Love & Relationships

An FAQ About the #1 Biggest Mistake Men Make on Dates with Women

Kate Sloan
POV: you’re on a date with me at the Relic Lobby Bar and hopefully asking me lots of great questions about myself (photo by mb)

Hey Kate, what’s the biggest mistake men make on dates with women?

Not asking anywhere near enough questions. Or, in many cases, not asking any questions at all.

Really? That’s the biggest mistake they could make? Worse than showing up without showering/brushing one’s teeth, yelling at a restaurant employee, or sexually coercing one’s date?

While these kinds of behaviors are obviously not ideal if you’re trying to impress someone (to say the least), they’re so egregious that it’s hard to think of them as “mistakes” so much as “behaviors you should’ve known would turn someone off, and it’s kind of weird if you didn’t know that.” If you struggle with any of the above behaviors, your issues are probably above my pay grade, although I wish you the best of luck addressing them ASAP.

Not asking questions on a date is often an actual mistake, though – in that a lot of people who do it seem to be unaware that they’re doing it, or unaware that it’s deeply rude and off-putting. This post is mostly for people like that. Hi; welcome!

Are you sure this is such a rampant problem? Surely some men ask questions on dates?!

Yes, obviously some men ask questions on dates. There are over 4 billion men on this planet; it would be pretty wild if they were all socially out-of-touch in this particular way.

However, it’s enough of a phenomenon that countless trend pieces have been written about it; here are some articles from MEL Magazine, Marie Claire, Bustle, and the Sydney Morning Herald on this issue. Anecdotally, my friend Girl on the Net has written many blog posts about abysmal dates with men who ask no questions – and it’s an issue I’ve observed myself on many dates with men.

But I’m a man and I do ask questions on dates!

Great! Keep it up. Hopefully one day a majority of men will do the same. (Perhaps you can help by sending this post to all your bros.)

This problem isn’t limited to men! Some people of other genders do it too!

Sure, that’s definitely true! However, there are specific sociocultural factors that lead men to do this far more often.

Studies overwhelmingly show that men talk more than women in mixed-gender conversations, and don’t listen as well when others talk. Some researchers in this field have attributed this to differences in rhetorical strategy: “men learn that it is important for them to assert status and to appear a leader,” while women communicate “to establish and maintain harmonious relationships with others.” (Some sociolinguists, like the late Princeton professor Deborah Tannen, think these imbalances have more to do with societal power structures than with anything inborn/biological.)

Okay, fine, let’s get into it. Why is it important to ask questions on dates?

I’m so glad you asked! There are a few key reasons to ask questions on dates…

  1. To communicate interest. Presumably, if you’re on a date with someone, it’s because you’re interested in them – but if you ask them zero questions, you’re going to seem entirely disinterested. Is that how you want to come across? If so, why are you on the date in the first place?
  2. To be more likeable & attractive. Studies show that “people who ask more questions, particularly follow-up questions, are better liked by their conversation partners.” And you want your date to like you, right?! People who ask questions are also “perceived as higher in responsiveness, an interpersonal construct that captures listening, understanding, validation, and care.” These are all great qualities that many people look for in potential partners.
  3. To demonstrate social sense & conversational skill. It’s just good manners to keep a conversation well-balanced, rather than expecting the other person to single-handedly carry the entire interaction. Not to mention, I’d never even consider continuing to date someone who hadn’t yet mastered the basics of conversation, as it’s an absolutely core skill in any relationship I’d want to be a part of, and I think many people feel the same.
  4. To assess compatibility, which is arguably the main point of going on a first or second date. As Girl on the Net points out in this fantastic blog post, asking questions on dates is a way of screening for things that matter to you in a relationship, so the two of you can decide if you’re a good fit and want to continue seeing each other. You can’t assess that without asking at least some questions.
  5. To establish intimacy & attraction. For many people, sexual attraction sparks at least partially from a sense of emotional intimacy – and it’s difficult to feel intimately connected with someone who knows nothing about you because they’ve asked you zero questions. It’s genuinely sexy to be asked interesting, astute questions about oneself, not only because it demonstrates social skill but also because intimacy is based on the mutual desire to know/understand each other more deeply.

What if I can’t think of anything to ask?

Well, first of all: Do you actually like the person you’re on a date with? Are you actually interested in them, curious about them, eager to get to know them better? If so, I’m sure there are some things you can think to ask them. What do you wonder about? Ask about that.

If you genuinely can’t think of anything that you want to ask the person sitting across from you on a date, either you’re just not that into them (which is fine, but you shouldn’t go on more dates with them if that’s the case!), or you need to develop your curiosity like a muscle. Practice this skill in all your connections, not just romantic or sexual ones. Ask people how their day went, what they’ve been up to lately, what’s on their mind, what they think of the latest kerfuffle in the news, or any other (appropriate) question that pops into your head. Open-ended questions are usually best, as opposed to “yes or no” or “do you prefer X or Y?”-type questions, although those are fine too. The more you practice, the easier it’ll get, until it starts to come more naturally.

One wildly easy way to ask someone a question on a date, though, is just to flip their own question around on them. For instance, if they ask “How was your day?” you can give your answer and then say, “How about you?” This sounds screamingly obvious, I know, but you would be amazed how many men don’t even do this. It’s extremely, extremely easy. There’s no excuse not to do it. As Girl on the Net wrote in a comment once: “Literally a man could write ‘how about you?’ on his palm in biro before a date as a reminder to throw it into the conversation once or twice, and he would be doing better than 80% of the men I have been on dates with throughout my life.”

