I’m Using Men for Personal Growth
On dating, self-actualization, and making men supporting characters
I started dating again about two months after the end of a five-year relationship.
This admittedly sounds insane if you don’t know me very well—and perhaps even more insane if you do.
Suffice it to say, I am so not the kind of person to chronically date. I’m fairly content on my own. I’m devoted to my work. I’m an introverted homebody. I don’t believe in marriage. I don’t want kids. I’m generally bothered by most people. And I am certainly not one to hunt for a rebound or distraction.
Historically, in fact, I have been much more comfortable being single and fulfilling my romantic needs by yearning intensely for people with whom I have no chance (thank you for your service, Darren Criss). Love is a lot safer that way. I can construct an elaborate inner life with a crush and never have to contend with the deeply inconvenient reality that the person on the other end of my daydreaming is a person with feelings, opinions, needs, flaws, and the ability to perceive me back.
I also always had plenty of practical reasons not to date. I was anxious about being inexperienced. I knew my asexuality would be a challenge. I don’t click with people very often. It takes me a long time to develop romantic feelings. I would inevitably have to hurt someone by telling them I wasn’t interested. I was living at home with my parents and didn’t have my own space.
I was waiting for everything to be perfect, as I so oft do.
And then, comically, the only relationship I’ve ever had didn’t require me to learn how to date at all. It grew out of eight years of best friendship. He was already integrated into my life. He knew my family, my anxieties, my weirdness, my circumstances. There was no terrifying period during which I had to introduce myself to a stranger and hope they liked me enough to keep finding out who I was.
This relationship grew out of something that already existed. Which was wonderful. But not exactly good preparation for dating. I had essentially skipped the hard bit.
So after five years in that relationship and a breakup that blew up my life, I found myself in the extremely strange position of deciding that perhaps the answer was to fling myself into the dating pool.
As soon as I was emotionally healed enough not to hurt anybody, I downloaded Hinge. Beyond the generalized feeling that it was what I needed to do since it wasn’t my usual pattern, I didn’t quite know what I was doing.
I have since realized that it was the best possible move I could’ve made, for several reasons:
Reason #1: I am a Hermit
Always have been.
My natural habitat is a cold dark silent cave without any sensory input whatsoever. If left to my own devices, I would seal myself in and never emerge.
And like–no disrespect to the committed and happy hermits out there–but I’ve lived that life, and it does actually make me quite sad. That’s the autistic curse: deep desire for interpersonal connection, endless barriers to ever getting it.
In short: if I didn’t make myself go out and do things, I was going to shrivel. Especially after something so painful. Every signal in my body told me to retreat, be on my own, and swear off people.
So part of The Hinge Endeavor was simply forcing myself back into the world. I needed a reason to get pretty and leave the house. I needed to interact with strangers. I needed to do things I couldn’t control. I needed to have experiences that weren’t work or grief or unpacking the ruins of my previous life.
Thus far, dating has not really been about finding a new relationship. It’s been about refusing to disappear.
Insert Lana song:
Reason #2: Dating is the Ultimate Form of Being Perceived
As an autistic creature, I have a complicated relationship with being perceived. By which I mean it is horrendous and also my life’s fixation. I dabble in it to feel alive but it also kind of feels like a vampire stepping into sunlight.
It used to be debilitating for me. I couldn’t speak to strangers, or order at restaurants, or make phone calls–let alone be onstage or give a speech or presentation. Social situations require an exhausting amount of mental calculation–trying to determine how I’m being perceived, whether I’m doing something “wrong,” etc. And when I was younger (and undiagnosed), I simply did not have the spoons.
Ironically, acting helped immensely with this. So did anxiety medication. So did getting older. So did watching the world crumble around us. Remarkable what that will do to the psyche.
But I still feel when there are eyeballs on me. I can’t really work if someone else is in the room. I have a hard time when I don’t know how I’m being received socially. (I experienced this a LOT while presenting more masculinely after years of hardcore femininity. That change was tough.)
