I date differently now.

I could tell you all the overused reasons why—

That I’ve navigated deep, soul-searching, gut-wrenching heartbreak.

Sat on the other side of rejection.

Believed the best only to be used, broken, and have my heart cracked wide open.

All of that is true.

I am an empath.

I feel all my feelings so big they overwhelm me.

But when I get really honest with my heart, those reasons aren’t why I have been approaching this realm from a new angle.

Before we are ready to receive the big love we desire, we connect superficially.

I’ve been on all the dating apps and experienced the shallowness of what should be sacred.

The “something casuals” and “here for a good time, not a long time.”

The sweet talkers who become ghosters after they get what they came for.

The ones so good at playing the game that I convince my heart it’s okay to open.

Only to wake up side by side with the same man speaking new words than he was the night before.

The pull and then the push.

It’s classic because it’s comfortable.

We can’t live without connection, yet we shy away from depth.

Craving what we won’t allow.

I’ve blamed the dating apps.

Threw tantrums with the men unable to choose me in the way I was asking them to.

But, at the root of it, we all have the same desire.

To connect.

To feel seen.

To rest in the presence of another.

We just can only do so as deeply as we have within.

Real, honest connection can seem like a foreign language to many who walk in this world.

Because if we haven’t felt it, we can’t know it.

If you are curious what you think of yourself, look at what you choose in your life.

It’s a direct reflection.

And there’s a deeper meaning to all of it.

The intimacy without emotion is believing that our worth doesn’t extend beyond what our physical body offers.

Operating from the place of “If I open, they’ll leave,” or “If I do this, maybe then they’ll love me.”

It’s stemming from a wound—past or present.

The resistance to commit is our subconscious unsure of how to choose another when we’ve never chosen ourself.

We can’t execute what we’ve never practiced.

I never write from a place of arrival.

It’s always from the messy middle.

Inviting you into the process because I know how far and out of reach the finish line feels when you are waking up next to someone you love, but feel the bottom of your belly churn in circles because it is out of the center of your integrity.

Unsure of what coming home to yourself even feels like.

Afraid to use your voice because it might sacrifice the security.

I’m wading through it.

And I feel a shift in the waves.

I’m slowly losing the desire to place blame.

Knowing that I can only be met as intimately as I’ve met myself.

My energy is protected in a way it has never been before.

Aware that if I deny pain, I deny pleasure.

One can only be felt as deeply as the other.

Intuitively connected to what aligns and unable to ignore what no longer does.

If it shakes what’s sacred, I walk.

And if it isn’t a hell yes, it’s a no.

The truth?

I don’t always honor it, but I’m working on it.

Realizing it never had anything to do with them and everything to do with you feels like being handed a punch in the gut and wings to fly in the same moment.

Life is a living contradiction.

And to deny any emotion is to deny the human experience.

It will never be a hashtag, movement, or some grandiose destination—

It’s a million little moments of meeting the you that you’ve always been.

And it’s nothing short of a hell of a ride.