why I give up on dating

Two days ago I made a story on instagram saying that I don’t normally make resolutions for New Years but I decided that I am not dating men for 2025. I got a lot of hearts on that post and then the next day as I scrolled through my explore page there were nonstop cute couples post. Ugh. Two posts in a row about a man opening a door for their lady. Another of a guy who got his wife’s name tattooed on his wrist. Then an ad for Bumble dating with a girl exclaiming, “let me share how I met the love of my life”. Omg, shut up. Then right after that bumble ad there is another reel of a man gushing about how beautiful his wife is. Okay universe, fine…I get iiitttt, eye roll….but can I share with you why I came to this ‘not dating men’ conclusion in the first place?

2024 was a bad year for my whittle ego and for dating. At the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 I was on the dating app Hinge. At this time I was in Dubai staying with my bestie at her place. Dating apps feel exotic and fun when you’re outside of your homeland. I met a man who grew up in Dubai and he was fascinating. I was enthralled immediately. We took a road trip to Abu Dhabi and he taught me all about the United Arab Emirates, (UAE). While in Abu Dhabi we went to the Louvre museum and I loved every second, it was so much fun. He entertained all my cheesy tourist ideas, I love that attitude. That same night we went out to dinner at a freaking palace. We spent nearly 24hrs together on our first date and it was perfect, everything just flowed…and no we didn’t sleep together. The next day he treated me to a three hour spa treatment; it was an hour long hammam, hour long facial, and hour long massage. The next day he helped me put together a gratitude package for my bestie and took me out to dinner again. He asked if I wanted to go camp in the desert under a new moon (which we didn’t do but I loved the gesture). Then on my last day in Dubai he drove me to the airport and I never heard from him again.

February I was in Turks and Caicos staying with a friend and still on Hinge. I met a sexy South African sailor man who I was immediately attracted to. He was charming and handsome and tall and had very nice hands. We went on three dates, my favourite being the one where we stayed in listening to my favourite YouTUbe playlist while I cooked us steak and roasted veggies. That night felt like we were a couple living together. I loved it, thinking, ‘oh dis is so nice’. At the end of March I flew to Florida to support my parents during a health scare. I asked Mr. South Africa if he wanted to stay in touch and meet up sometime in the future and he said no. As someone who loves traveling, doesn’t have a fixed address, and just had three exceptional dates with over a month of communication I assumed he would have said ‘hell yes’. But no…so I was like okay cool, bye I guess? A few months later we would meet up again, have a romantic getaway, live our best lives, just to have him tell me one more time that he wasn’t interested in staying in touch, let alone attempt anything long distance. WHEN WILL I LEARN?!

Spoiler: I WON’T! Let’s continue this charade…

In April I was back in Canada and I had just made a big purchase with Tony Robbins so I stayed home to work and make up for dipping into my savings. I still had Hinge and I went on three or four dates. Nothing noteworthy. Then one of my clients said I should download the dating app called the League. Every day at 5pm you get three new matches. I thought this was great, instead of wasting my time mindlessly scrolling through men the League sends me three matches and I can say yes or no. I met one guy on there who happened to know my client who told me about the app. Small world..? He said he would pick me up from work and we can go get a coffee. In his texting he said, “I am picking you up in my Porsche”. I said, “Okay great”, unimpressed by his car…then his follow up text said, “Just kidding I drive a KIA”. Okay I literally did not give a fuck about your car and now I weirdly do. The moment he picked me up I wanted to throw myself out of the moving vehicle, whether it was a Porsche or KIA, it was not a match.

After that date I deleted all dating apps and swore off of them for the rest of my life. (ha!) It is impossible to know whether you have a connection with someone unless you meet them in person. Dating apps are shallow and basic and boring. YOU ARE ALL SO BORING!!!!! Sorry I am getting ranty but this is why you’re here, right? I kept that promise to myself all the way until I went to Tulum in September. I didn’t want to go on any dating apps but my friend was like, “that is a perfect place to meet someone who aligns with you”, and she wasn’t wrong. So I paid $16 in roaming charges to get a code texted to me and reinstalled Hinge. I went on zero dates.

