Dating is hard. We can all agree that searching for the person you want to spend your life with can be stressful and stressful. For this reason, it is best to put all that focus and effort into love and finding yourself.
It’s easy to see why dating sucks.
Dating can be intimidating. It can be stressful. It can be confusing if you’re not familiar with the latest dating app, or you’re simply not interested in “swiping right”. It may seem superficial and empty, or it’s just a numbers game.
Maybe you’re recovering from a breakup, or you know it’s time to “get back out there,” but you have some level of resistance or a sense of dread. you are not alone.
Oftentimes, when clients I work with have a hard time getting back into the world of dating, what happens, perhaps unconsciously, is that they put so much pressure on themselves, the other person, and the whole process, that it makes for a miserable experience.
What I see is that many of my clients have an unspoken hope that they will meet a magical person who will solve a problem for them, or fix their lives in some way. They’ve donned their backpack and walking stick and are on a hero’s quest to find The One.
The sole purpose of dating when approached from this angle is to find that person to spend the rest of their life with. And on one level, this mindset is valid — why would you date if you hadn’t met that special someone?
The downside to this approach is that it establishes a dynamic where 99% will fail, and this kind of zero-sum game can feel weak after a while. It may start to feel like a daunting task to search through a pile of people to find the one. It’s easy to see how one can lose hope or throw in the towel.
Another downside to viewing dating through that lens is that you probably aren’t quite yourself if you’ve got your binoculars out, and are looking for the one. With all the checking, judging, checking boxes, and analyzing you might be doing, you’re also likely to bring your representative along, hoping to make the best impressions and meet the standards you think the other person has for you. That in and of itself can be a difficult and stressful charade to keep up with.
But here’s where I’d like to introduce a new way of looking at all things dating, where maybe it’s possible to find some joy in the process rather than suffering through it.
What If You Stop Looking For The One?
What if you were using dating as a practice to finally be yourself?
What if, instead of thinking about it in goal-oriented terms, you instead thought about how you would like the process to feel? What are some feelings you would like to replace the dread with? Excitement? curiosity? openness?
Next, what is your intention in dating if you want to feel that way or create those feelings?
What if you intend to just go out and have fun? Can you switch the primary question from “Is this personal?” to “How can I have fun?” How do you come out of this experience with a good story, some new insight, or an expanded perspective?
Or what if we used the dating process as an opportunity to work on our communication skills? A date is a great, low-stakes arena for practicing boundaries, communicating your feelings, or working to keep the conversation alive. So at the end of the day, the second or third date doesn’t matter. As long as the time was fun, it was a win.
Read 9 Surprising Psychological Facts About Love And Attraction
What if we used dating as a platform for self-development psychologically and spiritually? You can see each person you meet as a whole world waiting to be unlocked by the quality of your questions. They come with a whole history behind them, as well as hopes, dreams, and new perspectives that potentially expand and enrich your worldview.
Quite different from suffering just to get to the other side of duplicity, right?
Ultimately, the more you enjoy the gift of being single and the process of gratefully exploring dating, the more likely you are to bring excitement and positive vibes to the experience and meet someone who might knock your socks off.
Why? Because your ability to have fun where you are at the moment is what you present to a potential partner, and if you are having fun and being yourself without your rep, you are attractive. But if you offer criticism, and tolerate the experience “after about.”