Oh yeah, and here’s 50 questions you can ask people on dating apps and 30 questions you can ask on dates. There, now you really have no excuse!

What if I hate small talk, though?

Who said anything about small talk?! Certainly you can ask small-talk-y questions on a date, and usually it shows good social sense to at least start in shallow waters conversationally – but you can ask bigger, deeper questions, too! Some examples: “What are you passionate about?” “What’s your favorite memory in [this neighborhood/this city]?” “What’s the last thing that made you laugh really hard?” “What are you looking for in a relationship?” “Do you think we’re alone in the universe?”

When I ask questions, do I have to actually listen to the answers?

Yes!!! or else why bother asking them? Seriously, if you’re that disinterested in your date, you should stay home. I’m not even trying to be shady here; you would probably have a better time playing a dating sim than going on a date with an actual person. Dating people requires being interested in people. If you’re not interested in people, ask yourself why you want to date.

Listening to – and acknowledging – someone’s answers to your questions is a vital part of how conversations build intimacy. If I tell you a story and you don’t react to it, I might as well have told it to a brick wall. Listen to what your date says, utilize active listening techniques, and acknowledge what they said (e.g. “Wow, that sounds like it was really stressful!” or “Damn, that’s amazing!” etc.) before you consider jumping in with your own story in response. Remember, the objective is to build connection and rapport, not to outdo each other conversationally.

This is too hard and makes me want to give up on dating!

If the “human connection” part of human connection feels too hard for you right now, that’s okay. I get it. I have days like that too.

But the fact is, if you want to connect with human beings, you have to have at least a few skills in your back pocket that enable you to do that. And asking questions is one of the most basic building blocks of conversation, so it’s a skill you should develop, even if you’ve struggled with it until now. Trust me, there are few skills more worth learning than this one, at least if you value connection and intimacy of any kind. There are plenty of resources out there that can help you get better at conversational skills, like Dr. Nerdlove’s blog posts and Camille Virginia’s book The Offline Dating Method – and simply practicing will help a lot.

When you find yourself wanting to “give up,” perhaps put yourself in the shoes of women who’ve gone on countless dates with men who haven’t asked us anything. It’s not just boring and exhausting (although it absolutely is those things) – it’s also deeply disheartening and depressing to go home at the end of a date, having been asked nothing at all. I have spent so many nights crying after this kind of date. It always makes me feel like worthless garbage that even someone who claimed to be interested in me couldn’t muster enough actual interest to ask a question. It’s soul-destroying, and makes me want to give up on dating sometimes. So I understand that nihilistic impulse, but please ask yourself: Is it really that hard to think of things to ask the person you’re ostensibly interested in? And if so, why is that?

What should I do if I am [neurodivergent/socially anxious/etc.] and therefore can’t ask questions on dates?

I mean, if you literally can’t, then you can’t. You know your limitations best.

That being said, as I’ve already emphasized, asking questions is a very basic aspect of conversation, which is a very basic aspect of human relationships. So if you intend to have human relationships in your life (whether romantic, sexual, platonic, or any combination thereof), this is a skill worth developing, even if it’s difficult for you. Most skills worth learning are initially difficult to pick up. That’s part of what makes it so rewarding to learn those skills. As Alexandra Franzen says, “Are you willing to feel temporarily uncomfortable so that you can accomplish something that is permanently amazing?”

That being said, if you really, truly feel like you can’t have give-and-take conversations of this type and will never be able to, then it’s possible you’d be better off dating folks whose style of connection is similar to your own – in which case you might prefer to date within neurodivergent/socially anxious/etc. communities rather than seeking out dates on mainstream dating apps etc., where most people will be expecting a more conventional conversational style.

Some people just don’t ask questions. Don’t you think it’s unreasonable for you to expect your dates to ask you questions?

No, it’s not unreasonable for me to expect that anyone who wants to date me should be interested in me, and should be able to express that interest. Asking questions is the most basic way of expressing interest. If someone can’t (or won’t) do that, I won’t even be able to develop an attraction for them, let alone do all the other things I like doing with people I’m dating, so there’s no point in continuing to see them.

It’s certainly true that some people have a less question-based conversational style than others. I still think those people have a lot to gain from learning how to ask questions, just as us question-askers can sometimes get better at simply interjecting our own stories/thoughts when we’re talking to someone who never asks us anything. But it can be frustrating to try to bridge these gaps, so oftentimes it’s a lot easier to date someone whose conversational style already matches yours.

I think I fucked up, and didn’t ask enough questions on my most recent date. Is this salvageable?

Possibly! When I’ve arrived home from a first date feeling miserable and alone because the other person didn’t ask me anything, usually I’d already made the decision to stop seeing them – but I think it would’ve helped a lot if they’d sent me a message within the next couple days, saying something like:

Hey, that was so much fun! Realized I might’ve talked your ear off cuz I was kinda nervous – but I want to get to know you better! Can I take you out again and ask you more questions this time? Also, how’s your day going?

Notice that there’s an actual conversational question at the end of the message, to prove that you are already following through on your intention to ask more stuff. It’s such a bummer when someone promises they’ll change their ways and then just… doesn’t.

