One weeknight in the dead of winter, I sat anxiously inside Starbucks, repeatedly checking my phone. She was running late. I was nervous as hell. As every minute passed, I got increasingly more nervous. My eyes remained at the door. Is that her? No. Is that her? Wait…is that her? It was actually my first date. Ever.
I was in my late 20s at the time and I had never put myself out there romantically. I never asked anyone out, flirted with someone or displayed outward interest in another person.
That is, until I met Starbucks girl on OKCupid, one of the most popular dating apps and it was the only app that I was using at the time. The night before I joined the platform, I had met some friends for dinner and we started talking about dating. They asked me why I never gave online dating a try, and I explained to them that my anxiety and stuttering had always gotten in the way.
This proved to be the motivation I needed, as the next day, I thought to myself, “you know what, I’m finally going to do this.” So, I registered for OKCupid, uploaded a few pictures of myself that were a strategic mix of professional-looking photos and shots of myself while travelling, and populated my profile with something short and witty that captured my interests in comedy, sushi and movies.
Soon after my foray into online dating, I connected with Starbucks girl, we hit it off, and agreed to meet for a date. We opted to meet for a coffee after work and I had no idea what to expect. How does thing called dating work? Earlier that day, before heading to work, I put deodorant and a hairbrush into my bag. This proved to useful as, after I left work, I ducked into the bathroom to apply deodorant and brush my air before going to meet Starbucks girl.
Dating is tough enough as it is — especially with the endless browsing, scrolling and swiping — but add a disability to the mix and it’s even worse. In my case, I have a speech disability (a stutter), as well as mental health struggles.
What this means for online dating is that I feel like I behave differently on screen than I do in-person. For a moment, I’m going to make the obvious comparison that dating is like job hunting. You know how some people feel like they’re great on paper (i.e., their resume) but not great during job interviews? That’s how I feel.
Also, my writing background coupled (pun intended) with my disabilities were like some weird dating paradox. Like, I was good at writing about myself and marketing myself. Not to sound arrogant, I was really good. People told me how good my dating profile was. It was the right combination of witty, personal and vulnerable. I even helped a few friends to edit their dating profiles. I was that good.
But when it came to actually going on dates, I was a mess.
Anyways, the first date with Starbucks girl didn’t help my worries. After she finally showed up, I didn’t talk much as I had let my anxiety get in the way. And I could tell that she was not as interested as she was on screen. She kept looking at her watch. It doesn’t take a dating expert to know that when your date repeatedly eyes the time, that is not a good sign.
About an excruciating hour later, we mutually decided to call it a night. As we were going our separate ways outside Starbucks, I leaned in to try to give her a hug and she backed away. Yet, another good sign. Nevertheless, I told her I had a great time and I asked her if she might want to do this again sometime soon. Her response: “Um…we’ll talk.” That was the third sign that ultimately sealed my fate.
I never heard from her again.
In the months that followed, I continued to go on a spree of first dates that didn’t go anywhere. It was a chain of awkward encounters where I let my stuttering — but more specifically, my anxiety about my stuttering and my social anxiety — get the better of me. For each date, I had the usual series of intrusive thoughts.
“What if there’s no chemistry?”
“What if she perceives me negatively due to my stuttering?”
“What if I don’t say much during the date, if anything at all?”
I won’t say these thoughts don’t hold true to an extent. Because they do. You can’t have chemistry with everyone. Can you imagine how easy dating would be if you did? Dating is hard enough. Some people are assholes, judging you, ghosting you. And these experiences can be exacerbated when you have a disability.
But over time, I realized that dating just takes time. It takes time for anyone to meet someone. Yes, some people are just lucky and they meet their soulmates instantly. But most of the time, it takes a series of bad dates to meet that one person whom you do have good chemistry with. A friend of mine had told me that having a disability is like having an internal social filter: it weeds out the assholes and I couldn’t agree more.
After eventually taking a break from online dating, I resumed my romantic pursuit in 2020. Then — during the onset of COVID, actually — I met another girl, this time on Facebook’s dating app (yes, Facebook apparently has a dating app, which apparently no one has heard of, but that’s worth another story on how Meta doesn’t market the social network’s dating app very well).
About two years after that, I turned Facebook Dating girl into Facebook Dating fiancée — someone with whom I can sit comfortably at Starbucks without any anxiety.
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Previously published on Medium
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