Ranting On...Getting Honest with Single People

Eva Mendes won, this man is no longer available, and it's time to move on

We haven't done a post on dating in a while, and so I figured I'd give one a try as we're all starting out the week and wondering what is in store.  In particular, I've been wondering about something very interesting that I'm starting to realize in online dating in particular, though I think it's applicable to people doing the traditional "ask out someone in person" route, or quite frankly, this may even resonate with married people (my point is, everyone should read this article and have an opinion on it!).

One of the things that I've learned particularly through online dating, but just dating in general, is that dating, more than anything, is all about expectations.  With online dating, you frequently put what you hope is your best version of yourself onto the page.  You pick your sexiest pictures, your most compelling interests, your cutest lines (I love that everyone decided a few years ago to embrace their inner-nerd, and suddenly "I'm a nerd" has become a requisite line in a dating profile even when clearly someone isn't one; reading the Harry Potter books does not make you a nerd-having a sorting hat that you wear to parties does make you one).  You also, however, put what you're looking for in a potential mate.  And it's frequently someone with a sense of humor, someone who will make you laugh, someone that completes you.  And that's genuinely, I think, what we're looking for at the end of the day-someone that we can grow old with, someone that we can share a life with.

However (you knew one of those was about to rear its head), that's not necessarily what we're looking for "first," and I think that we should start to admit that to ourselves, because the more honest we are with what we're hoping to accomplish, the more likely we are that we'll reach our end goals.  For starters, looks matter a lot more than any of us would like to admit.  I truly believe that after years of marriage you find the person lying next to you and raising your children with you and helping to pay the mortgage incredibly sexy even if they aren't as spry and thin as they were the first time you laid eyes on them, but that's not how a relationship starts.  There's a great episode of Sex and the City where Carrie talks about the "za za zu" and even if you don't have it later in your life, you still have the memory of it.  That's vastly important at the beginning of a relationship, particularly if you're starting out dating and not starting out as friends.  I think that you can truly base an attraction to someone that doesn't match up with your ideal brown hair, green eyes, 6'2" ideal on paper, but let's be frank-we give that person who does match up a lot more leeway on the rest of their profile than we would the person who has the BMI pushing 35 and is balding, regardless of the set of interests they may match up with us on, and it's better just to admit that.

What's not okay, of course, is to dismiss them out of hand.  Granted, if that person also has no interests similar to you, it's probably time to shut it down, but I do feel most of us are smart enough to click on the profile and at least read through if someone took the time to write us a letter (granted, those letters take about sixty seconds to write on average, but still-it's worth the investigation since clearly there's an attraction there).  However, even then I think that our judgment hats get thrown out the window.  Let's be honest-how often has a single thing we've found out about a person been something we've glommed on to to dismiss them.  This is something that I find that almost anyone I know who is perpetually single (myself included) finds themselves doing-you find the thing that you know won't work about another person, and use it as a weapon to sabotage the relationship.  It may be something relatively inane like that they are constantly watching a television show you hate or that they don't cheer for the same sports team as you, or it may be something a bit more substantive like they are thirty and clearly still think they're 23 (this is something that I've run into with frequency over the past year-guys who are in the middle of a quarter life crisis) or that they get drunk on weekdays.

I find that it gets even worse when you're online dating, primarily because it occasionally feels like we are shopping.  We're used to going to a site like Amazon or eBay and getting precisely what we want-there are thousands of options, and you can get the exact color, size, and fabric of shirt you want, or you can go to another site and buy it.  We live in a world where the internet can cater to your every desire, and thanks to a global economy, it's not outside of reason for a person in, say, Fargo North Dakota to want to have papayas on a regular basis (it may not be environmentally sound, but that's an article for a different day).  We try to apply that same logic to dating.  We get hooked on one or two profiles that we know would be perfect for us-the gorgeous guy who wants the same things out of life we do, who has the good job and the same set of interests and the same sort of quirkiness and ideas about a Saturday night that we want, and we aren't willing to settle for anything less than that.

And that, despite what our married friends say, is a problem (married people-this applies to you too, so look alive!) for three reasons.  One, that guy is not as perfect as he lets on-he has problems that we'll have to deal with as well, they just are masked by a set of strong arms and impressive list of favorite authors.  Two, that guy may well not be interested in us, and to quote Albus Dumbledore (it's getting damn deep in this article, so watch your shoes), "it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."  And three, the dirty little secret that married people don't always have the guts to say is that in life, you have to settle a little bit.

Settling gets such a rough reputation, but the reality is that it shouldn't have that set of stigmas.  A term like compromising is the same set of ideals as settling, and yet that's a term that far more people are willing to embrace.  Settling gets a bad rep because it makes you seem like you're unhappy with your results, but the reality is that you may be extremely happy, it's just not 100% what you were looking for in the first place.  Ask any married person (outside of earshot of their spouse), and if they're being honest they'll admit that there are things that they would love to change about their partner.  They would love it if they weren't late all the time or didn't leave their socks in the middle of the living room or that they leave the clean dishes in the dishwasher.  However, they love them in spite of this because we cannot date ourselves (it's illegal to clone a person), and even then, we probably wouldn't want to do that anyway (I would drive me crazy, personally).  It's deeply unhealthy, this concept that this one dream person will come along, because it's probably not going to happen, and when it is, it's likely going to be the guy who has never seen any of your favorite movies or that cheers for the Red Sox when you're a devoted Yankees fan.  Only in movies do you end up with someone who is picture perfect for you, and even then it only lasts two hours.

So my point is (because I feel like I need to reach one), don't just dismiss the person who doesn't look like Emma Stone or Ryan Gosling on a dating website.  Don't just dismiss someone because you found something arbitrary about them on their dating profile that you can write off and convince your friends it's a good idea.  And don't spend your life pursuing something that may not exist.  Learn to realize what is and what isn't the most important thing for you in a relationship, and have that knowledge ready for you when you decide to start or continue dating again.  Because that's the only way you can truly be prepared for what is in-store.