Oh, I Hate Dating!

In the very first solo episode of Oh, Good Grief!, host Taylor Parise opens up about one of the stranger and more complicated parts of grief: dating after losing a parent. From awkward conversations to overthinking when and how to share such a huge part of her life, Taylor reflects on the emotional weight that grief can bring into new relationships.

She talks about how losing someone so significant can take up constant brain space, even in moments that are supposed to feel exciting or lighthearted. Taylor also explores the guilt and hesitation that can come with telling someone new about your loss — and the fear of placing something so heavy onto a person you’re still getting to know.

This episode dives into the complicated intersection of grief, intimacy, and connection, and what it’s like trying to build relationships while carrying such a life-altering loss with you every day.

New episodes drop weekly. You can find Oh, Good Grief! on Apple Podcasts, and on Instagram @oh_goodgriefpodcast

Transcript

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I think he wanted me to say I watched the notebook last week, and I cry every time I watch that movie too, but I just don't think if you're not prepared for a serious conversation, do not ask a person when is the last time they cried. Hello and welcome to Oh Good Grief, where we talk about death, devastation, and grief. But we're gonna try to make it fun. Today we are doing a solo episode. It is just me sitting here in my home chatting with you. When deciding what topic I wanted to cover when I was first creating this podcast, I kept coming back to dating. I feel like my mom thinking about her dealing with grief, it's come up a lot in my dating life, more than I thought it would. And when I was trying to find someone to come on the episode to discuss this topic, a lot of my friends who had lost their parents as well said that they didn't really date after they didn't have a lot of experiences doing so. So I figured why not come on all by myself and talk to you about what it has been like dating through grief. It's been a journey. Let's talk about it. So my mom passed away when I was 24. I've been single my entire life. I call myself a serial first dater. I'm constantly going on dates, trying to find a person, it hasn't worked out yet. And then again, in my early 20s, in the middle of probably my busiest time dating, my mom passed away. And that kind of stops you in your tracks a lot. So I took a little bit of a break from dating, obviously. And when my mom passed, the first thing I turned to was podcasts and books and videos of people talking about their experience. And I didn't really find a lot on dating when I was doing that. But there was this one specific podcast where a girl came on and she was chatting about losing her dad in her 20s. And her dad, she lost him pretty close to around the same time I did. It was a year before me, but it was in September. My mom also passed in September. And she talked about meeting her partner in October, just a month later. He was a really big support system for her. It was very unexpected. She wasn't trying to jump right into dating immediately, but for her it worked out. And something in me wanted that too. I really wanted an extra person in my life. I wanted an extra layer of support. And so probably a month or two after my mom passed, I got right back on the apps, which maybe wasn't the best time. And the apps were already not working for me. So I don't know what made me think post-losing my mom, it was all of a sudden gonna magically work, but it did for this girl on this podcast. So I wanted to try too. Well, we are two years later, about two years later, and surprise, I'm still single, and it has not worked, and it's actually been a really interesting experience because a lot of what came up on dates, dating kind of stayed the same. Which I don't think it should have. It's a weird thing to bring up that I lost my mom to anyone, even to friends, when I'm feeling like I need to talk about it. It's a hard thing to bring up because it's an uncomfortable topic and it's something people don't necessarily want to hear. And even if they do want to hear and they do want to support you, they don't know what to say. So finding a time to bring it up when you're dating someone is even more uncomfortable because you don't know how they will react to those things yet, and you don't know what they've experienced. And some people who have lost close ones in their life don't like to talk about it the way I do. I've spoken about grief to people who also lost their mom or their dad and they didn't want to talk about it. So it's just a hard thing to bring up, and you don't want to uncover unsurfaced memories for people who didn't want to be triggered that day. So it's been tough dating. I'll start from first dates. Um for some reason, when I go on dates and we're doing the song and dance of who are you? What do you do for a living? What are your hobbies? What are your friends like? Eventually it's going to happen. They're gonna ask about your family. It happens every single time. How many siblings do you have? What are your parents like? Are you close to your parents? It never fails, it always comes up. And I play a little game where I talk in the past tense about my mom. I never come out and say that she passed away. I don't ever want to make people uncomfortable, and I always feel like that will. So instead, I just talk in the past tense. Oh, my mom and I were very close. Oh, her