What should I do if I’m on a date with someone who isn’t asking me any questions?

Such a tricky and annoying situation to find yourself in!! Broadly speaking, I think you have 5 main options here…

  1. End the date. Honestly, I wish I’d done this more often. You don’t have to do it rudely if that feels too difficult; you can just be like, “I’m not feeling the chemistry I’m looking for, so I’m gonna head out,” and then pay your half of the check (if applicable) and hit the road. Sure, they might ask you annoying follow-up questions (“Seriously? But why?!”), although they also might not, considering that asking zero questions is their whole problem in the first place…
  2. Leave more silences. Sometimes I ask people so many questions so eagerly that they don’t have enough time/space to think of questions for me and actually ask them. I am a journalist and have been trained to fill all the “dead air,” after all! So I’ve had to learn that sometimes, when someone finishes answering one of my questions, I can just nod wisely and wait to see if they ask me something back. For some people, an awkward silence can be a reminder: “Oh yeah, I’m supposed to ask stuff, too!”
  3. Ask them, “Is there anything you want to ask me?” This is more direct and therefore more scary, but entirely valid. It’s possible they’ve forgotten to ask you stuff because they’re nervous or enthralled by your conversational skill (you charmer, you!), so they might appreciate the reminder to hold up their end of the convo. Some situations may warrant a slightly more confrontational “I’m noticing that you’re not asking me about myself – any particular reason for that?”
  4. Just jump in with your own stories/responses. For instance, maybe you ask your date about their favorite movie, listen to their answer, respond/react to their answer, and then say, “My favorite movie is…” Personally this isn’t my preferred option because a) it annoys me to do that extra labor when I shouldn’t have to and b) I am never convinced someone actually cares to hear my answers if they haven’t asked me a single question… but it’s still good to have this strategy as an option if you need it, because lord is it ever exhausting and irritating to just listen to someone monologue for an hour+!
  5. Suffer through it. This is usually what I do, and I’m not proud of it – but there are times when it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to try to teach someone how to have a conversation, especially if I’m not even that into them. Sometimes I’m just like, “Well, I’m already on this date. Might as well enjoy my cocktail, pretend I’m a world-famous interviewer who’s here to make an ordinary person feel fascinating, and leave as soon as we’ve paid the check.” 🤷🏻‍♀️

Can I reject someone/decline to go out with someone again because they didn’t ask me enough questions? How do I tell them that?

You are allowed to decline to go out with someone for any reason you want, and I would say that “shows no interest in you” is a damn good reason.

When offering a reason, I have tended to say that we don’t have the conversational chemistry I’m looking for. I want them to know that the issue was conversational, so that they can hopefully fix it for future dates’ sake – but I don’t always have the spoons to get more specific, and that’s fine. A friend of mine will straight-up say “You are not interested in me” when asked about this, which is often met with protestations (“Of course I’m interested in you!!”) – but as I mentioned above, when you reject someone for being incurious, sometimes they are just as incurious about the reason for the rejection (possibly because they indeed are not very interested in you!), so you may not even need to explain yourself.

Do you have any theories on why men generally ask so few questions on dates?

I do! (Please forgive me for the very hetero and generalized answer to follow; I’m speaking very broadly about wide-ranging social trends, which, by its nature, leads to analysis that is neither universalizeable nor precise.)

I think heterosexual culture, as a whole, tends to position women as the gatekeepers of sex and men as the pursuers of sex. This can result in a dynamic where early dates feel like a job interview for the position of boyfriend (or husband, or fuckbuddy, or whatever the case may be) – the man feels, on some level, that he needs to seem impressive and authoritative, standing up to the woman’s scrutiny as she assesses him through questions. However, while men are trying to be a “winner” and come out victorious over their imagined competitors, women are often looking for a lover, a partner, not a winner (to borrow language from Emily Nagoski’s Come Together). You can’t really develop a mutual, equitable connection from a place of competitiveness and trying to prove yourself.

I think some men feel such a sense of scarcity in their dating lives that they’re happy just to be on a date with a woman at all, and don’t want to risk rocking the boat by asking anything that might reveal an incompatibility, even though that filtering process is largely the point of going on dates. There are also men who see it as somehow unmasculine to take a heartfelt, proactive interest in women’s thoughts and feelings. And there are men who harbor such skewed views about women that they can’t conceptualize us as anything more than a pretty face and a pleasant presence – in which case, why bother inquiring about our inner lives? Those men barely think we have inner lives!

But of the men who ask zero-to-very-few questions on dates, I think the majority are probably decent dudes who want to connect with women… and it is for them that I have written this giant-ass blog post, in the hopes that they will take away this one all-important lesson from it: Ask your dates questions about themselves. Show an interest in the people you claim to be interested in. All your relationships will be better for it.

5 reasons why YOU (not an A.I.!) should write your own online dating messages

Kate Sloan
Photo by mb

Sometimes people are surprised to hear I’ve been writing about sex and relationships for over a decade, as though there can’t possibly be that much to say on those subjects (this blog’s 1.4-million total word count would beg to differ!). What I always tell them is that sexuality and romance are endlessly fascinating – not only because they contain infinite variations, but because technological and cultural progression constantly pushes them to evolve. Sometimes these evolutions are slow, and sometimes they’re rather sudden – such as, for example, the way language models like ChatGPT are affecting dating online.

