It’s funny how people can look at somebody who’s attractive, confident, social, and funny and automatically assume their romantic life must be absolute chaos. 😭 Like surely there are twelve people in the DMs, three dates scheduled this week, two backups, and an entire depth chart being updated daily. Meanwhile she’s ignoring almost everybody because the idea of starting another “so what do you do for fun?” conversation makes her want to put her phone on airplane mode indefinitely. Being able to get attention and actually wanting attention from a bunch of different people are completely different things. Some people genuinely enjoy dating around, meeting new people, and keeping things casual, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But other people can have plenty of options and still want absolutely nothing to do with the roster lifestyle. They don’t want ten people giving them 10% of what they’re looking for. They want one person giving them something real. One person they can be ridiculous with. One person whose hoodie mysteriously becomes theirs. One person they can call when something good happens, when something terrible happens, or when literally nothing happened and they just want attention. 😭 They want to be independent and capable in the rest of the world and then come home to somebody who makes it safe to be soft. That’s what “babied” usually means in this context anyway—not being incapable of taking care of yourself, but loving that somebody wants to take care of you sometimes. Remembering the tiny things. Bringing you food because you forgot to eat. Pulling you closer when you’re half asleep. Checking that you got home safely. Letting you complain about something completely insignificant like it’s breaking news. And maybe that’s why dating itself can feel so exhausting when what you actually crave is familiarity. You don’t want another impressive first date. You want the 200th ordinary Tuesday with somebody who knows you completely. So yes, somebody might have options. They might get attention everywhere they go. But having access to a hundred people doesn’t mean much when your heart is built for choosing one. Sometimes the person everybody assumes has the biggest roster is secretly just waiting for the one person who makes having a roster sound completely pointless. — TikTok @deeploneliness_