favorite drink was a margarita. She was a teacher. And I try to see if anyone will notice that I'm not talking about her in the present. So far, two years later, probably 20 dates later, no one has caught it. And uh I pretty I'm fairly certain all the guys I've dated have not experienced loss. It's kind of crazy because so many people in my life have lost parents or siblings. And so it's interesting that I've somehow managed to date the 20 guys in Los Angeles who have never experienced loss, or at least don't seem like they have. Guys also don't come forward with things in the way girls do, and to be fair, I wasn't bringing it up either. So maybe they had, but when I hear someone speak in the past tense about someone, I immediately know or assume or ask questions, and that just hasn't happened yet. I remember this one guy I was seeing, it was probably our third date, and he had spoken about his mom in the past tense. Oh, she was drinking and she liked to do this and she liked to do that. And at first I was like, oh my goodness, he's lost his mom too. How horrible. We can talk about it. But before I asked why he was speaking in the past tense, I had a feeling I should just keep listening. And it turned out he was speaking in the past tense because his mom used to drink and now she no longer does. So thank goodness I didn't say, Oh my god, is your mom dead? Mine too, let's bond. Because his mom was very much alive. So I him, he was probably the guy I'd gone out out with the longest since I first started dating. We'd probably gone out six times and it never came up. I I never knew how to bring it up, it never came up. But it was something that occupied my brain space every single day, and it continues to do so. This is where I'm like, I really need to bring on a therapist or something to one of these episodes because I would love to sit down and talk about how to navigate dating while going through grief. I can do story time, I can talk about how I've experienced dating, but I really don't have any advice. And I would love some. So please reach out if you have advice. If you're a therapist who wants to come on here and talk to me and talk me and everyone else through dating after loss, you know, hit me up. Please call me. Let's let's do an episode. Anyway, it does take up a lot of brain space. I think about it every date. And I I don't know if that's a normal thing or if it just means I'm not ready to date. But in the last four months, I've actually been dating a lot more intentionally. I feel like there has been this huge desire to find a person, to find a partner, to share these things with someone that I can always talk about what I'm thinking and feeling with. And they have to listen because they're my person. Even with friends, it's it's hard because I'll go through days or weeks where all I want to do is sit in my grief and talk about it and share stories about my mom and be sad. And but I don't want to put my friends through that. And so maybe that's not an unhealthy thing that I want to find a person that I can do those things with, but that's just kind of been my experience. Another thing I think a lot about when I'm like, who is my perfect person? Who is who do I want to be a my partner, who would make a good partner for me, is what I want my other person's family dynamic to be like. I thought about that before I lost my mom because I have some weird, I have a complicated relationship with my dad, and I always pictured myself being with someone who had a healthier family dynamic versus my very complicated one. Because balance and it would be nice to marry into someone where you've got a larger family. But now that I've lost my mom, I think there's no one who understands me better than my friends who have also experienced loss. So when finding a partner and navigating dating, I always wonder if I'll ever be able to fully open up to someone who doesn't know what that's like, which is difficult because I don't want anyone to be in the position that I'm in. And I think, and no one will ever replace my mom, but there is that little part of me that thinks that if I marry into a family, a guy who's close with his mom, like I'll get to have a female figure in my life going through important moments with me, moments that my mom won't be able to be there for. And yeah, that's a weird thought. And I don't know, when you when you lose your mom, I think you're you're constantly looking for people to fill holes that she had filled. So I'm in this weird thing where I don't know what is better to have someone who really understands what you've gone through, or to have someone that can introduce you to new people that can fill those voids in your life. And like I said, no one will ever replace my mom, and those holes will always be there, I'm sure. But I'm a collector of humans and friends and people, and I think that the more people in my life to support me and for me to be there for, the better, the fuller. So that is also something that's come up a lot when I'm navigating, finding a person and dating. And speaking of therapists and probably needing to have one on the episode, I actually have not gone through therapy ever in my life. Um, when my mom passed, my brother was already in therapy, and my sister quickly sought it out. So my brother went to more traditional therapy for anxiety and different things, and then it was beneficial that he had a therapist through losing my mom. But my sister sought out spiritual therapy, she's Catholic, and I think that helped her a lot with