Ready or not…? Why you don't need to be “healed” to date

The night before, I'd been texting the guy I was dating. Like all conversations worth having when you're eighteen, it had turned into one of those deep chats about our hopes, dreams, and fears. Open, honest. Almost reckless, bearing all.

We were in that early stage of dating where everything feels significant because nothing has happened yet, and everything still might. Long walks, longer conversations, a lot of kissing, not much else. The kind of crush that feels literal, like your ribcage is closing in on itself.

When he admitted that he’d secretly liked me for years, I didn’t believe it. He was perfect. Handsome, kind, patient, funny, and sensitive—a guitarist with his sights set on traveling the world with his music. And he sent flowers to cheer me up when it wasn't even him who'd made me sad.

Because of this, I was certain that I wasn't good enough for him.

Not in a way that demanded reassurance. I just felt I knew. I ended things a few weeks later, without fully explaining why. I told myself I was being sensible. Mature, even. I thought that I wasn't ready because I wasn’t finished growing, that I came with too much baggage, that someone like him deserved someone less complicated, more healed.

What does healing look like?

Looking back, I realize I was scared of having something good and not trusting myself with it. Even more, I had decided what I could or couldn't be for him, before he got the chance to decide that for himself. I was operating with a mindset many of us still have: that dating is something which comes only after you’ve done the inner work—once you’ve healed your attachment style, fixed your finances, established solid boundaries, developed a morning routine, found a sense of peace, and finally learned to love yourself so consistently that anything else is a bonus. 

And if the internet is anything to go by, the list keeps growing: Eat well. Exercise regularly. Have hobbies. Have goals. Have savings. Be emotionally articulate. Go to therapy. Understand your patterns. Know your triggers. Learn to regulate. Be independent, but not closed off. Vulnerable, but not messy. Open, but not too needy. It all starts to sound a bit like America Ferrera's monologue in Barbie: a long list of requirements for becoming your best self that eventually begin to close off possibility rather than open it up.

Maybe that’s part of what feels strange about it, the way emotional readiness has become entangled with productivity, self-optimization, and the idea that love is something you earn once your life looks polished enough. But what does having your shit together actually look like? What does it mean to be healed?

I bought a house last year. I got my Master's degree. I run my own business. I have lovely friends—yes, I'm biased—go on a couple of vacations a year, remember birthdays. I'm relatively healthy, and can mostly keep plants alive. On paper, I look like someone who's got the adulting thing down.

Am I healed? I don't think so. But I am trying.

By 21, I had already racked up more than the average person’s fair share of trauma. My parents divorced when I was young. My sister got hit by a car and died at just nine years old (I was four). Between the ages of five and 20, I'd experienced four counts of sexual abuse by as many men. My dad was schizophrenic, and my mum had awful taste in partners.

Despite some of this manifesting as anxiety, PTSD, nightmares, and disordered eating, I was one of those children described as “mature for my age,” put into gifted and talented programs, and always praised for being "strong." But just because you carry something well, it doesn't mean it isn't heavy.

When I did start dating, I turned to people-pleasing habits: being understanding became over-accommodating; wanting to make someone happy meant abandoning what I needed; I found myself apologizing to the people hurting me; I found it impossible to simply receive care without feeling awkward or suspicious. On top of that, I had absolutely no boundaries whatsoever. By the measure of many, I was in no place to be dating. I did not have my shit together. But is it really that clear cut?

Still unpacking it: Being unhealed vs. being harmful

My first proper relationship lasted almost eight years, spanning my late teens and early twenties. For a time, it was everything. He was gorgeous, funny, creative, a little moody but in a hot way. Even lying on the sofa watching a film, our bodies slotted together like two perfect jigsaw pieces. He felt like home.

Over the years, though, things became harder. He was insecure, jealous, and I, in turn, would shut down in the face of any friction. We made up how a lot of young couples do: never really talking anything through. After adopting a dog and living abroad together, he broke up with me over dinner in Rome. Ah, yes, the city of romance.

As “The Winner Takes It All” played in the taxi to the airport, we both laughed and then cried. We never spoke again.

Looking back, it was not the healthiest relationship. We both had our own baggage, and neither of us knew how to communicate what we needed to without fearing it would blow everything up. I think we would have held each other back had we stayed together. But it was real and messy, and I'm not convinced that mess automatically means failure.

I have also dated people whose individual struggles became impossible to separate from the relationship itself. Where all the love and patience and understanding in the world couldn't disguise the fact that someone was emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, or simply not willing to face what they needed to face. An ugly truth I've learned is that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. You can love them, support them, make gentle suggestions, hold out a hand, but you can't do the hard bit for them.

And that matters, because there is a difference between being unhealed and being harmful.

