dating is exposure therapy

on limerence, ghosts, and dating with a diagnosis

…and I can only surmise that men are deeply committed to my wellbeing—because all they do is test me.

Without any spoilers, this movie is exactly how modern dating makes me feel. Watch Fresh if you feel like swearing off men for a little bit.

I’ve been dating a little more lately. By that I mean collecting Bumble matches and copy-pasting “hey there” to tens of strangers just to see what sticks. Finding connections has always been difficult for me. I’ve always looked for something very rare: not difficult per se, but certainly specific. I’ve never seen the point in settling for less. Staying single for so long hasn’t always been easy either. It came with a lot of doubt—both in myself and in what the universe had in store for me. I wondered if I was destined for a life filled with cats, loneliness, and spinsterdom.

Then I met my ex, who was everything I was looking for. It felt like a reward to meet the exact type of person I always dreamed of for staying true to myself. However, he didn’t quite come with the lifestyle I always expected to lead. My OCD loved that. At the time, the differences also felt like some sort of punishment; some sort of cosmic joke for no apparent reason.

The doubts lingered far longer than I deemed reasonable, and I thought I was just lying to myself to keep us together. Well, if you’re new here, it turned out to be OCD. While that’s been discussed ad nauseam, getting that diagnosis (and everything that came with it) is always going to be a huge milestone in my life.

This time last year, I was still knee-deep in compulsions. It’s strange to think about. I look back and see a version of me I don’t even recognize. I’ve spoken to a couple of people since we broke up but had always reached out from a place of manic urgency to find someone to quell the nagging feeling of uncertainty that comes with this disorder. It was so nice to be “done” with my future, having met my ex. I used to want to meet someone to solve that same feeling of doubt once again.

But this time was different. I always wondered if I’d be okay with only knowing what life was like with my ex; of only knowing that version of me. I figured it was time to finally see what was out there. So there I was, swiping left and right like it was some sort of video game for the perennially single. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t my first rodeo. I had done the legwork. In the span of a year, I spoke to one guy who openly told me how he purchased someone’s virginity once, another who liked watching girls make out with their dogs, and at least two who asked me if they could listen to me pee within the first few messages.

How did these topics even come up? Well, they don’t. These guys just offered all this information up entirely unprompted. Ladies, I know you know what I’m talking about. It wasn’t until I met him that I found the connection I had been so hard-pressed to find. Let’s call him Matt. Trust me, his name won’t matter for much longer.

Matt was interesting, well-read, and handsome to boot. He loved hearing about my hobbies and told me about his own. We listened to each other’s favorite songs, spoke about the dangers of social media, and he said I told him the coolest thing he’d heard that day. Could it be? A decent guy who wasn’t just trying to wrangle me into a not-so-ethical Ethical Non-Monogamy relationship?!

Matt was enthusiastic about me in a way that didn’t make me feel like he just wanted to see my boobs. He was excited about how excited I was about everything I was into. I wasn’t feigning interest just to be polite, the way we often do on these things. We hit it off so effortlessly that we were baffled by how easy it was. Good conversations can be so difficult to find where I’m from, and this man even knew what pici (my favorite fat spaghetti) was, for God’s sake! It got late, so we bid each other good night, and he told me he couldn’t wait to show me his bouldering chalk bag soon. I brushed my teeth, got into bed, took my insomnia medicine, and that was that. Now, this is where the story really begins.

The pill that had knocked me out against my will the night before was no match for my OCD brain once it found itself something new and shiny to latch onto. Suddenly, all I could think of was him. This man I had spoken to once.

The initial connection may have been valid, but I knew the chain of thoughts that followed wasn’t. But that didn’t stop me from letting them run rampant anyway. I started to review the conversation like it hadn’t just happened ten minutes earlier. I imagined how our lives could look together from the little I did know about him. I thought about the past in comparison and wondered what our future could look like. I knew it was batshit crazy, but my brain didn’t care. My OCD insisted it was harmless, just a little crush paired with a writer’s imagination. Well, that’s how it started with my ex, too.

Rare connections have always been my brain’s kryptonite. They’re something I’ve only experienced a handful of times before, which makes them all the more potent. I realized this time was no different, no matter how much I knew better or how much work I had done on myself. It starts out with a few silly daydreams (innocuous, if not completely mortifying) and then surreptitiously turns into a full-blown, clinical-grade obsession. And then the real feelings start building. That’s when you’re really in trouble.

I always thought it was all me. That I was just deeply in love when it was reciprocated or incredibly pathetic when it was all in my head. Now I realize it’s just another feature of this lovely disorder once again. The funny thing about OCD thought loops is that they aren’t all bad, not inherently. But they almost certainly will come back to get you in the end if you let them.

Even when you’re in a healthy, committed relationship, the thoughts eventually accumulate in your head and create a relationship imbalance that your partner has no clue about. You subconsciously build up expectations he can never live up to and standards he’s never even heard of. You start to prioritize him and your relationship without a second thought, convincing yourself that this is what love looks like. I suppose it might be. But for me, that imbalance became the root of so many of my compulsions. When you have this disorder, it’s easy to mistake one for the other—to confuse love with obsession, devotion with compulsion.

