Building my romantic confidence

hi shame & fear

Growing up in Taiwan, I inherited a body of sexual shame so dense it metastasized into something larger — romantic shame.

The rules I absorbed without knowing I’d absorbed them: I wasn’t allowed to feel sexually attracted to someone before finding admirable qualities in them first. I felt guilty for noticing other people while already in a relationship. My desire was unholy. Sex could only exist as a sacred union. I could be beautiful, even wholesome, but not hot. And a woman couldn’t chase; she waited to be found.

shame is my big shadow

These beliefs made me a romantic conservative. Because desire and romantic interest arrive together, I learned to pathologize anyone who showed interest in me: they have no friends. They’re desperate. I almost never dated.

This year, I started dismantling it. I let myself explore what it felt like to be sexually present in a room. The discovery came quickly: I’m far more magnetic than I’d allowed myself to be. I don’t need an dating app. My emotional sensitivity gives me an accurate read on the energy between people, on the charm I generate without trying.

And yet, even as I reclaimed power in public, something in my body still held the old story when it came to romance. Inferiority, encoded in the muscles.

Last week, a friend set me up on a date calculated as a “perfect astrological match.” What they forgot to mention, until I was already in the car: she was polyamorous.

I’m already in the car.

Worse, the moment I saw her, something in me seized. She looked like every loud, politically aggressive, artistically confrontational white girl I’d navigated around in school. I immediately knew: she’d be opinionated, sharp-edged, and I’d spend the whole night walking on eggshells.

I was so overwhelmed and scared, the date, the noise of Dave and Buster’s, twenty screens, that I left in the middle.

Then something unexpected happened. My friends and the date came after me. We walked. We talked. And I was completely wrong about her. She was kind, genuinely curious, gentle in the way she held the world. Not aggressive at all.

What looked like a disaster was actually a hinge.

For the first time, I felt something loosen in me around who I could connect with, across gender, race, belief, culture. The belief I can only love a very small number of people had been built on shame, not truth.

A sense of ease moved through me. Something healed.

My scarcity didn’t have to govern romance anymore. Like friendship, I’ve never been scared of losing a friend or two, because I’ve always trusted that good people keep arriving. That same faith could live in romance, too.

Afterwards, first time in my life, I finally directly asked someone I’d had a crush for a long time on to go on a date, even though they barely texted me back.

And this time, I started to feel at ease. Their answer wouldn’t define me.

What I received: “My week is a lot. I don’t have the bandwidth to show up as what I’d want to.”

So it was never about me.

Why had I been rejecting myself preemptively, before anyone else had the chance?

I smiled. Because I know now, whoever I meet, however things go, I’ll have a rich life learning from different people. It is already a romantic journey.