Modern Dating 2025 Part 1: Reclaiming My Power and Trusting My Gut

What 24 dates taught me about intuition and self-worth

If there’s one thing no one can say about me this year, it’s that I haven’t put myself out there on the dating scene.

From January 2025 to June 2025, I went on 24 dates. Some of them were second or third dates.

All in all, I met with 17 different men. But that’s 24 times I’ve gotten dressed up, made plans to meet, travelled, conversed in small talk—or in deep talk—explored their world and exposed my own.

Since my last post about navigating the dating world, not much has changed. I’m still single, the dating apps are still a minefield and, save for one in-real-life encounter, people still feel more comfortable reaching out online than approaching you in person. But one big change has occurred: my attitude towards dating.

Why So Many Dates?

For me personally, this was a lot of dates in a 6-month span. When you consider I’m the type of person who needs to be alone to charge my batteries, fitting in 24 dates around my professional life, my hobbies, my morning and evening rituals, and catching up with friends and family, this was a big commitment for me.

To put things in perspective, last year, I went on 12 dates in total—so this was definitely turbo-charged.

There were many factors involved in my decision to just go for it. It was a mixture of feeling confident in myself—feeling ready to put myself out there without taking rejection personally—and believing that if you want something in life, you have to put in effort. I wanted to have the peace of mind that I’d put in effort instead of wondering about what could have been had I decided to not spend the night on the couch.

Most importantly, this time around I went in with curiosity, openness, compassion, and kindness, and vowed to remain soft no matter the outcome.

The Boy Who Flipped the Switch

At the beginning of the year, I spent about a month talking to someone. This might not seem like a long period, but when your daily life is void of romance, suddenly interacting with someone every day for a month feels like a lot.

Everything seemed rather promising—he was checking in daily and talked about future plans. My friends even asked if there was time for me to add a plus one to a wedding I was going to in May because it felt like things were moving in a serious direction. And then it all went tits up.

I was on a girls' ski weekend and he had been romantic and organised dinner for the following Monday at one of my favourite restaurants. He initiated it, taking care of the time and making the reservation—this should be the bare minimum when dating, but for the most part, dates are very “go with the flow.” I don’t particularly enjoy this as it doesn’t feel intentional—I appreciate when someone makes concrete plans.

Our messaging over the week and into the weekend indicated we were both eager to spend time together. Despite our Monday plans, we decided to spontaneously see each other that Sunday afternoon. As soon as I confirmed I could see him that afternoon, he cancelled dinner the next day.

His excuse was vague, asking if we could reschedule for Tuesday, but whereas he’d been concrete in plans before, now there was no mention of where and when to meet. Yes, it could be he felt meeting two days in a row was a bit intense—but given we’d had three dates in a row the week prior, it seemed unlikely.

My gut said he had found other plans for Monday. There had been behaviours that had set off my alarm bells long before, but they had been muzzled by my hope. Now they were loud and clear.

The Energy Shift

His messages entered new territory by expressing physical desires—they were rather innocent, saying he couldn’t wait to kiss me and cuddle me, but something felt off. As I got in the car to drive back to Zurich, I told my girlfriends I was feeling a little worried about his intentions—there was a nagging feeling in my gut, and in this new era of my dating life, I’m trying my best not to dismiss it anymore or explain it away.

My friends tried to soothe me, saying that no normal person would write to me every day, ask me to come with him to his family’s mountain house just the day before, and interact with me the way he had been doing if he wasn’t serious. I tried to take comfort in it and I used the line of reasoning that I wouldn’t do this to someone I wasn’t serious about, so why would someone go to such extremes if they weren’t either? But, just because your own moral compass isn’t fucked, doesn’t mean someone else’s isn’t.

As I parked my car in front of my apartment, his messages got sexual. I didn’t know what to respond. When I was slow to reply, he’d backpedal on his messages saying it was silly to say what he’d said. I didn’t want to shame someone for voicing their sexual desires, but as we hadn’t been intimate in that way yet, I was worried this was all he wanted and that our intentions weren’t the same.

I told him I was getting in the shower, to which he said I could just greet him in my towel. I didn’t respond. And again he backpedalled.

As I stood under the steady stream of warm water—my stomach and chest in knots as my subconscious clocked this wasn’t what I thought it was—I had a hard, honest conversation with myself. I imagined my younger self and felt a deep sense of responsibility to protect the young me.