That’s the tricky thing about OCD: it can look wildly different from person to person. Sometimes I wish I had another theme, something that left my heart out of it. Angel numbers or moral scrupulosity, maybe. Occasionally, I’ll get jealous of people who avoid the word “butter” like the plague just to make sure their entire family stays alive. But I know it’s all the same mechanism. We’re all on the same boat even if our compulsions look nothing alike.

I’ve lost a lot of sleep to imagined threats of cancer (colon) or early-onset dementia (my tooth fell out once), lost years of my life to thinking about the inevitable (and graphic) deaths of my loved ones, and couldn’t so much as touch a menu without having hand sanitizer on hand for fear of contracting COVID and consequently spreading it to my entire apartment building. So, trust me, I know ball.

Yet, somehow, relationship OCD has been the one theme that’s been seemingly impossible to kick. This brief encounter and the spiral that followed show just how much of a hold it has on me even when I’ve done the work.

Dating has become the ultimate ERP for me. Exhausting, check. Excruciating, check. Embarrassing when it doesn’t go your way, check. I could get tempted to forgo all of it and chalk everything up to “normal human emotions.” I could keep dissecting every conversation. Reread every message. Wonder whether I like someone enough, whether they like me enough, whether this could work, whether I’m wasting my time, whether I’m settling, whether I’m being too picky, whether I’m ignoring a red flag or inventing one. I could even stop dating altogether.

Maybe I could settle with someone safe and practical to avoid all the hard feelings that come with real risk. I could spend six months trying to solve a man and troubleshoot the hypothetical future we have in store. Raging relationship OCD gives you the qualifications to do exactly that.

But the thing is…

I don’t want relief.

I want progress.

Maybe sticking it out is the real measure of my recovery. Not finally finding the right person or feeling safe from the discomfort of an uncertain future. It’s whether I can let my values win against my fears this time. Whether I can live without trying to control the uncontrollable. Whether I can stay open to the possibility of romance without letting the thought loops devour me. Whether I can put myself out there without losing myself to my OCD again.

Because I do have a choice. Not in whether the thoughts come, or whether OCD shows up, or whether something hurts. But in what I do next. It isn’t instant, and it isn’t fair, but it is a choice only I can make.

I used to think that meeting the right person would mean I could finally relax. I know better now because that period of relief lasted all of two months. I had everything I ever wanted and even that wasn’t enough. There is no person who can make uncertainty disappear. No relationship that can guarantee a future. No amount of chemistry or compatibility that can tell you exactly how something will end. That would be asking too much of one relationship; one person. I learned that the hard way.

What happened to Matt, you might ask? Well, he unceremoniously blocked me the very next day. I’m sure he had his reasons. I actually figured he had a very practical one. It doesn’t matter. Like I said, this story was never about him.

Once upon a time, I would’ve been crushed when I no longer saw his name on my phone screen. I would’ve wondered what I said wrong or how I could make sure this would never happen again. I would’ve compulsively told myself he was trash, that I deserved better, and that I shouldn’t even give him a second thought. I would’ve begged the universe to just tell me why this didn’t work out. That’s what always bothered me the most. Not necessarily that things don’t work out—not all the time, anyway—but why they didn’t.

This time around, I was sad in the way you get when you die right before you clear the level you’ve been desperate to beat for days. And then, just like that, I packed my breakfast burrito (homemade, of course), went to the bouldering gym, and ignored the fact that I was listening to his favorite song as I warmed up.

I know that this is progress.

I didn’t think things could ever be this way. I never imagined a version of me who didn’t punish herself for her mistakes, real or perceived. I didn’t think I had it in me to let go of questions when they could no longer be answered. I didn’t think it could be this simple to drop a lingering possibility or a waste of potential. Every week, I’m surprised to find a new version of myself I didn’t think possible. That alone is worth all the trouble that recovery entails.

I think I’ve come to realize that dating with a diagnosis will always come with a disclaimer. At least for a while. Not for the men on the other side of my phone, not even for the ones I might actually share a meal with one day. But for myself.

I need to remember that my values should always come first. I need to commit to putting my well-being before any single relationship. I need to remember that only I can take accountability for my recovery. Even when it’s hard. Even when it’s lonely.

The right person will understand that need for autonomy. He’ll understand that sometimes I’ll have to take a step back and sit with all the silly, complicated feelings without asking him to resolve them for me. He’ll understand that maybe he’ll never understand all of the things that come with dating someone with OCD—not completely, anyway.

I don’t think he needs to. I don’t need someone who can understand every thought that passes through my head. I thought I did but now I want someone who trusts that I’m doing the work to understand myself and wants to be there for me in the ways that I need; in the ways that are healthy for me.

I don’t know if I’ll ever find some version of that man. I don’t know if I’ll fall in love again. I don’t know if the next person I go out with will be the person I spend the rest of my life with, or if they’ll just be another Bumble match I’ll meet once and never think about again.

But I do know this: with recovery, I’ll be okay regardless.

P.S. Matt, if you’re reading this (Ariana, what are you doing here?!), you suck for ghosting, but I also appreciate it immensely. Enjoy my parting gift (the introduction to The Japanese House and memories of my sparkling personality), and I hope that every time you see a pair of nunchucks, you think of me!