I won’t go too deep into the common criticisms of this type of A.I., since you’ve probably heard them already: the creative theft, the ecological impacts, and so on and so forth. All of that stuff is important and has been written about at length by people who know more about it than I – but another thing that troubles me about A.I., personally, is the way it might affect our relationships.

It already is affecting them, in fact. I know several people (myself included) who’ve been surprised and hurt when a friend or partner sent a text that seemed to be ChatGPT-generated, as if personal connection is something that can be delegated to a digital assistant. Similarly, several news outlets have reported on the phenomenon of people using A.I. for online dating – either to help them craft their profile, or (worse, in my opinion) to write messages for them.

I very much understand the impulse, as a socially anxious person myself – but today I want to make the case for why you absolutely should not do this, even if you really want to.  You’ll be shortchanging your potential partners, but most of all, you’ll be shortchanging yourself. Here’s why:

1. A.I.-generated messages are bad. Like, embarrassingly bad.

Seriously. And they’re easy to spot, especially by people who’ve used these LLMs and are familiar with their cadence. Do you really want someone’s first impression of you to be “this person is intellectually lazy, socially unskilled, and totally disinterested in authentic human connection”?

I promise, even if you think you’re a bad writer, you’ll be ahead of the curve if you just write a specific compliment about the person’s profile followed by an open-ended and interesting question their profile inspired in you. And it’ll sound like you, not like a soulless collage of stolen excerpts. On that note…

2. You (not the A.I.) need to figure out what interests you about the person you’re messaging.

Sometimes people ask me, “What should I say in a first online dating message?” After telling them about Girl on the Net’s ‘compliment + question + connect’ formula, I’ll usually add: What caught your eye about the person’s profile? What made you swipe right (or whatever’s the equivalent on your app/site of choice)? Surely it’s something a little more specific and interesting than just “They looked hot in their photo.” Ponder the answer(s) to that question and you’ll have some good starting points for initial messages.

Sure, you could screenshot someone’s profile and feed it into an A.I. to generate a list of potential questions and talking points – but then you’re messaging them about what the robot finds notable. By contrast, the things that you find notable about someone’s profile are hugely useful clues – they can help you come up with conversation topics, sure, but more importantly, they help you assess whether this is someone you want to go out with/could be attracted to/might be compatible with. When you entrust that discernment task to a robot, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to get more in touch with your desires and to connect authentically with people who could fulfill them.

3. You only get better at socializing by doing more of it.

As I mentioned, I’m socially anxious myself – so I sympathize with folks who find it soothing to navigate social interactions with ChatGPT, I really do… but the thing about taking the easy way out is, you never learn to take the harder route, and so that route remains unfamiliar and foreboding. That can be a massive bummer when that route happens to lead to somewhere cool – like deep, fulfilling intimacy with another human being. Dating is a numbers game, and it ends up being a social-skills training ground for all kinds of people, not just socially anxious ones – so try not to feel bad about being unskilled at it; we all have to start somewhere.

Further, not to sound like an alarmist luddite, but some burgeoning science has shown that ChatGPT usage may make you more intellectually lazy and unengaged over time… which doesn’t bode well for its effects on relationships, an area where mental disengagement can be very noticeable, hurtful, and destructive. (Ever tried to tell a vulnerable personal story to a partner or close friend who was very obviously not listening? It fucking sucks!!)

4. When you meet IRL, your A.I. messages will be soooo obvious in retrospect.

Seriously, no one talks the way ChatGPT writes – and if they did, they’d sound strange! – so your date will probably realize pretty quickly that the texts you exchanged were a sham, which (again) is mighty embarrassing for you, and makes it hard for the other person to feel that their connection with you is genuine.

You’re putting them in an awkward position, too, since they might have their suspicions about A.I. involvement but likely don’t want to sound accusatory or insane by bringing it up. However, they’ll probably wonder about it distractingly for the entire duration of the date, which brings me to my fifth and final point…

5. You can’t outsource intimacy and vulnerability.

This is really the big one, huh?

When I say ‘intimacy,’ I mean the emotional kind (I don’t use it as a euphemism for sex). This type of intimacy is impossible to build without some measure of mutual vulnerability. And if all (or even some) of your messages are written by ChatGPT, you are sidestepping vulnerability, and you are therefore sidestepping intimacy itself.

I can’t let someone in unless I feel that they are letting me in, too. I can’t trust someone with my softness, my heart, or my body if they hold me at arm’s length emotionally. And if ChatGPT is writing their texts for them, well, they might as well show up to a date wearing a printed jpeg of someone else’s face pasted over their own – it’d be just as connective, just as sexy, and would get them just as laid.

 

What do you think about all this, dear readers? Feel free to sound off in the comments…

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

What’s Even More Intimate Than Sex?

Kate Sloan
This babe took me to Sweeney Todd + an improv show on our 2nd date, so you KNOW she understands the value of what I’m talking about in this post!

I’ve been pondering the word “intimacy” a lot lately, because it’s constantly being misused. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve seen a lube marketed as “intimacy gel,” for example, I’d have… enough money to buy a lube that proudly calls itself lube instead!

Intimacy, to my mind, is a mental and emotional thing, not a physical or directly sexual thing – although certainly it pairs beautifully with sex for many of us, the way a fine wine pairs with a fine cheese.