Younger, naïve Amanda would have let him walk through the door and feed me whatever lines he’d need to, to convince me he was serious about me. Braver Amanda knew that she deserved more—that if he truly was serious about me, he’d soothe my worries.

All I knew was that ignoring the sinking feeling in my stomach and the wave of disappointment that was washing over me was no longer an option—with him or with anyone else. I’d usually hold onto the thread of hope that I was wrong, but I decided it was time to listen to my sixth sense.

Gently, I told him I was really excited to see him but that his messages were worrying me and I hoped we were on the same page.

Then he confirmed he wasn’t looking for anything serious. I immediately responded kindly but consequently and said that then we shouldn’t see each other anymore. And that was that, really.

Moving Forward

In hindsight, I could see the red flags. There had been a degree of love bombing and a false sense of intimacy was created by checking in on me every day, but there was never genuine interest in my life. I don’t think he ever asked me about my passions—my writing, my music—or dug into the depth of my personality or asked about friends and family.

We spent most of the conversations talking about his work, his passion for running, and his incessant bragging about how fast he was, using me to validate his physical appearance often. If he paid me a compliment, he always needed me to give him one back—which made it feel like he wasn’t genuine and was just paying me compliments so I would reciprocate and stroke his ego.

I hadn’t been appreciated; I was merely a vessel for him to feel good about himself.

Reclaiming My Power

The usual “not again,” “dating is horrible,” “it’ll never work out” thoughts came flooding, and then something interesting happened—a switch flipped.

Instead of continuing to wallow in self-pity and using this failed dating attempt as another piece of evidence to peddle narratives such as, “online dating is the worst,” “men suck,” or “you can’t trust anyone,”—I decided enough was enough.

I decided that someone I barely knew does not get to have so much power over my mood and does not get to rob my hope of meeting someone who is right for me or sully my perspective of men.

Don’t Move On Too Quickly, Don’t Move On Too Slow

I think it’s important to acknowledge emotional pain; nothing good comes from running from it. I’ve seen plenty of people where relationships/situationships end and, instead of taking a pause to reflect and grieve, they nose-dive into the next person who walks by (or matches with them) so that they don’t have to process the let-down and can momentarily get a confidence boost.

Think about it: how many times have you sat in front of friends and talked about heartache, and the immediate response is to tell you to get out there and have a fling—a little fun—to take your mind off of things?

If you decide to do this and the person on the receiving end of your attention is of the same mindset that it’s nothing serious, then go for it. But for the most part, I’ve found that this behaviour just ends up being reckless towards yourself and selfish towards the other person who may actually develop feelings for you while you’re just using them as a form of validation.

Many times, I’ve realised the man sitting across from me is just using my attention as a temporary fix. And it’s not a nice feeling when your dating intentions are genuine.

That said, if the encounter was brief, I think it’s important to not dwell on it for too long. I gave myself a couple of days to be sad and understand where the disappointment lay in this for me and what my lesson from it was, but then it had to end.

I wanted to recognise that this was someone I had only known for a month—that my instincts had been right and I hadn’t really lost out on someone—so giving them more energy than they deserved was a disservice to myself. My lesson was to listen to my gut sooner.

Gratitude Over Spiral

I also decided that dating could not take such control over my life that the other great aspects of it lost its shine. Even in the face of rejection and failed dating attempts, I don’t want to lose my joy for life.

With or without a man, I am whole and have a lot to be thankful for. I want my baseline to be proud of who I am and to be excited about my life, so I decided to act like it.

So what did I do? I threw myself into Deepak Chopra’s 21-day gratitude meditation challenge. And I decided to wake up every day grateful for the day ahead, to choose to radiate love, positivity, and peace instead of disappointment, bitterness, and distrust.

I was not going to let someone who had not met my needs take up so much of my precious time or send me into a negative spiral.

The Courage to Honour Your Needs

During a monthly Ayurvedic check-up, I spoke at length with Prachi, my practitioner, about my dating faux pas. I feel I’ve cleaned up a lot of areas in my life, but dating still requires some dusting.

Prachi gave me a challenge: instead of walking into dates hoping for a love match, walk into them practicing showing up as I want to be and voicing my needs. As soon as she said this, I felt an immense amount of pressure drop.

Walking into dates not thinking “I hope this is the last first date I ever go on” removed so much anxiety around dating.

Going in with the intention of showing up for myself, and treating these dates as practice rounds to do this, created another game changer for me.

In part two, I’ll reveal how I applied this new mindset. It hasn’t been a linear journey—but I’m getting there.

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