A Year of Non-dating
Notes on love and breaking patterns
I’ve spent every Valentine’s Day in the past three years in heartbreak. So it came as a surprise when, near midnight on Friday, mesmerized with prototyping a feature, I didn’t realize it was V-day until Riya’s 13-hour jet-legged message lit up my screen. “Happy Galentine’s!”
A year ago, I made a decision that felt both radical and necessary — to step away from dating. I wanted to let familiar patterns fall away for more clarity on how I make decisions — to be an observer of my life and not an accomplice in making bad decisions. So I promised myself that even if I met someone I really liked, I'd stay in the gentle territory of friendship, letting any deeper connection blossom with patience.
Opening up about dating feels like confessing something I’ve been doing badly. I fall too easily, too fast. I love deeply, and while intensity itself isn’t wrong, loving like there’s no tomorrow often means there’s no tomorrow. I trust too freely, here is my heart, take it, and that’s how I end up losing who I am. In my six years of dating, I’ve mistaken ego for uniqueness, insecurity for confidence, manipulation for care, and selfishness for independence. I became obsessed with being perfect for someone else, neglecting my needs because I was convinced that's the only way to be worthy of love.
We protect ourselves with what I've come to think of as a brittle film of self-respect—brittle because if it becomes any more opaque, it turns to arrogance and conceit; any more translucent, and it dissolves into self-flagellation. This delicate membrane has shown me when to let people in and when to hold my ground. For years, I dated like someone starved of love, desperately wanting to be loved back, looking in all the wrong places. I could blame it on a bumpy childhood or those who have hurt me, but I recognize too well that the only person who should've been there for me before anyone else is myself.
There was a time when, if someone asked me what I wanted in a partner, I'd recite a litany of qualities that I felt absent in myself — as if love were a transaction where we trade our incompleteness for wholeness. I wanted to date someone wildly different from who I am because subconsciously, I felt I didn't know how to be good. It's a peculiar form of self-abandonment, this belief that what we lack must be procured through another's presence.
But in the quiet space of this year, I've learned that what I seek in my partner is also what I want for myself: to feel secure and stable in who I am, to love and give generously, to hold beautiful visions and aspirations and work on something with an altruistic impact. If anything, it’s more important to first nourish the traits in myself that I’d wish to see in a partner. If two people can't both be humble, gentle, open, curious, caring, and kind by ourselves and together, how can we form a healthy bond to nurture the best in each other?
The non-dates have been illuminating. There was a surgeon whose care and sensitivity spoke volumes despite our language barrier. We'd run together, among acquaintances, but his encrypted messaging and hidden relationship status became a test in trusting my gut and avoiding emotionally unavailable men. Then a writer whose conversations felt boundless but whose presence never stirred my heart beyond friendship. There were connections I could see myself exploring more but none felt magnetic enough to pull me from my no-date resolve. These friendly hangouts helped me see from a distance what I want and don’t want, flags red and green.
Perhaps the most revealing came from spending time with someone I once went out with. I didn't know that two people, separately in their own space and at their own pace, could grow so much closer. Sitting on his couch, talking and laughing until two in the morning, I felt a pure kind of love. I needed nothing more from him because the moment itself was complete. It taught me that meaningful connections don't always need to be categorized or pushed toward a specific outcome.
At the end of that night, he walked me downstairs and hugged me before I got into an Uber. On my way home, my heart was brimming with gratitude. It is possible to appreciate someone as a friend and truly wish the best for him, no matter what the future brings.
Time and distance won’t fade a real connection. We can move on, but that does not conflict with knowing what is special or remembering what we had was special. Every encounter calibrates my romantic compass. Tilt and turn, forward.
In the Gen Z world of dating, we give ourselves so little time to experience romance. Relationships have become a production line full of milestones to hit and meticulous phrases to label. Yet in friendships, we understand that it takes time and different life events — the highs and the lows — to know who will be there for us. So how could we expect love to be any more expedited?
Real love arrives in quiet moments. Perhaps it's your partner focusing on a task or blinking a smile or their face sound asleep. That simple moment of faith moves the heart so deeply. Love is small and light, and falling in love with the smallest thing takes loving it over and over again, until it finally strikes you as love. Like how a healthy meal for the first time fills us with emotional excitement and pride, but it's the ability to sustain that every day that shows we've become healthy.
My friend Salma once beautifully said, "Love is when two people can see each other as their biggest project in life." I'm finally starting to see that love isn't about two people completing each other or catalyzing change. Love is when two people feel secure in being themselves; their love becomes the bedrock and soundboard so they can do their best work. Like the growth of a tree does not come from the demand of the soil – having its space, the tree simply does what it's destined to do. Love is that soil. Love is when two people can be each other's soil.
Four seasons have come and gone, and so have people. I had traveled the world chasing that rush to the heart, an intoxication of the spirit. Now, I don't think that could be any further from what love is. Love is closer to a sweet nothing than madness. Like sitting in a park I've been to a thousand times, in my everyday clothes, a little vulnerable, a little heavy with thoughts. Then I hear the sound of the wind gently loving on everything: every leaf, every piece of sand, every strand of my hair. And I think I could sit still forever and spend the rest of my life feeling that gentle breeze. The feeling of capacity, all-embracing.
Warmly,
Erica
