#84: Relationship Status: Unfiltered – No. 03
‘Ms. ABC’ is 36 and came out of a relationship a couple of months ago. She’s been using the dating app Hinge to get some dates but is bored of the whole process
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‘Relationship Status: Unfiltered’ is bold, yet gentle interview series speaking to people across the spectrum of romantic and sexual experience, from high school sweethearts and solo polyamorists, to swingers, co-parents, serial monogamists and asexual folk. Each conversation follows the same of questions, revealing what people really think about love, commitment, dating and desire; from the inside of these relationships themselves.
These ‘Relationship Status: Unfiltered’ take place as informal chats over videocall, and I record the audio so that I can pull the responses together for the Q&A format below.
‘Ms. ABC’
Describe your current relationship status (be specific e.g. married for [x] years / co-habiting with partner(s) for [x] years / single and dating for [x] months).
‘Ms. ABC’: I’m currently single. My last official relationship ended in September, so that’s only a couple of months ago. Still quite recent, really. I am dating, but I’m also in a strange in-between space where I’ve technically put myself on a dating app hiatus.
That said, I am seeing one person. We met before I decided to stop with the dating apps, so it feels like an exception. This is ‘my last exploration’ for the time being. We’re not together, exactly. There’s no label. We’re in that vague early stage where you’re getting to know each other, but nothing has been defined yet.
Are there any labels (e.g., monogamous, polyamorous, queer, traditional) you identify with in terms of relationships? How do you relate to those labels?
‘Ms. ABC’: My relationship to labels feels very fluid, and, honestly, more complicated than I think it needs to be. If you’d asked me this question a year ago, I would probably have said non-monogamous, or at least very interested in ethical non-monogamy. I still am, intellectually, and maybe somatically too. But I haven’t found myself in a situation where I’ve been able to practise it in a way that feels grounded. I think I’ve lost a bit of faith, though I’m not entirely sure.
Before I went on my current dating app hiatus, I was very explicitly putting out that I was looking for monogamy. That surprised me. I think monogamy is something I’d want to discuss more deeply with any future partner, rather than declaring it upfront as an identity. I don’t really know if I ‘identify’ with any one label now. It feels very relational, dependent on who I’m with, and what’s happening in both of our lives.
If I’m honest, confusion might be the most accurate answer.
A big shift for me recently has been becoming more aware of my age. I’m 36, and up until my most recent breakup, relationships felt a bit like “shits and giggles”. You know, exploratory, low-stakes. Now, I feel these socially generated milestones starting to carry more weight. Ideas about biology, fertility, children, and time are suddenly really loud. That’s unsettling, because so much of my core self wants to reject all of that. I know a lot of it is bullshit, but that doesn’t stop it from being pervasive, or from shaping the decisions we make.
In terms of queerness, I’ve only ever had serious relationships with men. I have a complicated, love-hate relationship with men, especially straight men, which doesn’t help. I’m deeply physically attracted to them in a way that sometimes feels like a curse. So again, context really matters. I think part of me believes that with the right person, a lot of these questions about labels would soften, or feel safer. Maybe I just haven’t found that yet. But I’m intrigued, and I’m open.
I feel nervous about using labels around queerness, because they’re so powerful and meaningful, particularly in the context of oppression and marginalisation. I worry about taking up space that doesn’t belong to me, especially because I’m straight-passing. Surrounded by very queer, very gay and trans friends, it can feel disingenuous for me to claim that label out loud.
And yet, when I read queer theory, especially queer poetry, I so often think, that is me. So maybe the truth is that I’m more tentative about naming it publicly than I am about feeling it privately. Because, in reality, yes, I am queer.
What’s the story behind your current situation (e.g. please describe how you got together with your partner(s) / decided to open things up / start dating again after a big break-up)?
‘Ms. ABC’: I had been in a relationship, though looking back on it now, it’s more accurate to say I was dating a long-time friend. For the first nine months, it was probably a situationship, something I’ve only just seen clearly with hindsight. Eventually, we moved into what we called a more ‘official’ relationship, but even that shift felt like it happened more in words than in actions. My partnership needs weren’t really being met, even though I was telling myself that they were.
The breakup itself wasn’t messy, but the circumstances around it were illuminating. At first, I was deeply sad. Now, I feel incredibly grateful for it. It became a huge catalyst, a proper light-bulb moment in how I date and relate to men. I needed to be ‘snapped out’ of a particular pattern, and I genuinely feel ‘snapped out’ of my old style of doing relationships at least for the time being.
My immediate response was to get straight back on the apps. Part of that was an age and time panic, with a huge a sense of “I need to do this now”. But it was also because I felt like I’d cracked the puzzle, or at least understood it intellectually, and I was keen to put that learning into practice. I also believe we heal through relationships, which makes it hard to know when to pause and when to keep going.
That said, I quickly found the apps incredibly boring. I didn’t have the physical energy to keep having boring text convos with people. I was thinking I’d much rather meet someone in real life, which is something I’ve told myself I want to get better at.