I see intimacy as the ability to be psychologically vulnerable with someone – or “emotionally nude,” as Ricken Hale might say – and to hold their vulnerability in return. I also see it as the ability to be fully yourself with someone, and the knowledge (or at least the hope and belief) that they will adore and accept you, just as you are. It’s a difficult thing for many of us to find, not only because it’s rare to meet someone cool/hot/nice/smart/funny enough that you want to open up to them, but also because intimacy itself requires a certain level of soul-baring that can be uncomfortable at times – although I think it can also be revelatory and soul-nourishing, when it’s good, so it’s usually worth the gamble. (Hey, wasn’t that the whole point of my heart dice tattoo?!)

To that end, there’s something I find to be just as intimate as sex, and sometimes even more intimate. I’m talking about feeling deeply in someone’s presence.

Granted, yes, sex definitely falls into that category – at least, any sex I’d be excited to have. Ditto some sex-adjacent activities like hanging out at a strip club, casually watching porn with a friend, or jerking off with a stranger on a sex cam site like Chaturbate. But also within that category are things like: Watching a great movie together. Attending live music or comedy. Seeing gorgeous sights together while traveling. Conquering a difficult co-op video game or board game together. Working together on a high-stakes work project or creative performance. Hell, even just having a fantastic conversation can make you both feel strong feelings around each other, reaching soaring heights of intimacy that plenty of sex doesn’t even touch.

As a demisexual person, I find that some measure of emotional intimacy is required before I’ll be able to feel sexually attracted to someone. There will usually be a moment where something clicks and I suddenly think, “Ohhhh. I think I want to fuck you! How’d I never notice it before?!“

I’m sure it’s no coincidence that many such moments have occurred while my crush and I were diving to emotional depths together, whether we were laughing our asses off in the front row of a comedy show, mashing controller buttons side-by-side in a hyper-competitive Mario-off, or catching a rom-com at the local multiplex. I loved seeing a window into their most vulnerable self, much earlier in the get-to-know-ya process than I’d normally get to, whether that manifested more like childlike joy or the willingness to break down in tears.

Before that, at my arts high school full of weirdos, my most intense crushes tended to be on people I collaborated with: improv teammates, Shakespeare scene-study buddies, even the guy I co-wrote a fake Simpsons spec script with in Writer’s Craft class. I’ve always liked seeing people cracked open emotionally, spilling out a little; it’s so much more interesting than the staid small talk you’re usually limited to when first getting to know someone.

Sometimes I’ll even choose a date location/activity with this in mind, especially when I’m trying to discern if a budding connection has staying power. Are they comfortable laughing their ass off in front of me, in a borderline-unflattering way, and do I likewise feel I can laugh that hard in front of them without giving them “the ick”? If the movie we’re watching is sad, are they gonna be weird about me crying on their shoulder, or will they hand me a tissue and tug me closer? If a really hot sex scene on TV makes us want to hit pause and jump each other’s bones, will we let ourselves get swept away like lusty young lovers? These examples may seem pretty different – happy, sad, horny – but the point is the intensity of the feeling, not its identification. I think I’d make out with a hottie just as enthusiastically after Fight Club as I would after Secretary, y’know?

I always feel like I know someone better after we’ve felt strong feelings together, whether we’ve watched a tearjerker or a jerk off cam. Knowing someone deeply, and being known deeply, is the very definition of intimacy to me – so I suppose it’s no coincidence that it’s the hottest thing in the world to me, too.

 

This post contains sponsored links. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Online Dating Tips for Demisexuals

Kate Sloan
My actual Tinder profile

I’m demisexual, meaning that I don’t have the capacity to feel sexually attracted to someone until I have some kind of emotional connection with them and have a good sense of who they are as a person.

Mostly I’m fine with being this way – my demisexuality fits nicely into my introverted lifestyle – but sometimes I wish I were capable of developing sexual attractions quicker, especially since that seems to be very much the norm on dating sites/apps. It can be hard to navigate these fast-paced online hubs of sex ‘n’ romance when you’re slow-moving in these realms. Sometimes it’s difficult enough to make a person want to give up altogether.

I’ve found a few strategies that help me in this regard, though. Here are some online dating tips for demisexuals. As per usual, take ’em with a grain of salt, because we’re all different – but I hope they help you, if indeed you need/want help with this issue.

 

1. Choose the right site/app to begin with

It’s easy to get intimidated when you look through a list of dating sites or apps and don’t even know where to start. But many apps and sites designed to facilitate human connection are geared toward a certain type of human connection – and likewise, there are some apps and sites that don’t explicitly try to be hookup-focused, or queer-focused, or kink-focused, or whatever, but may attract certain demographics anyway for various reasons.

In my experience, for instance, Tinder is not always the best choice for someone who wants a long-term relationship, or a relationship where sex is of minimal or no importance. On the flipside, I wouldn’t typically recommend Match.com for someone who just wanted a hookup. Do some research (including “field research” if need be) to get a sense of which sites and apps are most aligned with what you’re looking for, and use those.

Some of these services are more demisexual-friendly than others. I like the text-forward interface of Lex, for example, because it allows me to get to know someone’s communication style and a little bit about how their brain works, before seeing what they even look like. OkCupid can also be good for demisexuals because its filtering tools and compatibility questions are powerful and can help you narrow down your dating pool to people you’re mostly aligned with.

