Choosing Reality Over Potential

On modern dating, fantasy, and learning to listen to reality

My latest Hinge match felt like the most promising.

His photos were thoughtful, artistic, well-curated. He had kind eyes, a bright smile, and warmth that came across the screen.

He was also height appropriate, fit, healthy.

But most importantly, after liking my profile, and me liking him back: he sent me a message that made my mouth drop.

He asked me the most thoughtful questions I’ve received on a dating app, and maybe ever.

He asked what made me look his way, what made me feel special, what I liked about myself.

As someone who thinks deeply and enjoys reflecting, those questions lit me up.

I was immediately pulled in.

Not pulled forward, which happens when I orient around wanting to feel chosen by man and start to leave myself.

For the first time in a long time, I actually felt completely inside myself.

I answered one of his questions thoughtfully, letting him know I’d write a chapter if I answered the others.

He said he enjoyed chapters, and wanted to hear whatever is it I had to say.

The conversation, from there, moved to a deep sharing that felt mutual, delightful, organic and easy.

I felt like I could share the parts of me that brought me joy: like the caterpillars growing on the passionflower vine in my yard, the air balloons on a Sunday morning, the little gems at my favorite market.

I felt open, seen, respected and heard.

All before having met this person in real life.

I was carefully tracking my nervous system: how does my body feel talking with this him?

The answer over following days continued to be the same: I was inhabiting myself, being real, emotionally honest.

I felt like I could share what I thought and felt, and that he could receive, reflect, and share his impressions.

That the conversation was mutual.

He said he liked thinking with me, and that made my heart leap.

I kept revealing myself inside an intimate conversation with a stranger, despite my better knowing.

I have a note to self on my fridge that says: Texting is not intimacy.

I have the voices of dating coaches in my head that says: Texting is a dopamine loop.

I have my own inner knowing that says:

Texting is not real.

Reality is.

I could also feel something else in my body after 5 days of emotionally deep and intimate texting: he wasn’t moving towards me.

He hadn’t asked me out, like you’d expect from someone you feel a connection to.

So I decided to swallow my desire to be asked out.

It took every ounce of courage I had for me say: speaking of imagination, which we’d been discussing, I have a light week and capacity to drive, and I’d love to meet you.

I could feel something under the surface I didn’t have words for, a deeper layer that was picking up on blurry signals.

His response felt like a punch in the gut to my vulnerable ask, saying he would check the schedule.

It wasn’t moving towards me.

At that moment, I decided to detach, and to continue looking for my life partner.

Based on our conversation, I’d clarified some things: I wanted someone to cook with me, think with me, garden with me.

I wanted someone to share ordinary life with, the mundane, the domestic.

I wanted someone who could bring this mutual recognition into real life.

I found it ironic that this conversation opened up the day I started to read psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin’s “Beyond Doer and Done to,” in which she presents the idea of mutual recognition as being the foundation of a healthy relationship.

There I was, in a conversation, that maybe for the first time ever, felt like mutual recognition.

I felt seen, admired, and in my body.

I could also see, admire, and be with another.

But, I also quickly realized that mutual recognition includes mutual action.

It includes capacity to tolerate discomfort, difference, separateness.

It means risking not getting what you want.

It includes the capacity to hear hard truth, and see reality as is.

This is hard.

I had gotten attached to the idea of the fantasy, to a conversation where I felt met in new and delightful ways.

So rather than ignore the reality of his response, I did the next courageous thing:

I asked him what he was looking for.

Because if I truly look at myself, the scared parts of me want to stay in ambiguity.

They like to stay safe inside the fantasy, inside the potential.

They like to keep hope alive, to feel the intermittent reenforcement.

His response was clear, and confirmed what I had been feeling:

He was not ready for a relationship. He could offer friendship. Slowness. No promises.

At this point, I believe in truly getting to know someone, not jumping into a relationship, and going slow.

But to do this requires still risk and vulnerability. It includes allowing yourself to be seen. To risk rejection. To risk getting your heart broken.

I bargained with this. I thought maybe if we kept talking, kept getting to know each other, maybe he’d change his mind.

I wanted to explain away, he’s scared, he’ll come around, I’m a safe person to explore with.

Except the deepest part of me knows:

Ignoring another person’s stated reality is my failure to recognize them as a separate subject.

Building a relationship from anything else is false.

Not listening to what he’s saying and trying to make him the object of my fantasy will result in pain.

It will result in the same thing I keep saying I don’t want: an emotional roller coaster of intermittent reenforcement.

It will result in being pulled between the parts of him that clearly want deep connection, and are capable of it.

But also the parts he named were equally real, about healing and not being ready.

Growing up means listening to reality.

Because of course I want it to be different.

I made up a whole fantasy of who this person is to me, without having even talked to them on the phone.

My attachment system opened after a week of talking, because it represented a possibility I deeply dream of.

But my adult self knows something different now.

It knows she cannot control another person’s reality.

It knows honoring rather than projecting is real growth.

It knows letting go is better than forcing something.

And this is hard fucking work.

This morning, I sent a text saying I needed to disconnect from the conversation.

I know I need to close the open loops that keep me trapped in potential.

Hope isn’t enough.

That when someone reveals themselves, you need to listen.

Not to what you want to hear, but to what they’re actually telling you.

I know that this deeper listening is what will help me find a life partner that’s aligned in the long run.

Meanwhile, the loss of potential, the loss of connection hurts.

It hurts to feel seen by someone, and still need to let it to go.

It hurts that capacity is real, and that sometimes you’re in different places.

But seeing reality clearly, and honoring it:

Hurts less than trying to turn potential into reality.

This morning, before I hit send, something in my heart was quivering.

Not because I thought it would destroy me.

Because some part of me still… wanted to write a different ending.