Dating : One Thing Dating Apps Will Never Tell You…

Unrealistic expectations are keeping you single.

I spent a majority of my 20’s into my early 30’s single as fuck.

Let me be clear — when I say “single” I mean intertwined in an endless string of 3-month-long trysts that felt so perfect at the moment until they were gone, pining over a theoretical “love of my life” for 7 years that never was quite a reality to the both of us, celibacy for almost a year by default and like everyone else, hooking up with an incredible amount of randoms in-between (some whose name I never knew and will never remember). The entire time I yearned for simple companionship, literally someone I could walk through the stupid steps of life with. Someone who’d ride a bike with me, go to the beach, buy groceries and of course, build all the furniture I had no tolerance to assemble. What I was seeking, was a person who made my house feel like a home and someone who didn’t care what money I made, who I knew or what I did for a living. Unfortunately for me, the type of men I was dating and attracted to at that time, did not align with anything I actually wanted in what I now call “my real life.” Sound familiar?

One of my best guy friends would always lament to me when I was bitching about being single and dating issues, “you never know why someone is into the other person, it’s something only they know.” Dude logic, but I respect intel from the other side. A lot of times as a strong, independent, single woman you expect that the man (or woman) of your dreams will just hop on board for the ride the minute you are ready and find each other. The two of you will cruise off into the world problem-free, having all the first-year sex for the next 10 years. This unicorn partner would never do anything to piss you off, never be broke and of course, will always just blindly follow your laid out plan for the future. I have a very important secret to disclose:

THIS PERSON DOES NOT EXIST.

The concept of falling in love is sexy by nature. Endorphins, mind-blowing sex, emotional discovery, the hours you spend joined at the hip (literally and figuratively) — it’s engineered to set an expectation. The cold hard truth is that part of a relationship will inevitably fizzle out. It’s a primary reason older people with their sage wisdom always say, “better to be friends than just lovers.” Stock in the friendship aspect of the partnership needs to be taken seriously. If not you’re likely looking at a ticking, hot-mess time bomb.

Think about who you’re friends with and take a hard look at how you approach and nurture those relationships. Do you only befriend one kind of person? Are you willing to allow people with different experiences and backgrounds into your purview? If the answer is yes, you probably have a multitude of different types of friendships that keep your life enriched. Do you have an expectation for the short-term output of your close friendships? Probably not, but if you do, you might wanna relax a little.

Here’s a novel thought:

What if you approached your dating life with the same ease as your friendships? Instead of clinging staunchly to one emotional, societal or physical ideal of what you think love will be — what if you let that shit go? In expectation, we bypass a lot of what is literally happening every day, our regular life. Living inside this unlimited cess pool of unrealistic expectation, of a person who may or may not already exist, is what grips our decision making in relationships. People declare that they “are willing to change and compromise” but when it comes at the cost of their comfort, cannot bear the reality. A lot of people are also not what they appear to be on the surface (news flash, you might not be as advertised either) and often you reach a “take it or leave it” part of the courtship. While staying in an abusive relationship isn’t up for debate, be careful not to dip out too soon due to your inability to work through what is tough for you to handle. That’s on YOUR ego and as it has been discovered time and time again, good things come with work and patience. PS — all relationships will get hard to handle at some point, it’s how you work through it that builds its’ resilience.

I polled a random group of my Twitter followers to get an unbiased opinion of what they felt was a key factor to making a relationship last and emotional compatibility seemed to easily top the list.

Although the nuance of what “emotional compatibility” entails is vague in this context, what it ultimately boils down to is VULNERABILITY. Who can you bear your soul to? Watch you cry? Cry with you? The sexy part that ropes you in, doesn’t prepare for this part of the saga. Therefore, if you’re finding yourself constantly coming up dry take a hard look at your expectations and what is important to you when no one is judging or looking. Love is vulnerable by design.

“But why should I lower my standards for a partner?” — we’ve all heard this, or said this ourselves. Who are we to stand in the shoes of perfection?Resilience is the lifeblood of a healthy relationship and if you hold any standard that tightly, any amount of pressure will surely break it. Reality and resilience go hand-in-hand, if you haven’t come to terms with that already, maybe you aren’t ready to really be in a relationship yet.

It was only when I let go of my laundry list of expectations in my own dating life, that I was able to meet someone who was fundamentally more what I was looking for than anyone I’ve ever dated (just in a different shell than I’d previously validated). Once we let go of our expectations of what partner should be, we can begin cultivating a life with another human.