I allowed myself to get excited last week after a few fun dates with a girl who I seemed really compatible with, and I was chatting to two others who seemed interesting and planning to hang out. In fact, I started worrying that I would have to choose to focus on one and potentially hurt the others feelings.
Then I remembered: this is dating in 2024, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Sure enough the one I had dates with messaged me to say she realized she doesn't want a relationship right now (most likely a polite way of saying not with you, but she was mentioning how stressed she was with her new job and living arrangements), the other two have ghosted me.
Last year I was ghosted after two months of dating someone.
My best friend just found his ex fiance in bed with a colleague. My other friends ex partner got really violent after a few months and even tried to harm his dog so he had to get the fuck out.
The point is that people are unpredictable and so are life circumstances. Everything ends eventually and everyone knows and accepts that, but at what point do you allow yourself to get excited about the prospect of a future with someone?
It almost seems like as soon as I allow myself to get excited, the universe notices and laughs 'oh, really? we'll see about that' and drives something between us. I've had a girl I was briefly dating land a dream job in another state and moved (which I supported of course) one girls brother killed himself the day of our 5th date and it threw her into a depression where I tried to support her but ultimately our potential relationship fell apart.
As it stands I'm basically just waiting to be ghosted or waiting to see how it collapses and that's not a healthy mindset.