What It’s Like To Online Date After Cancer

If you’ve ever tried online dating, you may have experienced the phenomenon of meeting someone who didn’t quite look like their pictures. Maybe they grew a beard or started wearing glasses. Perhaps they looked significantly older than their photos.

For me, the difference was my hair. It was much shorter, darker and curlier than my photos—because of the chemotherapy required to cure my body of stage four cancer.

My world was shattered in November 2017, when I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at 25. Suddenly I had to make choices: Do I want to have kids one day? Can I take time off work? Do I need a will? I abruptly texted a guy I had started seeing a few weeks prior to tell him I had cancer and needed to press pause on dating as I went through treatment. He responded kindly and with understanding, expressing how sorry he was that I was sick. I saved the text in case we reconnected and made something of our initial chemistry. Sadly, no dice.

It took four months of chemo and more hospital stays than I’d like to remember to be officially in remission. But as many cancer survivors will tell you, life after cancer is usually harder than the treatment itself. You’re cleared to go back to work before processing the trauma of the disease. You must come to terms with your body feeling like it’s not the same one you had before. You don’t get daily reassurance from your doctor. And if you allow yourself to think about what happened for more than five seconds, you start to cry. That puts you in a difficult headspace when you want to start dating again.

My first few dates post-cancer were overwhelming because I was still adjusting to the new reality of my life. I craved the normalcy that came with being a young, single adult, but also lived with a lot of unresolved anxiety and fear. I couldn’t account for the last year of my life because all I had done was survive. I also had to endure the inevitable, “Oh, you cut your hair” quip from almost every guy I met. I started a tally in my head: 10 first dates, eight guys who asked about my hair, and four who asked why I cut it or alluded to the fact that I didn’t look exactly like my photos.

While these were valid comments, they required me to opt for one of two responses, neither of which felt great. The first—“Yes, I cut my hair”—was simultaneously a lie and an invalidation of the experience I had been through. The second response required me to drop a heavy topic in the first few minutes of meeting someone new: “Actually,” I’d say, “this chic curly look is thanks to chemo! Ever tried it?” I always felt forced to make a split-second decision that would drastically alter the trajectory of the date. And yet, I always went with the same choice, choosing to deflect and say simply yes, I had my hair cut. This felt like a betrayal, erasing the hard-fought battle my body had sacrificed my hair for.

With a little distance from cancer treatment and my hair back to its usual shoulder length and wavy texture, I had a different problem: when to share the fact that I’d had cancer. Initially I stuck to the same strategy and would wait to reveal the information. The problem with this approach was that I felt like I wasn’t truly being myself; it was almost as if I couldn’t authentically be myself with someone if they didn’t know this major thing about me. These few relationships ended, in part, because I was holding back. I can see now that I was worried about how they would react—would they see me only as the cancer girl, too broken and damaged to date? This dating pattern left me feeling hollow and defeated, and eventually I realized no, I should be feeling empowered and resilient. Cue: “Eye of the Tiger.”

Now I choose to bring my cancer journey up by the third date. I have even experimented with putting “cancer survivor” in my dating app bio, but in a sea of choices I think this small but vital detail is often overlooked. While some men have found convenient exit ramps after I share, others have reacted with kindness and have gently asked questions to learn how cancer has affected my life.

This new strategy works for me because I’d rather know early on if someone can’t respond to vulnerability with grace, or can’t understand the complexity of who I am. After five years, I am comfortable with the dichotomy of cancer not defining me, but also entirely shaping the direction of my life and my perspective on just about everything.

It is incredibly brave to put yourself out there after a health trauma and to share so vulnerably, and the right partner will recognize your courage even if your appearance has changed. We may be bruised, with cracks and scars on our hearts and minds, but we are also strong. We have survived the struggle and lived to see another day and another date.

I am currently in a new relationship with a longtime friend. He already knew about my cancer experience, so it felt safe and comfortable to talk to him about it. When I thought about our friendship over the last 13 years, I was especially struck by how kind he had been to me when I was sick. He went out of his way to get my address from a mutual friend to send a care package of books he thought I would like and regularly checked in via text. Far from the damaged girl with cancer, he makes me feel special, and I can’t wait to watch our relationship unfold from here.