I went to make this post because I found myself frustrated with my own failures and rejections and wanted to find a catharsis for that. I thought it'd be useful to share my findings with other people.

1. We externalize our dates.

I was guilty of this when I was younger. Often times in dating, we have a mindset that we have to put on a show for our preferred sex, especially as a guy. We have to woo women by taking her on expensive dates, and having exciting extravagant evenings. In reality, it should never be about the dates themselves if you are looking for a serious long term partner. The excitement of the 'dating' phase will fade, and that is when you are left with the person themself. A simple coffee date can actually tell you right away if you genuinely like 'the person' not the feelings surrounding excitement and attraction and arousal. I think often times we almost subconsciously see just ourselves as not enough and feel the need to externalize dating in the hopes we are more successful at it. In reality, its probably better to have 9 failed coffee dates and 1 success than 5 successful expensive fun dates and 5 failures. It certainly feels shittier, but it's keeping your eye on your long term goal and its avoiding the major pitfalls of infatuation.

2. We focus on what we can morally get away with opposed to what we should do.

This is something I have learned over the years that is really important. Often times in forums such as this, we have a lot of opinion based questions. A big one I often see is 'Is it okay I see other people during the talking stage?' or 'Is it okay they still talk to their ex?' or questions of the like. The main gist of a lot of these questions is trying to find the line of moral standing and making sure you or this interest of yours is not crossing it. Its taking a poll from the audience of Reddit users and making that your 'line' that shouldn't be crossed. That seems sort of silly. First off, it is what feels right to YOU. You shouldn't be basing what you think is right or wrong off of strangers. Second off, it seems to be such a backwards mindset. If you are genuinely trying to find the love of your life, should you be seeing other people? If you have someone in front of you that you see a life with, should you jeopardize that because you fear failure or being alone? I think we need to start focusing on where OUR moral lines are and what it means to cross them. And do more of what we believe is right and actually gets us what we want.

3. We attempt to minimize rejection.

This pretty closely ties into the first two, but I think we often do everything in our power to avoid rejection. Mostly because it fucking hurts. I have been rejected probably 50 times in my life and have had only a small portion of successes. However, each success has been a meaningful one. And rejection starts to sting more and more each time but in my experience lasts a shorter time. I think one of the biggest pitfalls we run into is we get caught up in that rejection. And we become tired of it. So we text, and we speak, and we move in ways in which we get to experience less of it. I think the secret is to work on becoming more brave. Either through 'exposure therapy' or working on our fears or however we come about it. I know it can sound corny, but bravely being authentic and getting rejected time and time again seems to have the best results. Two quotes that really have helped me internalize these beliefs is 1. 'You are what you love, not what loves you' - Adaptation. and 2. 'You do what you love and fuck the rest' - Little Miss Sunshine. I recommend both those movies to feel the full effects of those quotes. Go to therapy, find your purpose and find (healthy) people you love. Learn to accept the rest. Despite that being INCREDIBLY difficult, maybe it's actually that simple.

4. We try to go into dating as the 'perfect' product.

I see this pretty often in different dating forums about improving yourself before dating. The idea of using your 20s to hit the gym, and focus on your career, and building a social circle, etc. So that in your 30s you have the foundation to date. I think this is sort of a naive way at looking at the world. And I think it ties back to again, minimizing rejection. We are almost externalizing ourselves at a certain point. Rather than focus on yourself and your story and your passions and your internal experience, we are all crafting ourselves into similar people that 'fit in' with the crowd and cross off all the checkmarks. In my opinion, I think I would rather have someone love my 24 year old scrawny shy relatively poor me than my 32 year old built confident three figure salary me. Because it means they love me, not my crossed off checklist. Is it important to have standards and to make steady improvements over time? Of course. But I think we will find our most authentic love at points where we are trying and failing to improve but authentically us, opposed to when we are already at that destination. And I think it's important to remember that we shouldn't all be fitting in the same 'checklist', it should be personalized to what you deem important. There is a big difference between being comfortable enough in your skin and trying to be as close to perfect as we can, and I think that distinction has become lost on us.

5. We focus more on the art of dating than the person themself.

Similar to the first point, but more big picture. I think a forum like this is perfect for showing this point. Each scenario we get, we are getting limited context. Even if its multiple paragraphs. People are complex and we are judging these scenarios based off of what we see as the baseline of human behavior. While that works for things like 'red flags', I am skeptical it works on scenarios where love is involved. In my opinion, love is really just two people trying to find solace in each other in the most peaceful way possible, while trying to weather the pressures of the world. There are 'cliches' that are simply just true, such as 'communication is the make or break!' and things of the like. But in reality, it's up to the two people how they deal with that bolded sentence. And oftentimes with dating it seems like we just use a one size fits all filter to achieve the goal of 'finding love'. If we are starting from this super watered down generic formula for dating oftentimes, is that going to form into love? If we don't even know what love is, is that going to build love? If we look at people as cardboard cutouts to be judged all the same by generic criteria, is that going to foster love? I'd venture to guess no. I believe 'dating' should really be about finding out what love is to you and finding a person that you can build that with.

That's my speel I guess. Curious to hear thoughts. TLDR: We are doing it wrong!