If you know you are repeatedly hurting people, avoiding accountability, hiding behind someone else’s care, or expecting your pain to excuse hurtful behavior, that’s a red flag.

On the reverse, as therapist Rafaella Fiallo explains, “Being ‘unhealed’ does not automatically make someone a harmful partner. There's an important difference between being a work in progress and being emotionally unsafe. Someone can still carry insecurities, grief, or attachment wounds while also being capable of empathy, accountability, respect for boundaries, and genuine effort toward growth.”

“The goal isn't perfection before connection, but the willingness to grow within connection,” she continues. And that’s exactly the point: I’m unconvinced that anyone reaches a certain point of readiness at which love can finally begin without friction—or that anyone ever finds themselves completely, definitively “healed.”

Allowing yourself be a work in progress

At 31, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Part of that process helped explain things like my rejection sensitivity, dopamine-chasing, and why, when mixed with trauma, I have often found myself drawn to people and dynamics that feel all-or-nothing. At 32, I went back to counseling after a long conversation with my girlfriend about grief, my parents, life, and why putting myself first still felt oddly unnatural.

Somewhere in all of that, I learned that what I had always called “resilience” often looked suspiciously like low self-esteem, trust issues, and hyper-independence in a trench coat.

My therapist recently reminded me of a salient truth: there is a common belief that you need to be alone to heal, but it rarely works that neatly. You could be the most emotionally aware version of yourself while single, meet someone wonderful, and still find yourself triggered by something they say, need, or unknowingly wake up in you. Some wounds close, open, and close again. Nobody has it together all the time.

You can think you have dealt with abandonment until someone takes too long to reply, and suddenly, your nervous system has a completely different opinion. You can think you communicate well until you realize there are still things you soften, delay bringing up, or pretend don't matter because old instincts are quicker than new habits.

It’s not as sequential as the imperative that we must finish growing, and only then can we start dating. Very often, you grow because another person brings parts of you into view that solitude never could.

My girlfriend has only ever known the current version of me—the one who communicates well, has opinions, and knows what she deserves and what she won’t stand for. But that doesn’t mean I’m no longer growing, figuring stuff out, and learning each day.

I still convince myself that if something feels off, I should swallow it to keep the peace. I still mistake calm for boredom, and consistency for a lack of spark, finding familiarity in chaos. It's not that I haven't been loved deeply before, because I have. But this is the first time I have really allowed myself to be a work in progress without making myself solely responsible for somebody else's happiness and healing. And my girlfriend, who is more securely attached and open-minded than anyone I have previously dated, makes it possible for me to do this in partnership.

I am, somewhat inconveniently, both a massive people pleaser and a deeply independent person. I love loving, but I also need freedom. I want closeness, but not at the cost of losing myself. Unsurprisingly, I'm still working on that balance.

What we owe ourselves, and others

Being “unhealed” does not automatically make you a bad partner, a bad lover, or someone fundamentally unfit for intimacy. It might—sometimes—make you reactive, avoidant, over-giving, guarded, or easily frightened. It might make you human. Reactive behavior can hurt people if left unchecked, but it isn’t proof that you are unworthy of love, incapable of connection, or "broken" in some way. In fact, our “unhealed” parts can benefit from care, language, accountability, and practice inside relationships.

You can be healed and glad to be single. You can be partnered and still deeply in the thick of your own stuff. You can be dating multiple people and learning something different with each of them. You can be happily non-monogamous and still get triggered. You can be in a loving long-term relationship and still have parts of yourself that feel unfinished. You can have the most "together" life on paper, and still find connection difficult. You can be chaotic as hell and somehow in the healthiest dynamic of your life. None of it is as neat as wellness culture purports it to be.

And maybe that's the point. Maybe readiness is not a perfect state. Not something you achieve once and then keep forever. Maybe it is simply the willingness to be honest about where you are, to communicate what you can and cannot offer, to take responsibility for your patterns and triggers. Most of all, to let the people you're connecting with decide for themselves whether they want to meet you there.

Sometimes, ending a connection because you’re "not healed enough" may still feel wise. And if you decide you need to be solo to work on your stuff, that's your call. Some seasons of life can demand it. 

I don't think we owe the people we date perfection. I think we owe them communication, accountability, self-awareness, a genuine willingness to look at our own shit. And enough honesty to avoid deciding—on their behalf—that we are impossible to love before they've had the chance to choose for themselves.

Many of us are still learning in real time—how to stay or leave, how to speak, how not to confuse fear for instinct, how to let something good exist without immediately questioning whether we deserve it. Perhaps it is simply knowing you are unfinished, saying so out loud, that allows you to be where you are. 

Sometimes, that kind of honesty can open more doors than certainty ever could. If you want to meet people who are open to those conversations too, Feeld is a good place to start.