I have one breast, yet I date

How dating changed my prejudices about men

I am a cancer conqueror. I prefer the word “conqueror” to “survivor” because of the active role I played in my battle against the disease.

I was diagnosed with a type IV cancer over 15 years ago. They gave me 6 months to live, yet here I am. Note to doctors: people don’t come with expiration dates.

About 3 years ago, I was diagnosed with a secondary cancer. I had to have a mastectomy.

A few months later, my husband left me.

I was crushed. I cried, I raged, I went through boxes of tissues. I eventually made my way back to normality.

Yet that’s when I suffered a severe identity crisis. I was a one-breasted woman of “a certain age” who was once again single.

It had been over twenty years since I’d last been on the open market. Times had changed and I was confronting a Brave New World of dating apps and social protocols.

I wasn’t sure how I would navigate it, but that wasn’t the scariest part. No, the thing that frightened me the most was that I only had one breast. Not only that, I was overweight and “past my prime”.

After all, it is common knowledge that men are visual people who only go for cute young hotties. OK, that’s…