23F here. my last serious relationship ended a little over a year ago, and I thought he was the one but he obviously didn’t feel the same. It was a really rough breakup but I eventually got over him, didn’t really have a rebound or anything and took some time for myself. A few months after I started to date again. I don’t meet a ton of people naturally so I resorted to dating apps. I know that a lot of people on those apps aren’t the greatest and it’s hard to find the good ones, but I just got ghosted so many times, some after dating for a few weeks and was seemingly going really well. basically, from my last relationship and all of these ghosting situations I’ve developed some trust issues that I’ve never had before. It especially doesn’t help that I have anxiety and go through depressive episodes a lot. The last few months during quarantine, I gave dating a break and deleted my apps and basically just took time for myself and wasn’t actively searching for anything. Recently, I’ve talked to a few people online that I met through various subreddits, and every time, the person expressed that they liked me and and we would talk for a while so I got comfortable and began talking about my past a little bit (nothing too crazy like constantly talking about my ex, but did mention it and also the ghosting situations but didn’t talk about trust issues or stuff like that) and they each said stuff about how they hate ghosting and will be honest and all that Jazz. I started opening up a lot all for them to do the exact thing they said they wouldn’t- ghost. and always after we would voice chat for hours and at the end say wow that was really nice I’d love to do it again. I’m just so exhausted, I feel like I’m afraid to say anything about myself or have those deep conversations because they’ll end up ghosting or start to obviously show their lack of interest in their messages. I’m starting to feel extremely discouraged to even reach out to people anymore. I’m pretty introverted, so it’s hard enough as it is for me to even want to talk to people and get to know them and form that bond. I know a lot of people talk about how you need to love yourself before you can love someone else, and while I don’t love myself, I don’t hate myself either. I know that I’m attractive enough, I know that I have good qualities, but it’s starting to hurt and affect me more than it should when someone gets my hopes up and leaves. This is starting to be a really long post and if you’ve read this far, thank you. I needed to vent, but also if you have any advice for continuing trying to date or anything like that, I would be very appreciative.
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