While I was in Tulum I was chatting with a guy who I had met at Tony Robbin’s Business Mastery in August. He was saying how amazing it would be to fly to Tulum and get tattooed by a hot enlightened babe and blah blah blah, did he ever come? Of course not. We should circle back to this genius. At first he was sweet, charming and flirty. We would run into each other at the business conference and be cute. He asked me to hang out outside of the conference so we made plans to go on a little date, then last minute he changed his mind and said we should go to a bar where all his friends are. I was annoyed because I would rather be hanging out with my friends then his but I thought maybe I could meet some new people. So we meet up and we are about to get a cab to go to the bar and he’s looking at his phone…there is a girl dancing seductively basically saying ‘get here now’. I say ‘is that your friend?’ And he’s like yeah but there are other people there too. Hmmm. We get to the bar and he beelines it to the dance floor to chat with this chick and completely abandoned me. I ended up walking over to a pool table and chatting up the guys who were playing there while I texted my friends to come save me. So rude. Funny enough I see him again at Date with Destiny and he offers to walk me home one night and while I am about to give his dolt more of my precious time he says, oh we should wait, I told another girl I would walk her home too. ARE YOUUUUU KIDDDINNNNGGG MEEEE? Way to make a girl feel less than special. Goodbye forever.

Let’s go back to Tulum…during this time I was also chatting with a guy friend I met in Costa Rica at a ayahuasca retreat. We had great convos about relationships and the polarity between feminine and masculine energy, it was refreshing. I asked him if he wanted to go to Unleash the Power Within (a four day Tony Robbins event in New Jersey) in November with me. He said yes. I figured this may be a great person to go with to discuss these fem/mas polarities and heal our dating wounds. We did share an airbnb but with separate rooms. During Unleash the Power Within we had to discuss our limiting beliefs that were holding us back, one of mine being ‘men consistently let me down’. In this blog post alone I have enough proof to back this belief. Let me assure you, I really want to think men are great, I really do. BUT on two separate occasions during the conference I saw this guy looking at photos of half naked chicks dressed like Dallas cowboy cheerleaders and he was zooming in on their body. Immediate ick. Immediate ick. Here I was thinking I would meet some exceptional men in these personal development spaces and that is not the case…which will become resoundingly clear at the end of this blog post.

I tried to undo the ‘men consistently let me down’ belief by gaslighting myself into believing that’s not true. The friend that I went to Unleash with said, “clearly I have ‘expectations”. Umm okay…well…I don’t have these outlandish expectations on people, I expect people to be decent human beings…and men seem to struggle with that. Sorry, not sorry. As I love to say to my bestie of 25 years, I would LOVE to be shocked by a good man. I would LOVE to be wrong about men. Then I went to Date with Destiny in December and for about a week, I thought maybe I was wrong. Are you ready for this doozy of a story?

Date with Destiny is a six day event, if you want to get a sneak peak of it then I recommend checking out “I am not your Guru” on Netflix. They dedicate one day as ‘relationship day’ and I was really looking forward to that for obvious reasons. As much as I blame men for being self absorbed pieces of shit, I also have a hand in my own brutal attempts at being in a relationship. So I am pointing the finger at me here and being like, why? Why you like this? Why do you love emotionally unavailable men? Why do you have avoidant tendencies ? Why? Why? Whhhhyyyyy?

On the second day of DWD we are put into groups that we sit with for the remainder of the event. An attractive man in my group comes up to me and asks me to help him wrap our team bandana around his hand. I linger for a bit wondering what this immediate attraction is, and then I go outside for some fresh air during our short 30min break. I am on Whatsapp sending a voice memo to my bestie and the attractive man walks out to chat. We have a great conversation and as we are walking back in he asks why I am at DWD. I tell him that I am unsure of where I want to live and I feel like I am stuck in a rut. Then I say, “I am also interested in healing my relationship wounds, I tend to be attracted to emotionally unavailable men”. He immediately says, “Well, I am not emotionally unavailable and when I saw you walk by me I thought to myself, there she is” I was a bit taken aback by this and I said, “oh really? What does that mean?” He tells me that when he pictures his dream girl she is the perfect combo of both of his ex’s; one is dark feminine and the other is light feminine and I look like the combination of both of them. Really, this should have been a red flag, right?

