I didn’t realise I was so awful to be around. Didn’t know that it was such a chore to speak to me. Well, if I’m so annoying and intense, then just tell me that, nobody forced him to spend time with me.

Unfortunately, these are all things I’ve said to my friends in the last few months because I felt stung by tedious ends to the few romantic situations I had been bothered to give my time to. And I’ve wondered recently whether I should be so frank on this blog about what’s going on in my life, for fear that it might turn future partners off, but then I recalibrate and I think, well I’ve tried numerous methods when it’s come to my approach with lads and it doesn’t seem to matter how cool I play it: if they’re going to do something annoying, then that’s inevitable.

Plus, most situations blur so much into one – whether they be relating to me or my friends – that it’d be difficult to tell who I’m talking about anyway. Dating at the minute feels so lame that I don’t need to be explicit with details to make it relatable.

I’ve been told by multiple lads, in different ways, that I’m too much. Some have literally said those words to me, whilst others have hinted but no matter the method, I heard them loud and clear. It hurt me for a while, I won’t lie, and I tried to hold myself back in situations by talking less or giving less of my personality to the moment for fear that my confidence, outspokenness, or lack of insecurity in showing my interest in a person might come off as ‘too much’. I’ve spent hours talking to my friends, stressing about whether I look crazy, simply because I want to see the guy I’m dating or I want to ask him what’s going on. After all, god forbid a woman be put under the ‘crazy’ umbrella.

When I wonder if I’m crazy, often all I’m doing is texting the person I’m interested in to ask to do something or to try to make them laugh. I’ve got no anxiety about saying what’s on my mind and I don’t care enough about the games (nor do I have the patience) to play them. If I’m interested, then I’m straight up about it; I’m not getting down on one knee or blowing up someone’s phone with a million texts or calls, but I’m clear. If I like a person then I want to do spontaneous fun sh*t; I want to hang out, go for a drive, cook food, find a cool exhibition, or go have some drinks at a place where we can play arcade games. I hold back my feelings for a while, and I don’t trust for a hot minute, but I don’t enjoy the dynamic where someone is chasing somebody else. It feels pointless to me.

So I have come to accept that maybe I am a lot to handle – as these young men have told me. I’ve got a big personality, I can be forward, and I’m very ready to give my all to a person if after we’ve spent time together I judge them to be worth it. But I’m tired of stressing about whether I’m ‘crazy’ just because I’m being myself, and it disappoints me to hear so many of my female peers saying the same thing about their dating experiences.

I’ve felt like recently, every time I date a lad, the second I start to ‘let my guard down’ and show myself as a person with complicated emotions, opinions, ambition, ideas, and imagination, that’s when I’m too much. Before then, when I’d shown my quieter side by listening to the person across from me and investing time in their lives, thoughts, and feelings, I was easier to handle. I was a face they liked to look at, a nice person to make them feel good about themselves, and someone they might want to sleep with. But when I began to want the person to get to know me, I’ve been told that I’m falling in love with them too much so they’re going to have to step away. Only, I don’t remember knowing them well enough to make that decision about my feelings.

I don’t like someone else thinking they know me or how I feel before they’ve taken the time to notice me as a person. One man, a few months ago, showed this so beautifully when after a month of properly dating each other he called me Beth. He’d spent hours and hours with me, slept in a bed with me, and spouted all the things about me he liked, only to get my name wrong as he told me he knew I could fall in love with him, but that he couldn’t with me. You know me so well you know my feelings, but you don’t know my name?

You have to laugh.

I’m a good person, I’d make a great partner, and I deserve to be shown the same respect I show these men. It’s not about having bad taste because my experiences aren’t unusual for the dating world at the minute – in fact, some have had much worse. And I’m sorry, but we can’t all have bad taste.

I don’t have a solution, I just keep moving and reminding myself that my friends and family think I’m great, so I can’t be that jarring to be around.