When I Started Dating Again

After a long stretch of meeting no one interesting, I decided to start dating again.

When I met X, something inside me knew he was wrong for me but I ignored it. He was impulsive, magnetic, the kind of person who walks into a room and changes the temperature. Creative and unpredictable. I was drawn to that fire, the intensity, the passion. I fell head over heels not because he was right, but because he mirrored the energy I had back then: restless, searching, needing to feel alive.

It was a beautiful disaster.

After that, I stopped dating for a while. I needed to clear my head, to understand myself and the patterns I kept repeating. I started observing men not to date them, but to understand them. To see who they were when I wasn’t trying to be chosen.

Then I met S.

He wasn’t someone I’d normally be physically drawn to. But he was grounded, composed, quietly intense. There was a subtle magnetism about him a man who was comfortable in his own skin. He made me feel seen not through affection, but through quiet observation.

He was the first man I could sit in silence with, sipping our beer, without feeling the need to fill the space. There was allure in his mystery, a calm that made me want to know more.

But as time passed, I realized something he was mirroring me, too. Not my chaos this time, but my calm. My growth. My restraint.

Through him, I learned not to overgive, not to chase validation, but to match energy. To meet peace with peace.

Now I understand: both were initiations.
X taught me to burn and be alive.
S taught me to breathe and be calm.

And somewhere between those two lessons, I found myself again, no longer waiting to be chosen, but ready to meet someone who already sees me. The one who stands quietly in his own strength, looks at me across the room with quiet admiration, and recognizes in his soul and says this is her.