5 (More) Tips for Dating with Anxiety

Recently, a friend of mine posted an article on here called 5 Tips for Dating with Social Anxiety. (Go check that out. It's wonderful advice.) That got me to thinking about what my uber-anxious-self would recommend. You know, now that I've somehow managed to wiggle myself out of my wormhole and drag my slimy body out there in the dating world long enough to gain some major XP.

I'll start by saying that I was a late bloomer, to put it rather mildly. I hid like a petrified bug under a dank-ass rock, to keep it real. Social anxiety stopped me from taking any sort of risks in life, especially ones involving putting myself out there near those oh-so-scary creatures called people. If I stayed at home, they couldn't judge me; they couldn't hurt me; they couldn't make me face my fears.

Less than two years ago, I had no known life to speak of.

It was kinda sad.

Yet I wanted love. And the internet can only get ya so far. Sure, you can roleplay with your best friend who lives a socially distanced approved 2000 miles away alllll night long, but it's never going to replace the real butterflies you feel when you get that first kiss from the one who makes you titter like a happy chipmunk. It's never going to give you the feeling of warmth and comfort and love like being held in a pair of sexy arms.

So you want to find out if all those bajillions of love songs were onto something? Or perhaps you just want to lose your virginity before your mid-life crisis sinks in?

Come with me, my child. Take my sweaty, anxious hand. Let's delve into waters left untread. Don't worry, baby. Mommy's here. I'll help you get from first date to first anniversary.

After all, if I can do it, YOU REALLY HAVE NO EXCUSE!!!

#1: Be Like Nike and Just Do It

Fear is soooo good at keeping us safe. HOWever, unless you wanna be a bubble boy for your whole life, you gotta keep your fears in check. I'm sure your social anxiety can give you 1001 reasons not to go out on that first date. Tell it to shut up and listen to Shia LaBeouf screaming in your ear.

"JUST DO IT!"

Take a nice, long, deep breath. Only make sure before you finish letting out all the air, you hit send on that text asking your cutie patootie crushy wushy out.

The longer you hesitate, the more time your anxiety has to come up with excuses to keep you rooted in your own prison-like mind.

This also applies to when you're already one foot in the relationship door. Initiating things is scary. This is always going to be the case. But if you grab his hand or tell her she's cute, sure, you could be rejected. BUT. (And this is a big butt of Kardashian proportions!) You could be accepted. And let me tell you, it's such a powerful feeling to know that you're afraid of something and to do it anyway. It's freeing. Like taking off a pair of too-tight undies after a late night snack run as soon as you step foot in your door.

#2: Forget Everything I Just Told You in Step 1 and Take Your Good Ol' Time

Listen, I'm not going to pretend I know what everyone needs. But I can tell you there is a time for baby steps and there are a time for trampling the village like a cranky T-Rex. You know you best. You know which category you belong in. Either put on your dino costume or fasten your diapey. That's up to you. Not my business.

I would suggest, at least in the VERY beginning, to take your time. Make sure you are comfortable with the person you are about to embark on this Disney-esque journey with. Get to know them a little first via text until you are at least 27.3% certain that spending time with them won't be the most awkward thing since your seventh grade school photo.

On the flip side, just make sure you don't wait too long. (See #1) You don't want to become comfortable in that bubble you build with the person through your own little virtual world together.

Just cover the basics. Make sure you have some things in common. Weed out a few red flags. Make sure you know how to talk to this person and feel comfortable doing so.

But once you hit that point, go back to point 1 and get a move on.

#3: Consider a Practice Person

This is going to sound bad. Just hear me out. I know we're all looking for The One. We all wish it were as easy as going on that first date and falling madly in love-lust-combo with them and never having to search for anybody else ever, EVER again.

HOWever, reality knows your number and if you don't answer, they're just going to leave a nasty message on your voicemail anyway.

For me, I've had a total of 1.5 boyfriends in my life.