navigating difficult emotions. And my personal thing I've been doing, which I'm sure is probably not the right way, is talking to anyone and everyone who will listen and being very open about it and my to those in my life. But I do think, especially as I'm talking about this right now, therapy probably is something of course it's beneficial. I think everyone should go through therapy, should I think everyone should seek out therapy. Um, and I'm a hypocrite for not having done it, but I do think there's a lot of skills that I probably needed before I lost my mom in dating that I now need even more because I am 26 now and I am still single. So that might be a good avenue to seek out. So, overall, when I'm out here on the apps, at the bars, meeting new people, I think it's kind of been a repeat of the same thing. Getting to know someone, never fully opening up and things just not working out. I think I have a fear that talking about my grief will be a burden to someone and they won't like me as much, which if it is the right person, that is not how they're going to approach it. They're not going to drop me because I'm sad sometimes. So I think maybe something I can work on and something I should work on as I go into my next date is being a lot more open and being as honest as I am with everyone else in my life and talking about these things right off the bat. Maybe if I get it out of the way, dating won't be as hard and I won't feel as superficial as I'm navigating these conversations. So yeah, let's set that goal for myself from now on, or at least on the next, let's say three dates, maybe I try to find a way to bring it up and just get it out in the open and see what dating's like after the person knows, hey, I'm a person that this happened to. I lost my mom and I'm sad sometimes and it sucks. What about you? How are you doing? I'm gonna give that a try, and then I will hop back on here and give you all an update and tell you whether or not that fixed the problem or if I really do need to go seek out therapy, which again, probably should. All right, so I am not going to be escaping the segment of my podcast. I am going to share a story with you guys today. It's not a long one, but it is something that has happened to me on multiple dates that I find infuriating. And it is the only time I've ever brought up the fact that I lost my mom on a date. So let's get into it. Just to make things simple, I'm gonna talk about a time that this has happened once, but this has happened I think twice, possibly three times, definitely twice. However, I was seeing this guy, it was our third date. We were sitting on a couch in a bar in a quiet corner, we were just chatting and we were asking questions, like like 20 questions, random, random things. And he asks me, When was the last time you cried? And I think that's the dumbest question you could ever ask someone because what I don't think you're prepared for that answer. And I knew he wasn't prepared for that answer. Who I don't want to know about the last time someone else cried unless they want to share it with me. I'm not gonna force them to share it. Anyway, I told him, well, but not without warning. First, I was like, You do not want to know. And he's like, No, I do. Like, when's the last time you cried? And I was like, I I I mean, I don't I cried last week, and he was like, Oh, why'd you cry last week? And I'm like, dude, I'm telling you, you do not want to know. And he's like, No, I do tell me. And I was like, I because my mom died two years ago, and so I cry a lot. And he was like, his face just went in shock. And he was like, Oh, and I was like, Yep, I told you you didn't want to know, but yeah, I cried last week because my mom is dead. So when's the last time you cried? And then I kind of blacked out after that. I don't remember what he said, but we moved on very quickly. It was clear that he wasn't comfortable by that topic of conversation, and that is okay and that is understandable, but do not ask that question if you are not prepared to get a serious answer. Crying is a serious thing. I mean, yeah, some I think he wanted me to say I watched the notebook last week, and I cry every time I watch that movie too. But I just don't think if you're not prepared for a serious conversation, do not ask a person when is the last time they cried? It's weird, it's insensitive, I don't know, not my favorite, but that that has happened to me, like I said, at least twice. And it is the only time I've ever brought up my mom on a date because that is typically the reason for my crying. Thank you all so much for tuning in and bearing with me in this solo episode, my first solo episode ever. I would love to hear your dating stories, what you're going through as you're dating through grief. I'm not sure I had any good advice for you in this episode, but maybe you can relate to some of the things I said, like immediately jumping into dating right after losing someone, trying to fill those holes, even though it's kind of an impossible thing. Maybe you also play the past tense game. Has anyone ever noticed you doing it? And also, I'm sure we can all relate to our grief, taking up all of our brain space, especially when we're in those settings on dates, when we're trying to get to know someone, but we don't know how to share everything. Again, thank you so much for listening. Please go find me on Instagram at TaylorParis or at O underscore goodgrief podcast. And I will chat with you again next week as we talk all things death, devastation, and grief. Goodbye.