I sort of accidentally dated someone recently.  That feels like the most accurate way to describe it.

I wasn’t looking for a relationship. I wasn’t particularly interested in finding one. I’d gotten pretty fucking comfortable with my own life.

I have friends I love. Things I care about. Mountains to climb. Words to write. A whole little existence I’d built that didn’t feel like it had an empty space in the middle of it waiting for someone to fill.

And then I stumbled into a man.  For a little while, we did things together.

Nothing particularly revolutionary. We went places. We talked. We laughed. We made plans. We camped.  There was another person folded into the ordinary parts of my life for a minute.

And then it didn’t work out.  Which is fine. Not everything is supposed to.

But somewhere in the aftermath, I realized something mildly inconvenient:

I liked it.

Not necessarily him. Not necessarily whatever that particular thing was going to become.  I liked having someone to do life with.

I liked having someone to send the stupid thing to. Someone sitting across from me at dinner. Someone to make plans with. Someone to tell the story to. Someone whose name popping up on my phone made me smile.

Apparently, despite all of my very convincing evidence to the contrary, I might actually like companionship.

Rude.

And that realization led to an even more unsettling one:

Maybe I’m ready to date.

Not because I’m lonely.

Not because my life is waiting for someone.

And definitely not because I suddenly believe a man is the missing ingredient between me and enlightenment.

I just realized that I really like my life.  And maybe I’d like to share some of it with someone.

So I tried.

I downloaded the dating apps. I swiped through strangers and attempted to participate in whatever fresh hell modern dating has become.

And somewhere in there, I stumbled into someone else.

Different man. Different circumstances. Different version of me.  And somehow, when it was over, I was left with a feeling I knew immediately.

That hollow one.

The one that comes from being wanted, but not really known.

From having someone’s attention without ever feeling particularly held by it.

From realizing that being desired and being cared for are not the same thing.

And I fucking know that feeling.

I’ve spent enough of my life knowing that feeling.  So maybe being ready to date isn’t enough.

Maybe I also need to know what I’m dating for.

Because I’ve spent a long time figuring out what I don’t want.  Honestly, I’m fucking excellent at that part.

I don’t want inconsistency.

I don’t want confusion dressed up as chemistry.

I don’t want to wonder where I stand.

I don’t want to chase, convince, rehabilitate, translate or perform emotional archaeology on a grown man just to figure out whether he actually likes me.

I’ve got data.  Years of it.

But knowing what I don’t want and knowing what I do want are surprisingly different things.

Because I don’t want this again is built from experience.  I want this requires me to believe something different is possible.

And that’s harder.

So I’ve been thinking about it.  (And deleting the apps.)

Not what he looks like. Not what he does for work. Not how tall he is or what kind of car he drives or whether his dating profile contains a suspicious number of fish. (Which btw fellas – is always too many.)

I mean:

What does it actually feel like to be loved by him?

I want emotional safety before impressive.

I want someone who can stay present when things get intense. Someone who doesn’t immediately try to fix it, control it, minimize it, or flee from it.  Someone who can just stay.

I want someone who can handle honesty when it’s messy, poetic, contradictory or nonlinear. Someone who doesn’t require me to turn every feeling into a perfectly packaged thesis before I’m allowed to have it.

I want someone who respects my independence without competing with it.  I don’t want someone who needs to become my entire life.  I worked too fucking hard to build one.

I want someone who understands that sometimes I am going to disappear into the woods for six hours because there’s a mountain over there and, for reasons I cannot adequately explain, I need to stand on top of it.

I want him to have things that make him feel that alive, too.

I want someone who finds my mind fascinating instead of exhausting.  Someone who wants to know why I think the things I think. Who asks another question. Who doesn’t hear depth and immediately translate it into too much.

I don’t want to be looked at and wanted anymore without also being wondered about.

I want someone who wants to know what I’m thinking. Why I disappeared into the mountains. What I’m writing. What made me laugh in the car by myself. What scares me. What I’m becoming.

I want someone who desires my body, sure.  But I want him to be fucking fascinated by the person living inside of it.

Because being lusted after without being known has started to feel less like validation and more like loneliness.

I want someone capable of repair.  Because we’re going to hurt each other’s feelings eventually.

We’re going to misunderstand each other. We’re going to get triggered. We’re going to have bad days and say things badly and occasionally be assholes because that’s what happens when two imperfect humans try to love each other.  I don’t need someone who never gets it wrong.  I need someone who comes back to the table when we do. No punishment. No disappearing.  No withholding affection until somebody has sufficiently suffered.

Just:

Hey. That didn’t go well. Let’s figure it out.

I want tenderness I don’t have to earn.

That one might be the hardest to admit.

I want softness without having to first prove that I’m struggling enough to deserve it.  I want someone who understands that strength and softness aren’t opposites.  That I can climb a fucking mountain by myself and still want somewhere safe to put my head when I come home.

I want someone funny.  Jesus Christ, please be funny.

I want someone who can laugh at himself, at me, at us, at the absolute absurdity of being two humans attempting intimacy while our respective nervous systems occasionally run around pulling fire alarms.

Life has already been serious enough.  I want to laugh through the rest of it.

And maybe more than anything, I want someone who recognizes my becoming.

Not just my woundedness.  I don’t want to be loved as a collection of things that happened to me.  I don’t want someone to look at my history and decide I am fragile.

I don’t need to be rescued.

I want someone who sees the woman who came out the other side of all of it.  The woman who built a life.  Who learned to be alone without believing she had been abandoned.  Who learned to trust herself.   Who keeps climbing mountains simply because she once wondered whether she could.

I want someone who sees all of that and thinks:

Fuck, I want to know her.

And here’s the weirdest part.

I don’t know who that person is.

I don’t know when I’ll meet him.

Maybe I’ll date a few more spectacularly wrong people first. Statistically, that seems likely.

But I think I’ve finally stopped asking the question I spent most of my life asking:

Will someone choose me?

I’m much more interested in another one now.

Do I choose you?

Because I’m not looking for someone to give me a life anymore.

I already have one.

A really fucking good one, actually.

I’m just finally willing to admit: I’d like someone to share it with.