Still, I went on multiple dates with two men I’d met on Hinge early on after my break-up. While they were lovely, they weren’t right for me. And I felt surprisingly good about how quickly I could identify that. That felt important and reassured me that I wasn’t as desperate as my mind had been telling me I was.
Then there was one last person before I deleted Hinge. Our chat was good, but I was physically depleted and already planning to delete Hinge, so I questioned whether it made sense to meet him at all. In the end, we’d been talking for a week and had made plans for a drink, so I went. He turned out to be really refreshing, genuinely fun, and very different from my most recent relationship.
That’s where my curiosity is coming from now. He has qualities that feel important for me, both relationally and individually. I think I need to expose myself to a new kind of dynamic and see how it feels. He’s seven years older than me, very clear about what he wants, and for now, we’re just dating and seeing whether we’re compatible.
Have cultural, familial, or societal expectations shaped your relationship choices in any way? How?
‘Ms. ABC’: Yes. I mean, inevitably, cultural, familial and societal expectations have shaped my relationship choices, even when I’ve tried to resist them.
Historically, I don’t think I was very conscious of it. I’ve always been instinctively rejecting of heteronormative ideas, even before I had the language for that rejection. They just never felt right for me. In my twenties, especially my mid to late twenties, I felt this very somatically, particularly in monogamous relationships. Something about the way I was engaging felt gendered, scripted. Like I was performing a role rather than inhabiting something authentic. On paper, I was doing all the ‘right’ things, but in my body, it didn’t feel right at all.
One of the biggest things I’ve since been able to name is the expectation of deference. Looking back, so many of my boyfriends, especially in my late teens and early twenties, would constantly ask me: “What do you think?”, whenever we were deciding on something.
At the time, I, kind of, thought that they were being considerate, as they were bringing me into decision-making. Now it gives me the ultimate ick. What they were really doing was outsourcing decisions to me, handing over the emotional labour to me.
That constant need to sign things off, to reassure, to decide, it felt deeply mother-y. I don’t want that. I want things to feel equitable, but not like the weight of the relationship is sitting on me. That script is something I now feel very allergic to, of being emotionally responsible, deferential, endlessly accommodating.
What’s shifted more recently is how loudly societal expectations are speaking to me now, compared to before. That’s mostly about age. I’m 36, and questions around children feel less abstract than they used to. Sometimes I think I really want kids, sometimes I really don’t. But biology, timelines, and proximity to other people’s realities make it harder to ignore.
An ex-partner, who’s now a close friend, is currently going through a horrific custody battle, and watching that has been genuinely sobering. It’s made me realise how serious the decision of who you have children with really is. Far more serious than marriage, I think. Whoever you have kids with is someone you’re tied to for life, in one way or another. That awareness has made me want time. Years, ideally, to live with someone, see them in different contexts, understand who they are under pressure.
I know, of course, that nothing guarantees safety, you can date someone for twelve years and still discover they’re awful. Life happens. But I don’t want to rush into something because of panic or pressure. I don’t want to end up pregnant by someone I’ve known for a few months just because time feels like time’s ticking.
So yes, those expectations are there. I feel them more now than I ever have. But I’m trying to respond to them with care, rather than fear.
Looking back, are there patterns in how you typically form romantic and/or sexual relationships?
‘Ms. ABC’: Yes. This is actually what I’m actively trying to break.
I’ve come to realise that I date emotionally unavailable people. And through my own self-reflection, I’ve also realised that’s because I’ve had a level of emotional unavailability myself. I’m really attracted to the chase, to the feeling that I’ve won something. There’s a lot of ego in that, which is a pretty cringe realisation.
What I’m starting to understand now is that people are who they say they are the first time they show you. And that applies to me, too. I have to think about how I’m showing up and how I’m dating.
The pattern is basically this: I date someone emotionally unavailable. Then we go, “Oh, we really like each other”. Then they turn out to be emotionally unavailable. And then I’m surprised. It’s ludicrous. Rinse, repeat.
The last breakup made it impossible to miss. It was so extreme and so black-and-white that it felt almost sent from the universe like, “If you ignore this, you’re an absolute dickhead” because it couldn’t have been any clearer. With past relationships, there’s been room to explain things away, life, circumstances, timing. With this one, there was none of that.
What really shifted was being able to see my role in it. Instead of focusing on the other person, I could see what I did again and again. And once I saw that, I could apply it to pretty much every relationship I’ve had over the last ten years. Therapy helped me get there, but honestly, by that point, it was just fucking obvious.
After how long did your current relationship become sexual?
‘Ms. ABC’: Four hours.
[Almaz and ‘Ms. ABC’ laugh loudly]
That was our first in-person date. And interestingly, because I’ve been talking about doing things differently, with the other two people I dated around that time, nothing sexual happened at all. I was really committed to this idea of ‘new’ dating. I was also on a whole thing about being sober, or sober-adjacent, or fully sober, and about sex not being part of it in the same way.
But it turns out I can only hold out for a few weeks before I eventually circle back to type.
[Almaz and ‘Ms. ABC’ laugh loudly again]
So… yeah. We’ll see.
