I've been single for too long now. I've learned. Grown. But I miss the human element of a romantic connection. I've been in two bad relationships back to back. Cheating. Lies.

I'm scared to trust again, but I long for the right person. It's a battle. I don't know if I'll ever be with someone again. Tough pill to swallow.

- Anonymous

Hi Anonymous,

Two relationships. Cheating. Lies. Scared.

I’m not going to soften any of that. You’ve already done enough of that yourself.

You wrote seven sentences. Five of them are about fear. One is about longing. And one, the very first, frames everything that follows:

“I’ve been single for too long now.”

Too long. As if there’s a clock. Like singleness is a waiting room and you’ve overstayed, flipping through the same magazines; wondering when, if ever, your name will finally be called.

Let’s sit with that for a second, as it’s quite a particular framing.

Who told you there was a clock? Where did you learn that being alone for this long means something has gone wrong? And pray tell, at what point did the absence of a partner become the measure of whether you've healed?

I’ve been where you are. Not the same rooms, but the same hallway.

Given the kind of relationships I was exposed to as a child, I’ve always been a bit on the cautious side when it comes to dating. But yes, I went on dates. Good ones, some of them. The kind where the conversation moves without effort, where I leave thinking, okay, this could be something. And then I'd get home and the whole thing would curdle. Replay every sentence. Scan for inconsistencies. Pull the thread until it came apart in my hands.

The suspicion would arrive before I’d even taken my coat off.

I met someone in Paris once. An attractive French man, a corporate lawyer at one of those firms with the marble lobbies. He knew what it was like to be a minority in a world that wasn’t built for people like us; so we had a kind of understanding you can’t fake and rarely had to truly explain. He was sharp, warm, attentive, and funny. Boy, was he funny. And I loooooove humour.

Oh, and he was gorgeous, to somehow top it all off.

A part of me couldn’t stand it.

He was too smooth. Too present. Too keen. Every green flag pinged as a warning. The fact that he seemed to like me felt less like a compliment I earned and more like evidence that something was off. Paranoid much, I know.

But the thing is, in my experience, people who seemed like good news have a tendency to be the headline you wish you’d never read.

I backed off. Not dramatically. I didn’t slam a door. I just stopped walking through it.

We stayed connected on IG. Over time, I watched him from a distance. Saw him show up consistently for the people in his life. Saw the way he moved through the world. And the quiet, inconvenient truth settled in: he was probably fine. More than fine. He was someone I could have let in, if I’d been capable of it then.

By the time I could see him clearly, I’d already left Paris. The window didn’t close because he did something wrong. It closed because I couldn’t stop bracing for the wrong thing to happen.

That’s the cost.

Not the cheating. Not the lies. Those happened to you and they were real. The cost is what comes after: the way your nervous system rewires itself to treat affection as a threat. The way you start calling that rewiring growth.

Which brings me back to you.

You wrote: “I’ve learned. Grown.”

I believe you. But I want to ask you something you might not like:

what exactly did you learn?

Since there are two kinds of lessons that come out of being hurt. The first teaches you to read people better, to notice when someone’s words don’t match their actions, to trust yourself enough to walk away when something isn’t right. That’s growth. It’s hard-won, costs something, and makes you better at love, not worse.

The second teaches you to flinch. To scan every room for the exit. To keep one foot out the door so when it falls apart (and you’re certain it will), you can say:

see, I knew it. I was ready. I wasn’t foolish this time.

That second one feels like wisdom; it performs like strength. From the inside, it looks like someone who has their life together, who has learned from past mistakes.

But I fear that's not growth. It's armour wearing growth's name.

And the tell that gives it away — is your very first sentence:

“I’ve been single for too long now.”

A person who’s grown into a genuine, settled comfort with themselves doesn’t describe their singleness as a problem with a timer on it. They don’t frame the absence of a partner as evidence that something remains broken.

You’re not scared to trust someone else. I think you’re scared to trust yourself. Your own judgement; that ability to read a room, pick the right person, and not end up back where you started.

The two people who hurt you didn’t just break your trust in partners.

They broke your trust in the part of you that chose them.

Therein lies the real wound. And no amount of time alone heals it, because being alone doesn’t ask anything of you. It lets you keep the armour on indefinitely and call it peace. Somewhere along the way, the person who knew how to walk into a room without scanning for threats forgot how.

Singleness isn’t a condition. It’s a life. And you’re already living it. The question isn’t when it ends. But whether you’re living it with your hands open or your fists closed. I spent too long with mine closed. By the time I unclenched them, the person who might have held what I was finally ready to offer was already a name on a screen in another city. Half way across the world.

I don’t want that for you.

still unclenching,

it’s michelle d.

Hiii, in case you stumbled upon this serendipitously,

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