 

2. State your hopes and expectations in your profile

I often include a line in my online dating bios that’s something like “More into fun dates than hookups” and “I like to take things slow and get to know people.” I think a statement like this can do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of attracting people who have similar desires and repelling people who don’t.

I’ve also seen people say they were looking for “friends, and maybe more eventually,” which I think can be a good approach for demisexuals. If you do become friends with someone you met on a dating site/app, then at least you’ll still have a friend even if an attraction doesn’t end up developing between you.

An important thing to keep in mind here is that there’s absolutely no need to shame people who are more interested in casual sex than you are. We all have different needs, wants, and preferences. Yours isn’t more ethical, good or “respectable” just because you like to get to know people before potentially boning them.

 

3. Ask questions whose answers you might find hot

I know myself well enough, at this point in my dating life, to know that I find it attractive when people are highly enthusiastic about a particular passion of theirs, whether that be movies, music, cocktails, video games, or just about anything else. So I’ll often ask people about their passions, or about activities in their life that light them up, because the answers to these questions can awaken a spark of attraction to me that is sometimes later fanned into a proper flame as I get to know them better.

Consider what questions you could ask to take the fastest (or funnest) possible route to info that might stir your interest, and ask those more often when you’re chatting with potential dates online. In doing this, you’re helping them out and helping yourself have a better time.

 

4. Consider limiting initial dates to the daytime

I have a hard time saying no to sex when I have a strong sense that the person I’m on a date with is expecting or hoping for sex to happen. Most of the people I’ve been on dates with have been kind, considerate, and non-pressure-y, so I’m aware that this is a problem that exists largely in my own head and that it’s okay to have boundaries. But, for this reason, I often find it easiest to go on first dates (or second or third dates) in the daytime, because there tends to be less of an expectation that sex will happen at the end of the date.

Afternoon coffee dates, weekend brunch dates, and walking-through-a-park dates can all be good for this. If I want to be extra sure that sex won’t be expected, I might let the person know about what I’ll be doing afterward, e.g. that I have to get back to work or that I have plans with a friend.

It’s not that I couldn’t have consensual, enjoyable sex if I went home with someone on a first date. It’s definitely happened. But for me, sex on a first date is almost always sex without sexual attraction, because I usually simply haven’t had enough time to develop an attraction at that point. And personally, I’d rather wait until I really want to have sex with someone before having it.

 

5. Remember, above all, that your boundaries are valid

It’s okay to want to wait a while to have sex. Hell, it’d be okay if you never wanted to have sex. It might mean that you’re not compatible with some of the people you go on dates with, but that’d be true no matter what your deal was. Sometimes people just aren’t compatible with each other, and that’s okay. Either one or both of them can compromise, if they’re comfortable doing so, or they can go their separate ways.

An important caveat there is that you never have to compromise if you don’t want to have sex. “No” is a complete sentence, as the saying goes. It can trigger a lot of shame and self-doubt when someone pressures you into moving faster than you want to, especially if they start making claims like “Other people I’ve dated haven’t wanted to wait this long to have sex” or “The way you feel about sex isn’t normal.” But please try to remember, if you can, that anyone worth dating (or fucking!) will respect your boundaries.

Sure, they might end up saying, “You know what? This isn’t working for me, so I think we should stop seeing each other.” That’s a normal part of the dating process, for anyone. But never forget that you are well within your rights to say no, or even to get up and leave. You don’t owe anyone sex. You don’t even owe anyone an explanation for why you don’t feel like having sex. And the more you can internalize that knowledge, and the more you practice setting and holding your boundaries, the more delicious it’ll feel when an attraction finally develops and you find yourself wanting to have sex with a particular person.

A true “yes” can’t exist in an environment where a “no” is shamed, dismissed or belittled. I hope that you find your true “yes,” because it feels so damn good.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Polyamory & Trauma Are a Tricky Combination, But These Resources Can Help

Kate Sloan
Sometimes my traumatized heart feels like a stormy sea.

In mid-2017, I started having weird episodes when my then-boyfriend would go on dates with one of his other partners. I’m using the phrase “weird episodes” here because I wasn’t sure what to call them at the time – they felt more panicky and distressing than mere jealousy, but did not manifest like actual panic attacks, as far as I could tell. During those episodes, I felt like I was dying, and like I was an ugly failure, and like I had just been informed by the love of my life that they didn’t care about me and were leaving. Those emotions felt entirely real and immediate to me, and made me utterly unable to function. They would often continue for hours or days.

I was very confused, and frankly, so was my partner. I had been polyamorous before, and this had never been an issue. Sure, I’d felt twinges of jealousy or irritation now and again when my partners would spend time with their other sweethearts, but those had always felt manageable, momentary, and easily dismissed. These new episodes were entirely different in character, and were much more debilitating to my relationship and my everyday functioning.

What I later learned, through tons of therapy, reading, journaling, chatting with polyam friends, and reflecting on my experiences, is that I am a trauma survivor and that these episodes were a trauma response. Childhood experiences of emotional abuse had amped up my nervous system and had made me hypersensitive to the threat of being unloved, unwanted, and not good enough. These feelings came up more acutely in that particular relationship because we were in a DD/lg dynamic, which brought my deepest desires to life but also brought the most vulnerable and helpless versions of me to the surface psychologically.

