I’m Not Ready for a Relationship — at Least Not With You
By: Zita Fontaine
Tags: Self Improvement, This Happened To Me, Relationships, Love, Advice

I’m Not Ready for a Relationship — at Least Not With You

The truth behind the most evasive dating line

Image licensed from Canva

I’m not sure if it speaks volumes about my low self-esteem, my bad perspective on life or it describes my reality, but I have always thought that I was quite the unlucky one when it comes to romantic relationships. I have been dumped and ghosted, mocked and ridiculed, left without a word by people who I thought would stay in my life forever.

And while I don’t want to undo every break-up, I wouldn’t want to escape from the learnings of heartbreak, I tended to feel that I am always the one worth leaving.

Until recently…

I don’t know if I grew up or managed to obtain a more mature and more objective view on life, but I start to think that I am not always the one who is dumped or ghosted, I am doing it just as much — only I don’t realize how many opportunities end because of me.

I have heard the phrase “I am not ready for a relationship” only too many times, enough to fill a couple of books with desperate or hilarious love stories. All my dating fiascos, my terrible online dating experiences, my stories about ridiculous opening lines are sort of just dispersing into the mass of the people I ghosted, I dumped and I left on “read” forever.

But when it’s me doing it, I always know the reason. I know why I never replied. I know which line was the last straw. I know which funny attempt triggered my past traumas and raised some red flags.

It’s always nice to be the one who knows the reasons.

But life and relationships are not this simple. We don’t always get the answers, and sometimes we don’t even ask the right questions. We beat ourselves up about situations and people who don’t deserve it and we assign importance to events that are due to pure misunderstanding at the best, or plain stupidity at the worst.

“I am not ready for a relationship”. Such an evasive line. Such a lie. Such a horror to read it — because these days we never hear this anymore, we are left with a screen, a few words, and maybe an ellipsis that eventually goes away without further explanation.

I have read it a few times, and I wrote it myself even more times. But what does it really mean? Can it have some splinter of truth or does it always mean the worst, namely that you are not enough for that other one?

What does this sentence mean, beyond the obvious, that ‘I am not ready for a relationship with you’?

My feelings are not strong enough, but I don’t know how to say it kindly

Maybe you are a really great person. Maybe you are even amazing. Maybe it’s really not you, it’s me. But for some reason, I don’t have it in me emotionally to get into a relationship with you. Yes, I might be looking for a relationship, I am craving love and affection — but not from you, I am sorry.

Maybe you feel that we have amazing chemistry — and it can’t be faked, right? But I just simply don’t feel it. We can have a good time together, maybe we have amazing talks, we laugh a lot and maybe the sex is good too. But there is something missing. And while it sounds like a commonplace, it is missing from me. I can’t feel what I want to feel. I can be attracted to you and still, I might not want to get into a relationship.

It’s not your fault. I think it’s not mine either.

It’s just not happening. We might give it a try, but if the spark is missing, if something feels off, you need to take my word for it, I am not ready for you — or you are not who I want you to be.

But I like you and I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to suggest that you might not be good enough for me, because this is not the case. It’s just not working out, and I already know it.