Don't Ask Me What I Seek

What I'm Actually Doing Here

I'm not on a dating app to meet a man's sexual needs. I'm celibate. I'm not interested in casual sex, and I'm not interested in flings. I date casually, and I know when I'm ready to call it exclusive. But casual, for me, has never meant careless.

Here's what I'm doing instead. I'm screening for who I'd become with this man over the long run. Not who he is on a first date. Not who he is when he's trying. Who I become, sitting across from him, five years in. That takes time to see. It can't be rushed, and it won't be rushed.

When I see growth is possible with a man, I take it further. That's when exclusivity comes up. Not before. And exclusivity is a conversation, not an assumption. If he isn't seeing anyone else and wants that with me, good. But that conversation doesn't unlock a bedroom. It unlocks a beginning.

I don't catch feelings in casual dating, because casual dating was never asking me to.

The relationship gets consummated once I've watched him be exactly who he says he is while we're official and building toward longevity. Not before. That's not a punishment. That's the order things happen in when a woman actually values what she's offering.

This is my bio, word for word, on my dating profile right now:

"It doesn't matter what you want. This isn't a retail spot where you tell a woman, 'I'm seeking a relationship, and I don't want games or drama.' What you really want is to meet and see if there's sexual chemistry. God forbid a woman is just getting to know you while exploring her options.

Don't ask what I'm looking for on here. Whether a husband or a f*ck buddy, you'd still have to qualify for the role! So, don't ask me what I seek to find out if you qualify. I'm not handing out the playbook."

Here's why I wrote it that way.

My dating profile doesn't ask what a man is looking for, and it doesn't tell him what I'm looking for either. Every man has the same line ready. "I'm seeking a relationship, and I don't want games or drama." It sounds like intention. It's really a password, and once he says it, he expects the door to open. What he actually wants is to meet me and check for chemistry, and if I'm still getting to know him while I explore my options, suddenly that's a crime.

So I don't ask a man what he seeks, and I don't hand him mine either. Whether I'm looking for a husband or something far less serious, he'd still have to qualify for the role. Telling him which one it is only hands him the answer key. I'm not handing out the playbook. He has to show me who he is without knowing which version of himself I'm grading.

The playbook isn't a secret. The playbook is a standard, and standards only feel like secrets to men who can't meet them.

On Men Who Assume

A man swipes right, and somehow that swipe comes with an expectation. He assumes I owe him my attention now that he's picked me. He assumes I exist to meet his needs simply because we matched. I didn't sign up to be a stranger's emotional or physical service. A match is an invitation to a conversation, not a contract.

Part of this comes from something bigger than any one man. There's a loneliness spreading through men right now, heavier in some communities than others, and a lot of them are trying to solve it through the first woman who responds. That loneliness isn't my responsibility to fix. I won't be recruited into curing it.

And then there's the man who, the second I hold a standard he can't meet, tells me "that's why you're single." He says it like a weapon. It isn't one. I'm single because I choose to be, until the right man makes it worth changing that. I'm not scrambling for a seat at a table. I built my own table.

I'm not interested in a man who believes a woman's value runs on a clock, or that being selective makes her the problem, or that men hold all the leverage in this simply because they can be less discerning about who they let sit across from them. That thinking isn't confidence. It's a script written by men who've never had to earn what they think they're owed. I don't operate off of anyone's script but my own.

The Dinner Date Nobody Questions

Then there's the man who lives states away and says, "I hope the distance isn't too far for you to travel." He's already decided I'm the one getting on a plane or in a car to come meet him, and he said it like it was a compliment. What the hell. That's not a man for me.

If a man is traveling from out of town and offers to treat me to dinner, I already know what he's thinking. He's thinking I'll end up letting him stay at my place after driving a hundred and eighty miles for a meet and greet. I'll send him right back home. I ask what happens after dinner, and the answer is always some version of "we'll just take it from there and see." See what? A hundred and eighty miles, and there's no plan past the appetizer.

Why can't that same man plan a day trip instead? Take me to a festival. Take me to a museum. Give me something with a beginning, a middle, and an end that doesn't require guessing what happens after. Instead men say dinner and a movie, like that's a whole day. Boy, bye. My first dates run an hour, maybe a little longer. What makes a man think I'm giving him five hours of my life when we just met?

The man for me books his own hotel room. He plans the entire visit himself, has it mapped out before he asks me to confirm a date, and he expects to sleep in that room alone. I'm not visiting a man in his hotel room. I'll do that for my man, the one I've already chosen, not a stranger hoping a plane ticket and a hotel key are enough to get him laid.

Distance is a Test Too

A man once told me a woman already knows if she'll sleep with a man within the first five minutes of meeting him. I think that's exactly why men default to dinner for a first date. Dinner is evening. Evening is dim lighting, a glass of wine, and a clock that's already pointed toward night. If a woman knows in five minutes, then the whole set-up of the date was never about getting to know her. It was about setting the stage for whatever comes after the check.