How do your friends or family view your current relationship, and how does that affect you?
‘Ms. ABC’: I mean, it’s too early in us knowing each other to be able to answer this question.
What does commitment mean to you in the context of your current relationship(s)?
‘Ms. ABC’: I think commitment, at this stage, and really throughout any relationship, starts as early as possible with transparency about where you’re at. That can be very basic. If you’ve been on a date with someone, don’t ghost them. That, to me, is a form of commitment, especially at our age. It’s the bare minimum.
Once sex is involved, commitment also means being responsible around sexual health. Being safe. Being transparent and honest about your sexual landscape. All of that matters, because it allows everyone involved to make informed decisions about how things progress.
I’m genuinely open to different ways of doing relationships. I’m cool with people doing whatever they need to do, as long as it’s clear. For me, commitment isn’t about promises or labels at this point. It’s about honesty, communication, and taking responsibility for how your choices affect other people.
How many significant relationships have you been in (if particular casual sexual arrangements were significant to you in some way, please do include those types of relationships here!)?
‘Ms. ABC’: If I’m counting people, I would have actually introduced to others as my partner or boyfriend, then probably six or seven.
I’m only really counting relationships from my twenties onwards. It’s not that people I was involved with when I was younger weren’t significant. They were! But they don’t feel especially relevant to how I understand my relationships now. With those six or seven people, there was always a point where I thought, on some level, “This could go the distance.” Whether I really meant that or not at the time is another question.
There have also been a few people where the connection was significant sexually. But I struggle with that category. I kind of need things to become something, otherwise it feels a bit head-fucky for me.
I’m not really a fuck-buddies person. I’ve tried, and it never works. It either turns into something messy that probably shouldn’t be a relationship, or I just can’t do it at all. It’s too much for me. My little brain gets sad.
Previous posts in the ‘Relationship Status: Unfiltered’ series:
‘Mr. EFG’ is a 45-year-old married man who’s has been with his husband for 17 years in total and married for seven:
I share some more content from the interview with ‘Mr. EFG’ as verbatim audio clips and more transcript text where he answers the question: ‘Anything else that you’d like to add, please do share!’. ‘Mr. EFG’ and I talk about his fetish for lads in sportswear, which was influenced by the film Flash Gordon. Paywalled: To gain access to this post upgrade to paid:
‘Mr. XYZ’ revealed how the impact of media portrayals, particularly romcoms and lads mags influenced how he saw the cultural expectations of being in a relationship as an adolescent. We also chatted about the role of labels and the balance between personal freedom and relationship stability.
I share some more content from the interview with ‘Mr. XYZ’ as verbatim audio clips and more transcript text where he answers the question: ‘Anything else that you’d like to add, please do share!’. ‘Mr. XYZ’ and I talk about the influence of romcom tropes on how he views relationships. We also touch on how the current ubiquity of smartphones means that people look at their screens while on the street, rather than looking around them, or at other people. Paywalled: To gain access to this post upgrade to paid:
Become an interviewee in the ‘Relationship Status: Unfiltered’ series
I’m still looking for participants!
Whether you’re blissfully coupled, non-monogamously muddling through, figuring out life post-divorce, or proudly single and thriving, I want to hear from you!
What to expect:
– I’ll interview you via video call (or in-person if you live in Manchester, UK).
– You’ll remain completely anonymous (I’ll make up a simple alias for you).
– Your words will be transcribed and lightly edited for a Q&A-style feature.
– Bonus content from the best bits of our chat (short audio clips and verbatim transcription) will appear in a follow-up paywalled POSTSCRIPT mailout for paid subscribers only.
Want to take part?
Please respond to this email with a line or two about your current setup (you don’t have to go into detail, just a flavour!). I’ll get back to you with more info and some dates and times to have a chat.
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The ‘POSTSCRIPT’ segment for paid subscribers will drop on Wednesday 24 December and will feature extra verbatim text and an audio extract where ‘Ms. ABC’ answers the final question, ‘Anything else that you’d like to add, please do share!’ and
To receive this extra mailout you’ll need to upgrade to a paid subscription, which is either billed monthly at £3.79, or annually at £34.99.
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I’m Almaz Ohene, a Creative Copywriter, Freelance Journalist and Accidental Sexpert.
Visit my Work With Almaz page 😃
Watch my showreel highlighting the work I’ve been doing within the intimacy pleasure, intimacy and sex ed sectors.
Please do ‘like’ this post via the heart icon (❤️) that appears at the very top and bottom of this post, as it’s the best way to help others find my work.
If this project is something that you value, and want it to continue, readers are encouraged to upgrade to paid. With a paid subscription you’ll gain access to the content beyond the paywall and unrestricted access to the full archive of this newsletter.
Paid subscriptions are either billed monthly at £3.79 (less than a coffee ☕️) or annually at £34.99.
If you would prefer to make a one-off donation, feel free to send a contribution via PayPal.
You can also show your enjoyment without spending £££, by liking, commenting, restacking via Notes, or by just generally sharing 😃