My dating life hasn’t been as colorful as one may expect for a 24 year old.

Dating is hard when you fall into the crossroads of many traits society deems as “wrong.” Other people are usually only able to look past one or two “wrong” characteristics, but when you walk up to someone as an amalgamation of these attributes, more often than not, they look right past you.

I’m nonbinary, bisexual, overweight and riddled with multiple mental health struggles.

I could go on and on about how none of those features are actually wrong and about how everyone deserves love and to be treated with respect, but I’ve crafted myself this little LGBTQ+ column, so I’ll only be focusing on the first two.

Dating as a member of the LGBTQ+ community can be hard. You might think that, because everyone can usually relate to the struggles that come from being ostracized by people outside of this community, that we’re more accepting of each other.

But that’s not the case. American traditional beauty standards still bleed their way into this community.

Some people may think being nonbinary is hot, but only if that person was assigned female at birth, is skinny and has short hair and that general tomboyish look. Being anything other than that increases your dating difficulty.

Also, what does dating a nonbinary person mean for someone and their own identity? If you’re straight, does loving someone who’s nonbinary invalidate that straightness? If you’re gay, does it invalidate your gayness? Does it mean that on some level, you have to rethink your entire identity to allow this love into your life?

So, what does that mean for nonbinary people? Am I always just not going to be feminine enough for gay girls? Not masculine enough for gay guys? Too queer for straight people? It’s strange — even in a community that celebrates breaking out of societal norms, the idea of too much fluidity seems to unsettle people.

Add being bisexual on top of that. Somehow, loving people for who they are, regardless of their gender, is a big “no” for a lot of people inside and outside of the LGBTQ+ community. I’m not saying it’s like that for everyone, but the judgment comes up more often than I care to admit.

During the summers, I worked at an ice cream shop. Our general manager is gay, and a number of people who work there identify as lesbian, bisexual or pansexual. You may think this would be a group of very open-minded people, so I never expected the commotion that would start when I posed the simple question of “Would you date someone who’s bi?” at work one day last year.

In this little group of ice cream shop employees, the ones that understood each other best were the straight men and the gay girls, who each gave a resounding “no.” I was a little taken aback. Was this not the year 2024? Wasn’t everyone supposed to be more open minded and accepting?

When prompted with why, both groups said they believed their partner would always want more. If they were dating a girl, they’d always wonder if they were missing out on dating a guy and vice versa.

The straight girls had a mix of answers. One girl didn’t care, and others said they would break up with their boyfriend if he came out as bisexual. My general manager said he wouldn’t care, but only because deep down he believed that if he were seeing a guy who was bisexual, then that guy would know that he wanted to marry a man.

Everyone else generally didn’t care either way. After all, it would be a little hypocritical not to date someone who was bisexual as a bisexual person, would it not?

So what does this mean for our bisexual friends in the dating world? Are we destined to only date other bisexuals? Are we cursed to be thought of as unfaithful cheaters, even to the LGBTQ+ community? Will no one ever understand I’m just a hopeless romantic looking for someone I click with, just like everyone else?

And don’t get me wrong — like I stated earlier, not everyone shares these views. There are those diamonds in the rough, so hope shouldn’t be lost.

I know that eventually, I’ll stumble upon the right person who is just quirky enough to embrace all these different facets of what makes me who I am — someone who accepts me and doesn’t flinch at my complexity.

But until then, I urge people to reflect on their own biases they may have unconsciously developed due to how the media and society portray us. Not all of us are what the movies and TikTok make us out to be.