So when that boyfriend/daddy dom started dating someone else, without checking with me first and without taking the time to make sure both Adult Me and Little Girl Me felt okay with that decision and felt safe in our relationship, of course I started getting triggered all the time. I had deep-seated childhood trauma and was being re-traumatized repeatedly by the embodied sense that my “daddy” liked someone else better than me – a situation which wasn’t exactly helped by him constantly texting with his other partner while we were together, conveying more enthusiasm about that relationship than about ours, and telling me I was overreacting and harming him by being triggered.

Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last. But what it taught me was invaluable. The intensity of my reactions in that relationship eventually led me to seek out trauma therapy and start finally unpacking my issues. So, even though that boyfriend treated me badly, in a way I have to thank him for showing me exactly what parts of myself I needed to work on in order to someday become my truest, highest, most healed self.

 

Learning about the ways that trauma impacts polyamory has been completely transformative for me, because it has given me the tools to understand my past experiences and a road map toward happier ones. When I first entered the non-monogamy world around 2012, there was an almost libertarian-esque fervor about “taking responsibility for your own feelings.” The general prevailing attitude in the community, so far as I could tell, was that if you felt jealous, that was your issue to deal with, and your issue alone. There was very little nuance in the conversation and very little room for the idea that people’s emotional responses are not always the result of a toxic monogamy mindset and are not always fully within their control.

This can cause traumatized polyamorists to feel that they’re “broken” or “bad at polyamory” for having these responses. In many cases, they think that because they’ve been explicitly told that by judgmental partners who didn’t understand what was going on. Triggering a shame spiral in this way helps no one, and yet it was the customary approach most polyam people seemed to take when dating a traumatized person at that time.

So I’ve been delighted to see more discourse about trauma and polyamory over the past few years, and more resources popping up to explain these concepts to folks and help them have happier, healthier relationships regardless of their trauma history. I’ve gathered some of those resources below for you to peruse if you need ’em, or if you think my tale of woe sounds like something your partner or friend has gone through, or if you’re just curious. Whether you want to be non-monogamous yourself and have struggled with it due to trauma, or you just want to work through trauma that affects your relationship(s) regardless of monogamy status, I hope you find these resources as helpful as I have.

 

Workshops

• Bar none, the most helpful resource on this topic for me personally has been Clementine Morrigan’s “Trauma-Informed Polyamory” workshop. While Clementine does teach it in-person sometimes, it’s also available online as a 2.5-hour video (with optional captioning) that you can purchase, download, and watch. What’s really remarkable about this class is that it brings together a variety of modalities I think are crucial for understanding and overcoming trauma responses in polyamory. These include nervous system work (i.e. understanding how and why your nervous system gets triggered and how to get it back into a place of safety) and attachment theory (i.e. the ways that our relationships with our caregivers in childhood can affect the way we approach relationships for the rest of our lives). If you choose to only explore one resource on this list, I think it should be this one, unless something else I recommend here sounds like it would resonate more for you.

• While not trauma-focused, Reid Mihalko’s “Battling the 8-Armed Octopus of Jealousy” workshop was super helpful for me in learning more about jealousy triggers. There are a lot of different reasons why people experience jealousy, and it can be useful to understand your own triggers in this area so you can learn to work around them or create relational structures that prevent them from occurring as often. For example, I learned in this workshop that one of my biggest jealousy triggers is not feeling “special” to my partner, which is one reason why we have specific honorifics, kinks, and sex acts that we reserve only for each other and don’t do with other partners.

 

Books & Zines

• The book Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Non-Monogamy by Jessica Fern has gotten a lot of attention in polyamorous communities over the past year, and for good reason. It’s a must-have guide to navigating polyamory when you or a partner is attachment-injured, i.e. experienced some kind of trauma related to their caregivers or other attachment figures at some point which continued to affect the way they feel and behave in relationships. If you’ve routinely struggled with anxiety and/or avoidant behaviors in your relationships, you might be attachment-injured and this book might help you. The thing I love most about it is that it emphasizes finding relational security through the quality of the connection, rather than through extraneous things that provide the illusion of relational security, like monogamy or strict rules. You should read this if you’re an attachment-injured person who wants to be polyamorous, or if you have a partner or potential partner who fits that description; it’ll give you a lot of strategies for calming attachment-related inner turmoil and finding a feeling of safety in your relationship(s).

• In addition to their polyamory workshop (above), Clementine Morrigan also wrote a zine called Love Without Emergency: I Want This But I Feel Like I’m Going to Die about their personal experiences with these issues. (That link is to the physical version of the zine; click here if you’d rather buy a PDF copy.) It’s less of an instructional resource and more of a calming, validating one. Sometimes I leaf through my copy when my partner is on a date, to remind myself that 1) other people experience what I’m feeling and so I’m not alone, 2) my trauma does not make me broken, and 3) there are ways out of those terrible feelings.

• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk is widely regarded as one of the best books on trauma, such that my partner and I frequently make jokes about the title when we need a moment of levity during a trauma episode (e.g. “damn, my body’s really keeping the score today, huh?!”). I haven’t had the emotional strength to read it yet, honestly, but I know that it’s largely about the ways that trauma manifests physically in the body, which is useful stuff to understand when navigating any kind of triggering situation, including those that can come up in polyamory.