That first 0.5, let's call him my practice person. We met on OkCupid, same as all my other boo-thangs. We got along VERY well. He was cute enough. Very smart. Seemed to respect me and my unique woman-baby situation. Yet I never fully felt a spark with him.

He did, however, give me my first kiss and take me out on my first date and offer me enough support to be able to do those things. So, in a way, he was essential to getting where I am now. He wasn't The One but he was Someone and he was there and both of us walked away with nothing lost. No harm, no foul, nothing lodged in either of our bowels. Or so it goes...

I'm NOT telling you to go out and use someone. That was never the intention. But sometimes you just have to dip your toes in the waters of love before you're ready to careen off a hundred foot cliff and drink in a lungful of the stuff.

A normal writer might explain this as a casual date.

Yes, that sounds about right.

Anxiety seems to want to make everything more and more serious. But dating doesn't have to be life or death. Sometimes, it's just a trip to the zoo with a funny guy, holding hands, with a chaste kiss in his car sprinkled in at the end. I knew he wasn't going to be anything more. I probably wasn't even ready for anything more. But he proved to me that it wasn't as scary as it seemed.

#4: Be Honest

Tell the troof. Anxiety makes us all act like freak-a-leaks from time to time. You usually can't successfully hide it. So you can either make them think you really gotta poop and that's why you're all sweaty and quiet and shaky. Or you can tell them how nervous you are and that you're trying your best.

You shouldn't be doing anything you're TOO too uncomfortable with anyway. If you're not ready to be kissed, that is o-kay. If you're not ready to go to their place alone, DON'T. It's your job to be honest and it's their job to respect that.

Going along with this same rule, ask questions. Anxiety can cause us to be stuck in our heads in a neverending loop of what-ifs. Your date is not a mind reader. Probably. Hopefully. Usually. So if you find yourself fixated on anything that you can't seem to simply SAY, do yourself a favor and muster up enough courage to just spit it out. Even if you have to blurt it out. You'll feel better.

And if you're afraid of the answer, trust me, you are doing yourself zero favors by keeping the lid on that can on worms. If the answer to your question about the person is BAD, then it will still be BAD if you don't know. Not knowing that someone is an alcoholic does not make them sober. It's better to know early on so that you can decide the next step you want to make. After all, you're looking for real love, not a fairy tale. If you wanted more fantasy, you'd be at home reading a book or watching Netflix, not gussying yourself up in your finest spandex and facing your fears.

#5: Keep Dates Short

This is advice I wish I would have taken early on in my dating career. Being the kind of manic-pixie-dream-girl I am, I only wanted to be perfect for the dude I was with. I would do whatever they wanted to do and go anywhere they wanted to go. However, those of us with anxiety know that we have LIMITS. And pushing yourself PAST those limits usually feels the same afterwards as being hit by a friggin truck.

So my 20-20 hindsight advice to you would be to plan date nights to be around 2 to 3 hours long. I made the mistake of only ever doing all day dates, and once you hit an awkward patch and you wanna go home, there's usually no coming back from that point. So unless you wanna be brave enough to speak up and say you're going home early or ask them to drive you back when you've only done half the things you've agreed to, just keep it very simple.

Dinner, movie, good riddance, don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

Until...

You find someone that spending twelve hours with doesn't feel like nearly enough...

You're with someone where saying goodbye is sad and you never want the hug to end...

And every kiss gives you a sparkly feeling that you just can't get enough of...

You can sit in silence with them for hours on end and feel nothing but comfort.

I never thought any of that would be possible for someone like me. But it was and that gives me all the hope in the world for you too. The takeaway here should be that you can absolutely have the sort of love you've always dreamed of, but you've gotta be the one to go out and find it. And once you do, prepare for the real hard part: every-fricking-thing else. No point in getting anxious about it now. Life will throw at you things you never ever expected.

Ooh, look. A piece of candy...