I recently got back on the dating horse. After 4 or 5 months of “Please leave me the fuck alone. I am really, really not interested. Really,” I decided to slowly open the doors to emotional availability again.

As soon as the door was ajar, I felt overwhelmed.

Dating as a childfree woman can be very hard! I have been faced with many situations in which I hint at my childfree lifestyle early during our conversation, and then I get slapped back with the full force of pronatalist and patriarchal bullshit. There was a specific man I spoke to who basically told me that my life was worthless if I didn’t reproduce. This man, a scientist, literally said reproduction is not a choice but a constant of nature and the reason why I AM here.

It was exhausting. All the conversations, the efforts, the back and forth, the mansplaining… all of it.

I was very close to shutting that door and going back to my happy singledom when I met Mr. M.

His profile said something about living an unconventional life, and it gave me hope that he would be different to all the other dudes who were only looking for human incubators. 

I found out very quickly that saying you have an unconventional life is the fastest way to make me curious about it. It makes sense, doesn’t it, since being childfree is one of the most unconventional choices you can decide to embrace.

I have learned something new about me during these past couple of weeks, and it is to redefine sexy as much as I want. Ask any woman what they find sexy in a guy, and you will probably receive answers like their eyes, their kindness, their height, their intelligence, their voice, their smile, etc. As of a couple of weeks ago, I think the sexiest thing is a man who says, “I live an unconventional life, and I’m proud of it.”

Because even if they are not childfree, they will understand that life is too unpredictable and interesting to ‘conform.’

Isabel Firecracker is the founder and firebrand of The Uprising Spark, a platform designed to help modern, childfree women define and reach their life goals. She is a world traveler, an avid kitesurfer, and loves dogs. Pragmatic, no-nonsense life purpose igniter and host of The Honest Uproar podcast. Childfree intersectional feminist.

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