I am a bit shy after he says this and that’s when I realize I am attracted to this man. Shit. I only get shy and awkward when I like someone, so this was my first butterfly in stomach moment. That day we end up getting an hour long break to grab lunch. I was walking back to my Airbnb to make some oatmeal so I invited him along. We talked non stop. I made us both some oatmeal and we sat by the pool. He googled ‘are Aries men and Cancer women were a great match?’ Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively popped up and he told me how much he loved their relationship and blah blah blah. He went off. He was smothering me in affection and I loved it. To quote a favourite meme of mine: love bombing wouldn’t work on me. I would just be like thank you this is exactly the appropriate amount of love. Ramp it up actually. Oops, I manifested it because I reposted a meme one too many times.

This was love bombing at it’s finest. The following two days he sat beside me during the event, saying all the right things, telling me how beautiful I am, how amazing I am, how he’s always been attracted to a strong independent woman because he can ‘handle it’. Then during the middle of someone talking on stage he looks at me and asks if I want children…I told him that was a loaded question and to ask me later. I am not going to even get into that conversation on here because it’s so WTactualF.

Then relationship day comes around and we are meeting a ton of couples who had met at Date with Destiny and went off to marry and live beautiful lives. I can’t help but get caught up in it all. I am starting to feel like I met my match, he is sitting right beside me. We were supporting each other through the whole experience. We were holding hands and canoodling and kissing and dancing and singing and everything felt great. Everything was great. At one point we were across the room from each other in separate groups and we locked eyes, he blew me a kiss and I caught it in the air and slapped it on my face. Cringe. I could go on and on about all the cringey cuteness but there is no point. Everyone in our group saw the connection, to the point of one woman showing me a tattoo shop in Sydney that I could work at (that’s where he lives). It’s insane to think I was considering going to Sydney, but that’s how much I believed. On our last day we were sad to leave each other, we had just experienced long days of vulnerable conversations, long days of ripping ourselves open and throwing our hearts on the table, long days of dissecting our flaws and celebrating our triumphs. It was like dating in hyper speed.

I look up to Sage and Tony Robbins, I love their relationship and to me they are #goals. Obviously this love bombing man knew this and he said that he loved that Sage and Tony both started as friends. He said that we should stay in touch and build a friendship and see where this goes, no pressure, no nothing. To me this was a better conversation than I had with the South African dude. At least this guy wanted to stay and touch and ‘see where this goes’. We kissed goodbye and talked on Whatsapp nonstop. I was on a three hour train ride to another city so I called my bestie and we talked the entire trip. She was so happy for me, like, FINALLY someone who is putting in the effort to be with me and see me as the shining star that I am! It was so nice. While I was still in Florida the love bomber asked if he could visit me in Toronto on his way back to Sydney. I WAS ELATED. I called my Toronto friends, made plans, figured it all out. Now my mom was involved and she was over the moon. Four hours later he said never mind. Ouff. At first he said it was logistical and I completely understood. Of course I was disappointed but I wasn’t going to hold that against him, I tried to find a solution and then he sent me this text:

The truth is Sinéad I respect you too much to not be honest with you, even at the cost of you feeling let down by me, so I’d like to share the below: The truth is, while I am sincerely depleted, I do understand the yolo gesture and pulling the energy out of me because it’s so worth it given the perfect timing; the truth that I wanted to explain to you over FaceTime is that I’m not sure enough of us, to do that. 3 days is a lot to put on us both I feel, and I know when I’m with you I’ll definitely get caught in the chemistry and emotion. It would be gorgeous and romantic, and we’d for sure become even more bonded together. But then we’d have to let go, and if I’m not sure enough on us now, then it doesn’t feel right to get you to spend 3 more cuddly days with me and yolo it, then have to let go at the end of it. I do hope you understand 🙏🏼 I just want to keep it honest about where I’m at.