But dating is the final boss of being perceived. The ultimate test of remaining who I am and not fawning and molding every element of myself like clay in order to be more likable to the person sitting across from me.
It requires allowing someone to notice you. To have thoughts about you. To understand you. To decide they like you. To decide they don’t. Eventually, if things go well, it means letting someone see you repeatedly, in increasingly uncurated states, until there is no particularly convincing argument that they don’t know who you are.
Shit is terrifying.
Which is, you know, why it’s good I’m doing it. Feel the fear and do it anyway and all dat.
(There’s also certainly fear related to the public perception of dating only two months post-breakup. I can imagine exactly what’s being whispered amongst onlookers. But I’m the one living it. And I know what I need, damb it.)
Reason #3: It’s Exposure Therapy
This whole practice is a giant exposure experiment. Exposure to interpersonal vulnerability, exposure to the court of public opinion, exposure to men as a concept (not even joking).
It’s holding myself accountable to the person I want to be. The bravery I hope to embody. Same with acting. Same with gender expression. Same with posting on social media. Tiny rebellions against the part of my brain that screams at me to go back to the cave.
At worst, one of these things somehow literally kills me. (If that occurs, honestly–impressive.) At best, I feel proud of myself and content with who I am and maybe help other people with similar struggles.
I have had the thought before that this feels like my version of doing drugs. Wilding out. My lil autistic bar is so low that I don’t need substances, I just need to step into a room of people and release the need for control over how I’m viewed and it’s the same kind of adrenaline hit.
Reason #4: I Will Never Feel Ready
For anything. Ever. To leave the house in the morning, to say goodbye to my loved ones, to publish my art, to dye my hair, to finish a tv show.
I exist in a never-ending loop of prepping and honing and perfecting and refining and I will never EVER step back and say “done.” It is not who I am. I have to yeet myself out into the world, half-baked.
Because the alternative, as I have lived a lot of, is doing nothing. Absolute paralysis. Living a lifetime in my own head.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life finding increasingly sophisticated reasons why now isn’t the right time.
Reason #5: Being Single is my Safe Space
Being independent is incredibly comfortable for me. It’s my default.
It gives me control. It gives me distance. It gives me the ability to have romance without disappointment or ick.
And, given the aforementioned context, I’ve only ever really experienced the extremes: staunch singleness, and lifelong-commitment-style partnership.
I’ve had two settings:
Nobody gets in.
and
Here is my entire life. Please take half if not more.
So yes, I could stay single for a while. But I don’t think it would be emotionally productive. Hence, I am trying to locate the middle. The grey.
Even now, while seeing new people, I can feel the impulse to dive all the way in. To chuck myself into the romantic abyss and get that sweet sweet emotional fix. It would be so easy to immediately start imagining a future, reorganizing my life around them, giving myself over completely.
And I’m so GOOD at it–loving someone. That’s the frustrating part. Absolutely built for it, whether in my head or in person. I know I could straight up change someone’s life if I decided to love them to the extent of which I am capable.
But I’m learning to mitigate that impulse. Keep more of myself. My work. My art. My friends. My family. My ambitions. My weird little projects. My autonomy. Let another person be in my life without becoming the entirety of it.
Obnoxiously, I can’t learn this theoretically. It has to be practiced.
Reason #6: I Need to Learn How Not to Make Someone “The One”
One of the first reasons I knew I needed to date was that I refused to let my ex become The One. The touchstone. The love of my life.
Not because I think he wasn’t important. Obviously he was. Thirteen years of friendship and relationship is a huge amount of time, and the life we built together was real and in many ways fantastic. A lot of the best parts of me came from him. Regardless of the issues, it’s wonderful to be so shaped by someone.
But I didn’t want to turn that relationship into the defining romantic encounter against which every future encounter has to compete. And I know that’s what I will do if unchecked, romantic little fuck that I am. (I blame over-exposure to literature as a child; protect your kids, keep them illiterate.)
