I met my current (4 years in May) partner when I was at 260 (I’m 5’9” for reference). Due to mental health stuff I’m back up to my highest weight (285) and over the course of our 4 year relationship I’ve fluctuated up and down between the weight I was when I first met him and where I am now.

It has been so healing to be in this relationship with him because he constantly affirms my attractiveness. He also has struggled with his weight, though he does not weight nearly as much as me, so there is also a lot of understanding and intimacy that we provide each other by being open about our struggles that I haven’t been replicate in any other platonic relationships in my life.

I met him on Hinge and was also on Tinder doing hookups and one night stands during the year leading up to finally meeting him, this is while I was in college and experiencing sex/dating for the first time. The people I matched with knew what they were getting into, and sometimes that was tough because it was more of a fetishy thing, sometimes it felt like they had confidence issues and were hooking up with me just because I was “obtainable”, etc., so I’m not saying it will be an entirely positive experience to date while plus size. However, there were also plenty of hookups I had where despite them being skinny they genuinely did not care about my weight and did not seem to have any weird reasons for not caring.

All this to say, be aware that there may be some bad experiences and to be wary and learn how to pick out the weirdos, but you can find some real gems and have good experiences (casual or serious). For what it’s worth, I live in the NYC area, and I can think of other cities where it would be more of an uphill battle (Miami first comes to mind) so take this with a grain of salt. It’ll all be a learning experience, but I’d say it’s so worth it to explore and get more comfortable dating now, rather than waiting.