Dating Again, God Help Us

Dating Again, God Help Us The death of the romantic illusion

Monday May 2, 2026… Dating Again, God Help Us

I’m dating again, which feels like a sentence that should come with a waiver, a helmet, a hydration plan, and maybe a small advisory board made up of therapists, bartenders, and one emotionally stable golden doodle.

And it has started showing up in all the usual ways… friends have friends who have sisters who know someone whose cousin once met a woman at a pickleball fundraiser who “might be perfect for me,” which is always terrifying because “perfect for me” usually means she owns a candle or incense business, has unresolved attachment wounds, and once dated a man named Chad who ruined brunch for everyone.

And then, in a moment of either hope, courage, or temporary neurological malfunction, I joined a dating app, which I can only describe as Costco for emotionally complicated strangers. 

There are endless options, questionable packaging, a lot of misleading labels, and every once in a while you think, “Well, this might be worth bringing home,” because she said, “I’ve done a lot of work on myself” seventeen separate times and then asked if Mercury Retrograde was why her ex stole her air fryer.

So honestly… if you can maintain eye contact, communicate directly, and avoid treating dating like a hostage negotiation with your nervous system, you are already in the top 3%.

And then, naturally, you immediately start questioning your judgment, your standards, and whether civilization is progressing in the right direction.

But it has made me think… at least… about modern dating… about connection… about chemistry… about what it means to be a forty-something divorced man in Charlotte, North Carolina, who has seen more sides of women, relationships, projection, longing, attachment, emotional gymnastics, and midlife reinvention than he ever intended to study without at least receiving a minor in neuropsychology.

So this is my candid, slightly unfiltered journal entry on what dating looks like now from where I sit. It is raw, occasionally ridiculous, mildly existential, and probably more honest than it needs to be, which means it is already on brand… “So let's get into it.”

Once You See the Machinery

There is a strange loneliness that comes once you have done enough of the work to see through the illusion.

Dating used to feel like this intoxicating little dance where two people met, projected all of their unmet needs onto each other, called it chemistry, and then acted shocked six months later when the fantasy started leaking oil in the driveway… at some point, you begin to see the machinery.

You see how people are often looking for relief more than love. They are looking for a mirror, someone to regulate the parts of themselves they have not learned how to sit with alone, someone to make the room inside them feel a little less empty, and because we are all walking around with our childhoods stuffed inside adult bodies, we call that romance and start making dinner reservations… and once you see that, you cannot unsee it.

The Dopamine Goblin Has Entered the Chat

You meet someone.

They are attractive.

They are [mildly] interesting, which in the current dating climate feels like finding potable water in the desert.

There is banter.

There is energy.

There is a little spark, a little mystery, a little “well hell, maybe this could be something,” and the old part of you wants to grab the popcorn and run the familiar script. The pursuit. The intrigue. The dopamine. The delicious little lie that maybe this person is the missing piece that will finally make everything settle.

And then the wiser part of you, the annoying little bastard who has been to therapy and reads the room way too accurately, quietly raises his hand and says, “Bro, let’s maybe avoid getting drunk on potential again…” because you know better now, even if the tiny little dopamine goblin on your shoulder is still pitching the fantasy like he works on commission.

Because you know now that connection and compatibility are cousins, at best, and sometimes they barely speak at family gatherings. You know chemistry can be biology, timing, projection, trauma, loneliness, lust, or two nervous systems recognizing a familiar wound and calling it fate… cute little cosmic scam, honestly.

The Problem With Doing the Work

The real issue with dating now is that once you have done the work, you start looking for someone who has also done the work, and that narrows the field from “endless possibilities” to “possibly three people and one of them lives in Greenville.”

People are out there swiping, flirting, performing, curating, trying to be chosen before they have even figured out whether they like themselves sober, alone, and without a flattering angle. They say they want intimacy, but mostly they want access without inconvenience. They want depth, until depth shows up with eye contact, follow-through, and a few inconvenient questions. They want love, but they also want the emergency exit clearly marked in case love asks them to become emotionally responsible adults.

And then, if you are lucky or stubborn enough, you eventually do the work. You sit with yourself long enough to realize the call is coming from inside the house. You unpack your patterns, stare down your own bullshit until it starts making uncomfortable eye contact, and slowly begin to understand that no one was ever coming to complete you because, wildly inconvenient as it turns out, you were never actually incomplete… which sounds peaceful in theory… in practice, it can feel lonely as hell.

Because now you are looking for someone who can meet you in the present moment without quietly auditioning you for the role of therapist, parent, savior, dopamine source, emotional support Labradoodle, or unpaid contractor in the renovation project of their self-worth.

You want someone whole enough to share a life with you, instead of someone quietly asking you to become the life raft… and maybe that is the point.

Alone in Truth

Maybe the work was never about becoming easier to love by more people. Maybe it was about becoming honest enough to notice when something looks like love because it feels familiar, when attention is just attention, and when chemistry is really just your nervous system trying to reopen an old case file like CSI Little Rock.

Maybe the real freedom is learning to stand inside your own fullness and say, with a little more peace and a little less panic… I do not need someone to fill me… I want someone who can meet me here… and until then, I would rather be alone in truth than partnered in illusion.

Gina is hot!

Deevo is a brand storyteller, speaker, coach, and founder of The Brand Storyteller. His work lives at the intersection of identity, storytelling, personal development, and human behavior, helping people understand who they are, what they are here to build, and how to communicate it with more clarity, depth, and resonance.

He writes about branding, relationships, reinvention, psychology, and the beautifully inconvenient process of becoming more honest with yourself.