I don’t want to meet someone and immediately evaluate whether they are better or worse than him. I don’t want to interpret chemistry as destiny. I don’t want to decide that liking someone means I have to know where things are going.
I especially don’t want to take the emotional intensity of losing one person and convert it into the idea that I have lost my singular opportunity to have that kind of connection…as I am apt to do.
I will not let myself believe that, DANG IT.
I think relationships can matter enormously without being permanent. I think endings are beautiful. I think emotions, even when heart-wrenching, are a blessing. I’m so grateful to feel.
And I think one of the healthiest things I can do for myself right now is experience people as people rather than as potential pathways.
This person is not a replacement. This person is not (necessarily) my next five years. This person is a person I am currently getting to know.
That is a surprisingly difficult concept for someone whose brain enjoys turning everything into a narrative and plan.
Reason #7: I Actually Like Having a Person
This was a little annoying to discover. Unfortunately, I actually do like companionship.
I like having someone to do things with. I like having someone to ask for input when I’m making a decision. I like affection. I like adoring someone. I like someone knowing what I’m thinking without any words. I like the intimacy of becoming part of the texture of each other’s everyday lives.
I genuinely enjoy having a person.
In part because, while I truly am happy on my own, I do get lonely. Not necessarily socially lonely. Intellectually lonely. Desirous of connection. I wish there were a distinct word for that. Alienation? There is just a particular kind of loneliness that comes from feeling fundamentally out of step with the people around you. I think a lot of autistic people understand what I mean. Pervasive loneliness despite being surrounded by people.
It is incredibly rare for me to fully click with someone. But when I do, I feel so much less alone. There is something about finding another person whose brain operates on a compatible frequency that is difficult to replicate with even a large and loving social network. It isn’t necessarily about needing someone to take care of me or fill some emotional void. It’s just nice to have someone who gets it. Gets me.
Slight tangent, but this is also part of why I like cities so much.
There is something comforting about being surrounded by enough people that nobody is really paying attention to you. Nobody cares what you’re wearing or where you’re going or why you’re standing on the sidewalk glitching for a moment. There is enough chaos that you can slip by unperceived.
And even when I need to slow down and take a break and hide in my room, I can still feel the world turning around me. Life goes on. I am not that integral, in the most relieving of ways.
That’s also why cities make me feel less lonely. Almost everyone has some version of that “lonely despite being surrounded by people” feeling. It evens the playing field. Makes me feel less alien.
So yes–I like having a person because they comfort me like cities do.
That doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly become convinced, however, that lifelong romantic partnership is the correct way to organize a life. I remain pretty skeptical, in fact, of the whole “find the right person and merge your entire existence with them until death” model.
I don’t know that there is one right person. I don’t know that love can ever be easy, long-term, or even worth the inherent strife. I don’t know that two people becoming each other’s everything is a healthy or desirable arrangement.
But rejecting that model doesn’t mean rejecting intimacy. I can want love without wanting to merge. I can want companionship without wanting someone to become my everything.
We’ve slipped into affirmations. Oops.
So Sue Me, I Am Using The Men
In sum, I am dating because I am trying to learn something I have never learned before: how to let a person I like into my life without giving them the whole thing.
I want to learn how to want to be liked by someone while still being myself.
I want to learn how to like someone without immediately turning them into a future.
I want to learn how to tolerate being perceived.
I want to learn how to experience rejection without treating it as a referendum on my worth.
I want to learn how to disappoint someone without believing I have done something morally wrong.
I want to learn how to have feelings at a reasonable pace instead of either waiting for them, suppressing them, or building a cathedral around them.
And, perhaps most importantly, I want to learn how to be with someone while continuing to heal and pursue whatever strange thing I decide to become next.
And I guess that does mean I am using men for my own self-actualization.
But also like, men have done that for eons sooooooo. Only minimal apology, on my behalf.
Prof. Tyndall
‘tism. t’eatre. teachin’.
