In her mid-20s, Katie Heaney wrote Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date, a memoir about the frustrations of a millennial who is willing, but unable, to find a boyfriend. Or, as she wrote in an essay for the Cut, “Why I Decided to Believe in Dating Karma”:
It’s just that I don’t really date. I write about not dating. I’ve never had a boyfriend. It’s not that I don’t want one, at least in theory. (I’ve had lots of theoretical boyfriends.) It’s that I find the process of acquiring one mystifying, anxiety producing, and often a little terrible. So I avoid it. This, my roommate tells me, is bad “dating karma.”
As luck would have it, the karma worked out — but only after she switched her OkCupid profile from “interested in men” to “interested in women.” She’s now been with her girlfriend, whom she considers her first serious relationship, for a year. In this week’s episode of the Sex Lives podcast, she discusses discovering her sexuality as an adult, reconciling her well-documented past with a new reality, and dealing with the sexual version of imposter syndrome.
Listen to the episode here.