• One of my all-time fave non-monogamy books in general is Building Open Relationships by Dr. Liz Powell. This one isn’t primarily trauma-focused but it does contain a lot of practical advice for navigating emotionally difficult situations that come up in polyamory, like what to do if you get anxious while your partner is out on a date or what level of detail you want to hear when your partner tells you about their dates.

• I haven’t yet had a chance to read Open Deeply: A Guide to Building Conscious, Compassionate Open Relationships by Kate Loree, but the author is trauma-savvy and it looks like it’s gonna be great.

 

Therapeutic Modalities

I’ve written before about how I used the filtering tools on PsychologyToday.com to find my therapist, by searching for practitioners who were LGBTQ-informed, kink-informed, and polyamory-informed, and who specialized in trauma. You can use that same method to find a therapist, or you can just voice a preference for particular modalities when searching for a therapist in whatever other ways are available to you. I’m no expert, but here are some modalities and strategies I’ve found helpful in healing from these issues:

• Internal Family Systems is a therapeutic model which emphasizes the existence of different “parts” of our personalities, which can be integrated through therapy. I never really used to believe in this stuff, but as I’ve been healing my trauma with the help of my therapist, I’ve noticed that my “inner child” is very wounded and needs a lot of love and compassion, which I had long been denying her by dismissing those sad, unloved feelings as stupid and irrational. Doing IFS work with my therapist is helping me reconnect with that inner child so I can “re-parent” her and help her feel safe, even when she experiences abandonment anxiety or insecurity because of my partner dating other people. If you’re interested in IFS but can’t afford/access therapy or just want to learn more, Dr. Tori Olds has an incredible series of videos about the basic principles of IFS; her work has helped me understand how this modality functions, not only emotionally but neurologically as well.

• “Somatic therapy” is a pretty broad term, as there are many therapeutic modalities that focus on the somatic, i.e. what our bodies are feeling and how that connects to our minds. However, I mention it here because it was something I specifically sought out when I wanted to heal from trauma, having noticed that modalities based on words and emotions (such as cognitive-behavioral therapy) weren’t easing my trauma responses at all. This, I learned, is because trauma is stored in parts of the mind that aren’t always consciously accessible to us, and because many people find that trauma manifests in their bodies, not just their minds. Doing somatic exercises with my therapist has been way more helpful for my trauma than CBT. Some examples of these exercises are locating the physical locus of anxiety within myself and having a “conversation” with it, or noticing while triggered that the bigness of my body means I’m an adult now and am not a powerless child anymore.

• Compassion and mindfulness. These are components of many therapeutic modalities, but I think they’re important enough to be mentioned specifically here. A lot of the work I’ve done on mindfulness, whether with the guidance of an expert or just in my own research and exploration, has been about accepting everything I’m feeling and experiencing at the present moment, including the things about myself that I normally dislike. Accepting yourself the way you are right now is a type of self-compassion, and self-compassion is vital for healing the anxieties and insecurities that can make polyamory feel impossible.

 

Other Resources

• I think reading polyamory blogs and forums can be super helpful when you’re feeling shitty about yourself for struggling with polyamory, because a lot of other people struggle with it too and have written about their struggles online. Kevin Patterson’s excellent blog Poly Role Models and the ever-insightful Poly.Land are great places to start.

• Sex educator and trauma expert Jimanekia Eborn hosts a podcast called Trauma Queen which is super validating to listen to as a trauma survivor. It’s not always focused on polyamory or relationships, but I think there’s a lot to learn from it in terms of trauma more generally.

• Jessica Fern, the author of the aforementioned book Polysecure, guested on my podcast and we had an interesting conversation about the monogamy mindset, nervous system regulation, healing from trauma, and more.

 

I’ll leave you with a metaphor that my therapist used in one of our sessions recently. Imagine you have a friend who went through a traumatic house fire as a kid. No one died or was seriously injured, but it was extremely scary and they’ve found fire very triggering ever since. But imagine that because of their ethics and values, they decided they wanted to become a firefighter. As they started training for the job, and then started fighting actual fires, what would you say to them when they kept getting triggered every day at work? What would be your advice for this person? Would you tell them to quit, or would you tell them to continue?

When my therapist asked me this, the answer seemed immediately obvious to me. “I’d tell them that the right decision would depend on whether or not they felt willing and able to put in the work to overcome that trauma,” I said. “I’d tell them they would have to think carefully about whether their values are more important than avoiding their trauma triggers. There’s no wrong answer, but they should think about it.”

My therapist said, “Exactly. And it’s the same with you and polyamory. Polyamory is very triggering for you. But you also know that you want to be polyamorous, because of your values and priorities. So the question becomes: Do you want it enough to put in the work of healing from your trauma so you can achieve your goal of being happily, healthily polyamorous?”

For the time being, I have decided that I do. So I will continue to revisit these resources, go to therapy, and work on myself. I will continue, at least for now, to fight those fires. I will continue to do the hard work I signed up for. Even when it hurts. Even when it feels impossible. Because I’m tired of being so damn scared all the time. I want to be brave and strong and healed, and I know that I can be. I just need help to get there – and, as this list has shown, there’s plenty of help to be found.

 

Do you have any resources to recommend on the subject of trauma’s interactions with polyamory? Feel free to share ’em in the comments, or let me know if you’ve enjoyed the ones I’ve recommended here. ❤️