How to overcome extreme dating anxiety?

[StartingAgain33]

I am by nature an anxious overthinker. Add to this the fact that I'm now back in the dating pool, 35, female and wanting to find the man that I settle down and have babies with and I am reaching what I think is the zenith of an extremely unhealthy pattern of not being able to see the wood for the trees and stressing myself out needlessly. Please help.

Dating history: quite a few long-term relationships, some lovely and some not. I constantly go over these and regret not yet finding 'the one', even though I ended a fair few... because I didn't feel they were the one.

I go from being cool to panicked in a day or so and find I cant sleep for thinking about whether I need to start having babies on my own or whether current guy I'm dating is the one etc, and it's exhausting. I then start the next day feeling exhausted and it feeds the anxiety. The baby panic is getting big - it feels like timelines will have to be really condensed, and this awareness makes me worry I'll come off as desperate to people I'm dating at the same time as being a real thing that I need to filter for (I'm currently only dating people that actively say they want kids).

I think I have a pattern of not being able to believe when someone's really into me, even when they are, or acting in ways to distance them and then believing it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Not helped by latest relationship which was with an avoidant character who, it seems, actually did seem to be pretending to like me more than he did till I pulled him up on it and he admitted my insecurities were correct.

I don't want to take a break from dating as I really do think that if and when I find someone I feel securely attached to, this will die down. It has in the past. But my age and the sense of an impending deadline is not helping.

Examples of neurotic thinking. This is what my brain does to the text that the guy I'm dating sends:

• 'Sounds great!' re our date = 'He is feigning interest'
• He texts back straight away = 'He wants to get this conversation finished asap'
• He sets up the next date before the end of our last one, yet I'm like 'WHY ISN'T HE TEXTING ME ALL THE TIME' because he's not texting every day, and I find it hard to concentrate or do anything else - which makes the worry worse

This guy is GREAT. Like, on paper and in person. He has been clear he wants the same things that I do, and he has his shit together. He makes me laugh, we get along very well. I should be excited.

Mad, right? I know it and still, it happens. I am in every other way a 'sorted' person - great job, hih level of very good education, nice friends, find it very easy to find guys who want relationships (the vast majority seem to when we go on dates), bla bla bla. Why can't I just grow up and get over this?

But then I worry I'm just picking up on unconscious gut feels that signify there is something to worry about.

I am in therapy, and i'm not keen to try anti anxiety medication as I used it before and whereas it helped in some ways it completely wrecked my sex drive, ability to orgasm and ability to truly connect with people.

Has anyone else gotten over this whilst actively dating, or should I just accept I'm buggered and maybe give up on the whole thing? I don't want to, but I feel like a pathetic needy person right now and it's stressing me out, big time.

Alternatively, I could use this experience as fodder for my next book - 'The neurotic's guide to dating and what things REALLY mean'. That's a kind of baby.

Is the anxiety limited only to dating? Eg can you function normally when dating isn't brought into the equation? You said you're an anxious over thinker but not sure if that means it extends to all aspects of your life enough to be debilitating.

It's good your in therapy. Honestly, I'd probably give the therapy some time to work itself through and then tackle dating. How long have you been doing it? That way if you do meet someone, you're less likely to worry about the incidentals and more likely to enjoy it. Also, if you meet people who aren't so great (which happens with dating, sadly) you won't take it so much to heart and risk jepodising what work you've done therapy wise.

Please don't discount medication, particularly if you find it hard struggling with all aspects of life with anxiety. Some medications do limit libido and orgasm but a lot don't (I've been on many since aged 14 so have a broad experience of most of them). Alternatively there are medications like propranolol that could help.

Stop thinking about deadlines. Some people get married in their sixties or older. You never know what life has in store for you and when. It sounds like perhaps you've forced things in the past that maybe you shouldn't have bothered with to begin with..?

Also, the notion of 'the one' sounds a bit ...disneyish. Definitely don't settle for someone who doesn't make you happy but that should be the extent of it surely?

As for kids. Do you actually want them? Or do you just want them because you think it's what you are supposed to want? And especially considering you describe yourself as neurotic...do you really think kids would be a good thing to bring into that? xD sounds like a horrible unecessary drama to me.

This whole thing is making you stressed an miserable. Is it worth it?