What Attachment Style Is It When I Don’t Date Because I’m Undocumented?​ ​

The version of myself I imagined by 30 was always ambitious. Maybe it came from moving so close to New York City as a kid. Maybe it was already in me. Or maybe it was all the rom-coms I grew up watching as a millennial in the early aughts. But I always saw myself as a main character in one of those films where the protagonist has it all: She’s dressed up, busy building a career, and — of course — in love. It felt possible, too, like it was all just a few scenes away. But being undocumented has altered the script of my love story. 

I haven’t dated in five years. I’m not on dating apps or looking for love at clubs. For a long time, I struggled to explain why. When people talk about dating and attachment styles, they use words like “avoidant,” “anxious,” “emotionally unavailable,” or “afraid of commitment.” But I don’t know if these labels fully explain what this feels like. I don’t think they do. I care about love. I desire it, deeply. What might look like hesitation to someone else is really just me trying to navigate a life that has never felt fully secure. 

I came to the United States from Valencia, Venezuela, in 2008, when I was 12 years old. With the country’s growing political and economic instability, my parents could see that life there was becoming increasingly uncertain, so they made the difficult decision to leave. At first, my mom, younger sister, and I joined my older sister who was living in Miami. My dad stayed in Venezuela so he could keep working and supporting us from there. Then, we all moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, in 2009, and I’ve been here ever since. 

As a child, I didn’t understand what that flight to the U.S. would mean for the rest of my life. Like a lot of kids in Latin America, I watched Hollywood movies and expected to be heading into a High School Musical set. But reality was nothing like the Disney Channel told me it’d be. Mostly, I just missed the people I loved the most, struggled to learn English, and had to adapt to a new school.

But the hardest challenge arrived during my senior year of high school. That’s when I started to recognize how being undocumented would shape the biggest parts of my adulthood. My friends were applying to college, choosing majors, and imagining where life would take them and who they’d become. I couldn’t. I didn’t have access to federal student aid, so I didn’t apply to college. Instead, after graduating in 2014, I started looking for work. But most employers require proof of work authorization, a Social Security number, or other documentation I didn’t have. Even if I had the skills, smarts, and eagerness for the role, they couldn’t hire me. 

When you’re undocumented, you have to find a way to say, “I don’t have papers. Can you pay me under the table?” It’s awkward, and it makes you feel small. After a few rejections, I shut down. That dream of a life like the protagonists in “The Devil Wears Prada,” one where I was a social media editor thriving in the industry, didn’t seem possible anymore. I realized my status would touch almost everything in my life: my career, my finances, my independence, my confidence — the version of myself I thought I was becoming.

Then, in March 2021, the Biden administration expanded protections for Venezuelans through the Department of Homeland Security’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, giving many Venezuelans in the U.S., including me, a pathway to work authorization.

Eventually, I got TPS and started thinking about school, better jobs, a career, travel, all the things other people my age were already doing. But even then, my work permit got lost in the mail and didn’t arrive until the summer of 2024. Just as I was ready to look for something better than my barista job, President Donald Trump was re-elected. I played it safe and stayed at my job, just in case I’d lose TPS and, consequently, that new role. My instincts were right. In January 2025, shortly after Trump returned to the White House, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem revoked TPS for Venezuelans. A month later, the administration formally moved to terminate the program, throwing the futures of hundreds of thousands of immigrants living in the U.S. into uncertainty.

That’s one of the most exhausting parts of being undocumented in the U.S. Just when something finally feels like it’s moving in my favor, it can all shift overnight, pulling any sense of stability or hope right out from under me. That’s why it’s so hard to plan, to dream. It feels like I’m setting myself up for heartbreak, and with the current immigration crackdown, there’s already so much to be distressed about.

Since the recent wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids started again, my anxiety has been through the roof. I barely want to leave my house. For a while, I didn’t even feel comfortable walking my dog around the block. I was checking my phone constantly, refreshing maps that track ICE activity, trying to figure out where they might show up next.

Eventually, I had to tell myself that what’s going to happen is going to happen, and I can’t allow fear to control the way I move through life. I can’t function if I live every second waiting for something bad to happen. I go outside now, I take walks, I run errands, I move through the ordinary routines of life, carefully. I wish I could do this when it comes to dating, too. But it’s not the same, is it? Avoiding a walk around the corner because I’m afraid of ICE and avoiding romance because life feels unfinished don’t come from the exact same place, but they both teach you to stay close to what feels safe.

To be clear, I’m not afraid of connection; I’m just protecting a part of my life that has already been made vulnerable by systems I can’t control. For a long time, I struggled to explain why without sounding embarrassed, emotionally unavailable, or afraid of love, because none of these explain it. I’m not ashamed to be undocumented, and I don’t think my immigration status makes me less worthy of being loved. But it’s often said no feeling is more powerful than love, and sometimes I think, tell that to someone who has to build a life around uncertainty.

I’m weighing the possibility of love against the risk of trusting the wrong person with my life, someone who can take advantage of my vulnerabilities, someone who could report me, have me detained, and deported. It would take me longer now to tell someone about my status. I’d need to feel safe enough to share it at all. I would need to know who they voted for. That tells me a lot about whether they can see people like me as fully human, or whether my life exists for them only as a talking point. I’d need to feel confident they know my status doesn’t make me a criminal, and that they don’t believe all the stereotypes Venezuelans have been reduced to in current political rhetoric.

They’d also need to understand the limitations my status has placed on my life. I’m a 30-year-old woman who still lives with my parents. I’m working in a field I don’t love out of necessity. I feel fastened in place until my status changes. 

I know these things don’t decide whether I deserve love, but they do affect the way I walk into a room, the way I talk about my future, and the way I answer simple first-date questions like, “what do you do?” “Do you like to travel?” or “Where do you see yourself in five years?” For other people, these questions are probably casual, maybe even surface-level or boring. For me, they highlight the dissonance I feel between who I know I am and the life I’m able to show someone right now. A job is not just a job when you don’t have access to every opportunity. Moving out is not just about feeling ready when your income is shaped by the work you’re allowed to do. Travel is not just a cute first-date question when leaving the country could mean not being able to come back. 

The person I imagine myself with is ambitious. They love to travel. Their career means something to them, and they’ve worked hard to build a life they’re proud of. In my head, they’re just like me — or at least the version of me I still believe I am, even if my circumstances don’t reflect her yet. That’s what makes dating feel so complicated. I’m not worried that I have nothing to offer. I’m worried that I’ll have to explain why so much of my life is still waiting for a chance. Reality really doesn’t move like the movies.

So dating, which should feel exciting, becomes another place where I have to measure the distance between the life I want and the life I can actually offer right now. I want to feel closer to the person I’m meant to be before I let someone else fully into my life, not the version still trying to catch up. I want a career I’m proud of, enough money to live the way I want, more independence, and the ability to say “yes” without immediately thinking of all the constraints around me that force me to say “no” to the things I want.

Maybe my life can still be a rom-com, just not the kind that depends on fantasy to make everything fall into place. Maybe it’s a coming-of-age story, too, because if being undocumented has taught me anything, it’s that we don’t all come of age on the same timeline. Direction matters more than time. Being undocumented does not make me unworthy of love. I know that. And love is still magic to me. But I desire nothing more than the freedom to become the version of myself I’ve been waiting to be, and maybe that’s what I want before dating: the chance to feel like my life is finally mine.

Editor’s note: The writer is identified by her first name only due to concerns about privacy.

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