Embracing Casual Romance Amid Life’s Chaos and Personal Expectations

Navigating the Madrid dating scene can feel like strolling through a tapas bar at midnight — tantalising, yet overwhelming and everything is a couple of hours past its freshness. And amidst the swirl of romantic possibilities, I found myself at a crossroads. Dating had become a chore, a tiring pursuit of “the one,” leaving me feeling more burnt out than blissful.

I preach to all my friends never to stop dating indefinitely. You can get fixated on your ex or the crush you drool over becomes an image of perfection and unattainability. Dating regularly allows you to understand how many potential matches there are in the world and stops that feeling that Disney placed in our hearts of there only being one happily ever after.

Work for me needs to take precedence, and acts as a convenient excuse to dodge the complexities of romance. I have been growing recently and new opportunities have started to arise and while these projects are moving forward I need to jump on the bandwagon. But deep down, I know I crave companionship if more than my friendships, even if it means deviating a little from the script.

Enter my current beau — kind, caring, and refreshingly incompatible when it comes to our future goals. Normally, that misalignment would sound the dating death knell, but there’s something liberating about embracing the present without fixating on the future.