a traditional lifestyle to compensate for the fact that I can never have what I truly want. I can’t do it. I guess I was born to be alone, and now, instead of futile resistance, I’m going to do what I can to resign to that reality.
Being an asexual isn’t completely inconsequential to the way I must live my life, but it’s
inconsequential enough that I truly think being hetero, homo, or bi would change nothing. It isn’t my sexuality; it’s my whole being. I don’t fit into this culture. I don’t fit into this world. I never will.
The fact that I don’t date is not because I’m an asexual. My asexuality has little to do with it. I used to think it was the reason. But on deeper introspection, I discovered I was wrong.
I don’t date because I have a fundamental opposition to the practice of dating.
Now, I’m not saying I think there’s something inherently wrong with it. That’s not it. What it is, is a personal inability to handle the downsides, plus my general principle of self-authenticity. The first reason dominates. I’ll explain briefly, in a way that will hopefully enable you to see it through my eyes.
Traditional dating presents itself to me as the ultimate form of emotional masochism. It’s a game - a completely irrational game, where I can never win as much as I lose. I hate social games. I hate social superficiality. And to me, that’s what dating is above all: a superficial game. The standard process goes like this: you meet a stranger, you experience sexual attraction, you flirt, you somehow end up going on a date or having a sexual encounter, followed by a series of dates or sexual encounters, until finally deciding to officially become exclusive sexual partners. You engage in this monogamous sexual relationship for as long as it suits you, creating memories together, emotionally investing in each other, spending your time, energy, and effort trying to make the other person like you while he or she does the same for you. And the whole time, you both know deep down that at some point, you’ll break up from any of several reasons: boredom, conflict, infidelity, drifting apart, etc. Then you break up. You take some time to mourn. Then you go out and find someone new and start the process all over again.
To engage in this process is impossible for me. It feels totally senseless. I have no need or desire for sex - although I’m not incapable of doing it or doing it for someone else’s sake - so dating for me would then become solely about emotional investment. And when I emotionally invest in someone, I do it with such extremity, that the inherent transience of the sexual relationship would devastate me - every time.
The transience is what makes dating feel like social insanity to me. Why-why-would I allow myself to truly love someone, if that person is only going to be in my life for six months? Or even a year or two years?
Anything short of forever, to me, isn’t worth it.
I have made it a point to cultivate long-term relationships all my life. Every single one of my intimate friends, I’ve known and loved since childhood. The one I’ve known the shortest amount of time, I’ve still known for six years now.
Sure, I knew many other people besides my intimate friends throughout my life. But I never emotionally attached myself to them, and they never attached to me. And that’s why they’re no longer around, and I’m okay with it.
Love is the most serious entity in my life. I don’t fuck around, when I love someone. I commit forever. And I expect the same.
But dating-especially at my age-is by nature, transient. I can’t accept that. I couldn’t accept that even if I were 10 years older.
And shit, as far as I’m concerned, it takes at least a year of knowing someone to even reach actual love, to get to the meat of a relationship, whatever kind it is. The concept of going from meeting a total stranger to making that person number one within weeks or a few months, only to have it all destroyed shortly thereafter is fucking ridiculous to me.
Maybe if I were an actively sexual being, I could date by making every relationship emotionally shallow and primarily about the sex (as some people do), but even that would be unlikely, based on my character. The fact is, I would have to possess an entirely different emotional makeup to practice dating without experiencing it as a whole new level of self-mutilation.
And fuck knows, I would always be the one dumped, never the dumper.
How could I ever justify doing it? What would I get out of it? If sex is irrelevant to me and the long-term emotional experience would be primarily damaging, then what’s the point, you know?
I refuse to be used over and over again for such relatively short periods of time, to volunteer myself for the same kind of loss that already haunts me where it lies in my future within the relationships I already do have which aren’t even sexual - but that will suffer because of the sexual.
Then, there’s my general principle of self-authenticity: meaning, that I live my life with a stubborn allegiance to my own beliefs and identity. I have never been willing to conform for the sake of conforming. And since I was a small child, I’ve known what I wanted out of my social life. I’ve known exactly what I believe to be possible, or once possible. It’s the one thing that hasn’t changed all these years.
I shouldn’t have to change who I am in order to be happy. And I know I never will be-that the best I can hope for is neutrality and professional gratification-which is powerfully unfair. But even if it means this solitude, this dissatisfaction, I’m never going to force myself to be someone I’m not. I could date and have sex and maybe even get married and pretend the whole time it’s what I want, but it isn’t. Not because I lack a desire for commitment or have an insurmountable aversion to sex but because going through that whole process is not what I want. I don’t want to be someone’s girlfriend. I want to be someone’s eternal, primary love. Sex or no sex. I want my friendships to be twenty times more than what they are. I want real meaning to the relationship I have with my sister and each of my cousins. I have never, ever believed in this practice of a single sexual relationship possessing more intimacy, love, and overall value than a person’s friendships or family relationships. I never will. And to live like that would be the worst kind of violation of everything I feel and desire for not just my own social life but everyone’s.
I’m not going to just give up those ideas, those intrinsic elements of my identity, and adopt a traditional lifestyle to compensate for the fact that I can never have what I truly want. I can’t do it. I guess I was born to be alone, and now, instead of futile resistance, I’m going to do what I can to resign to that reality.
Being an asexual isn’t completely inconsequential to the way I must live my life, but it’s
inconsequential enough that I truly think being hetero, homo, or bi would change nothing. It isn’t my sexuality; it’s my whole being. I don’t fit into this culture. I don’t fit into this world. I never will.