COOL. COOL. COOL. COOOL. COOOOOOOOOOL. So it wasn’t logistical at all. What broke me was the “I’m not sure enough of us”. I was so confused…how do you go from calling me this rare beautiful woman to not being sure? We just spent days in the most intense emotional bootcamp of all time. We got to know each other deeply, our values, our wants, our needs, our goals. He was allllll about me and beyond. So, the ‘not sure enough on us’? WTactualF is that? How about you’re just a love bombing manipulator? How about that? You didn’t give me any space to meet anyone else in that room…instead you selfishly took all my time under the guise of calling me your dream girl. I was never your dream girl. Trust me when I say I wanna find a lesson in this but sometimes there isn’t a lesson, sometimes people are just shitty. The limiting belief I have that ‘men consistently let me down’ is so ingrained in my soul that I can’t imagine who can convince me otherwise. All you men are scared, selfish little boys running away from true love, it’s pitiful. You are pitiful. Or maybe you never really cared about me at all…which feels like the most accurate statement here. You do not care about me. It actually feels liberating to say that, just like Miranda in SITC…he’s just not that into you.

Anyways my response to that text was:

Ouff. I think that hurts even more….that you don’t think enough of us? How do you even know?? Why would you say you miss me? I am so confused. I don’t think you are willing to give us a chance. Thank you for your honesty but I can’t just be friends.

After I sent him that text he tried calling me but I was on the phone with my friend Danny who was facilitating a tapping for me…I really freaking needed it. I ignored his call and his texts for 24hours and when I got off the plane back in Canada he texted me one final time. He sent a link to a video of Sage and Tony Robbins talking about the 5 Disciplines of Love You Need to Master for Lasting Relationships and because I believed this guy wanted to figure things out, I texted him back:

Hey, you’re not wrong about miscommunication over text but reading ‘not enough’ more than once felt like a knife through the heart. Date with Destiny was overwhelming. I was vulnerable and sensitive. I let my guard down and I’m grateful for our time together but I can’t help but feel a bit delusional about the whole thing. I got lost in the DWD sauce and that’s on me. I’m back home now and I would be happy to chat with you because I do have a lot of love for you. I hope you’re reconnecting with yourself in NYC and enjoying that magical city. And I am genuinely happy to see that you texted me when I had service again.

Wow, I am, like, so sweet. Or a doormat? You can let me know in the comments below.

We did end up talking on the phone and I felt like our conflict resolution and conversation was really mature, a breath of fresh air. We continued to talk for another two weeks. Obviously it was all too good to be true. Eventually he said he was being inappropriate because he was clearly attracted to me and we weren’t acting ‘like friends’. Yeah, duh, you fucking idiot. Then on Dec 28th everything finally ended. I was moving to Portugal and this dude clearly doesn’t know what he wants…at one point during our last conversation he said '“you know I don’t think I’ll be ready to have kids for another four years and by then"…(yeah just say it douchebag…I’ll be too old). As much as this guy tried to be diplomatic he just kept saying all the wrong things. Goodbye forever.

Anyways just to point the finger back at me for one hot second, I absolutely got caught up. I was in a vulnerable, weakened, tired, hungry and irrational. I get caught up in the chemistry and connection. I was willing to fly across the world to be with this fucking dude who couldn’t even make a three hour flight to Toronto. Girl, you crazy. I fully romanticize my life and no one else does. DON’T YOU WANT TO BE IN A ROMCOM?! I want someone to romanticize life with, and for a week I thought I had. UGH. I want to believe in love, I really do but this last one really threw me, like, do I even know what’s real anymore? I fear that last year and my last real break up that have lead me to this jaded place. So in lieu of all of this BS I am giving up on dating…again…even though it feels like I am running out of time. I am trying to be gentle with myself and know that I am a good person who deserves a secure, stable, loving, beautiful relationship.

I can’t stand all the pop psychology about dating. All the rules and games. I think if two people really like each other that should be it. Right? Why can’t it be that easy? It’s rare that I have an instant connection with a guy…I know it doesn’t sound like it from this blog post, but it’s true. It’s so rare to have a genuine connection with someone…and all these dudes are just like, yeah, whatever, waiting for the next best thing while they continue to watch my stories on instagram.

I said it before and I will say it again, I can’t wait to be shocked…but for now I’ll just continue to make my dream life a reality while they all watch from the sidelines, losers.