I only go to dinner with my friends. We talk about anything. We laugh at everything. We cry if we need to. We show up for each other's emotional intimacy, not a performance. So why does a man I've only spoken to on an app default to inviting me to dinner?

You have an entire day off, whether it's the weekend or a day you're not at work. Daylight. Hours to spend. And you plan to meet a stranger in the evening instead? I don't understand it, and I don't accept it either.

Talk To Me, Not At Me

Men who don't speak a lick of English message me on these apps constantly. Translated one-liners, broken sentences, sometimes just a string of emojis standing in for a whole conversation, and then somehow the affection arrives faster than the vocabulary does. "Beautiful," "my queen," "I want to marry you," all within the first few messages, before he's said a single true thing about himself. That's not romance moving fast. That's love bombing, and it's the biggest tell there is. And I have to ask, why an American Black woman specifically, when there's already a wall between us before either of us says a word that means anything? I know what I think it is. It's citizenship. It's a green card wearing a compliment. A man doesn't need to speak my language to know what an American passport is worth, and he doesn't need much vocabulary to call a stranger his queen either.

And here's the part that gives it away every time. "Grand rising, queen." "GM, queen." "Hello, goddess." "Good morning, my love." That is not how these men actually talk to women. Nobody's real voice sounds like a greeting card. It reads like a script, because it is one, copied and pasted into a hundred inboxes before mine, and half the time it feels like his representatives are putting in overtime and he hasn't said a genuine word himself.

Courtship runs on conversation. It runs on the back and forth, the inside jokes that build slowly, the moment a man says something and I catch exactly what he meant underneath it. None of that is possible through a translation app, and it was never supposed to be the point in the first place. I'm not a stamp on somebody's paperwork. If a man can't talk to me, he doesn't get to marry his way through me.

Swiping Isn't a Backstage Pass

Men get offended when I won't hand over my phone number. Then comes the question, why am I even on a dating app if not for that. I talk on the app. That's what it's for. Swiping on someone doesn't come with a rule that says I owe him a date, and it definitely doesn't come with a rule that says I owe him direct access to my phone. He's assuming a swipe fast-tracks him straight into my personal space, and it doesn't.

And notice the double standard. These same men will take whatever they can get from every woman they're talking to at once, multiple numbers, multiple conversations running at the same time, no problem. But a woman isn't allowed to do the same. Swipe on him, and suddenly she's supposed to be all in, only him, nobody else in the rotation. My life isn't built to hand my number to every man who swipes right.

I tell them straight. I compartmentalize. I'm not doing some of you on the phone, some of you in Facebook Messenger, some of you over email, juggling different men across different platforms like it's a job. That's insane. My number, my personal space, that level of access belongs to the people already inside my life, my friends and my family. A man doesn't get that same access just because we matched. He earns it, on the app, the same place he found me.

What I'm Not Doing Here

Ask me what I've already decided. I know exactly who I want. I know exactly what disqualifies a man before the first date ends. I'm not confused, and I'm not negotiating that clarity down to make anyone comfortable.

The man who's for me won't need the playbook explained. He'll already be living by one of his own, and it will look a lot like mine.

Becoming What I Want

I don't date men who smoke. I don't date men with children, and I know how that sounds, so let me say why. Children come with growing pains and a co-parent, and his finances are already committed to another household before they ever reach mine. If his children live with him, I'm not interested in visiting his home and performing a version of myself built to be the perfect fit for their father. Small children attach their hearts fast. Teenagers have opinions, and those opinions are worse. I'm not signing up to audition for either.

I'm not interested in a mama's boy. I'm not interested in a man who is financially unstable and looking for a woman to be his safety net. I will never be asked by a grown man for money. My brother has never asked me. My male friends have never asked me. A man I'm dating who needs me to help hold up his life is a man I'm no longer attracted to. That need doesn't inspire loyalty in me. It kills desire.

I prefer educated men. Not credentialed. Educated. A man who can learn from being connected to me, or there's nothing here for either of us.

I call myself a sapiosexual on purpose. I need a man whose opinions bend when the facts don't support them. A man who leads with feeling and refuses to be corrected by evidence is a man I can't grow next to, and if I can't grow next to him, he can't grow next to me either. That's not chemistry. That's a stalemate.

I can't get turned on by a man who lives in his emotions too. Feeling everything and reasoning nothing isn't depth, and it isn't attractive to me. And if I can't learn something from him, sharpen my own thinking against his, walk away from a conversation seeing something I didn't see before, then there's nothing pulling me toward him. My attraction runs through my mind before it ever reaches anywhere else.

So, Don't Ask Me What I Seek

I'll say this plainly. I'm fat right now, and I don't want to be. So why would I want an unhealthy man across from me? I want a fit man. I want a man who moves his body and takes care of it, because that's a reflection of discipline everywhere else in his life.

This is the season I'm focused on my own health and my own beauty. Not to perform for anyone. To attract what I actually want instead of matching what I currently am. If I want a fit man, I have to become fit. You can't stand still and expect the person you're calling in to meet you somewhere you haven't gone yet.

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Camille D. Ford

Journalist | Author | Playwright

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