Thoughts on dating

At this stage, I want my blog to be a sort of repository for ideas that are meaningful to me. One of the most satisfying things about casual writing is that it challenges me to put words to feelings and convictions that I have. In that way it’s not like academic writing, which takes a long time and usually is not very personal.

In that spirit, this post will feature a bit more personal introspection than previous posts. If that’s not your thing, well… you’ve been warned.

I.

One of the most common things single people hear when they air their grievances about the state of the dating world is something like this: “Don’t worry, it’ll happen when you least expect it,” or, “You can’t force it. It just happens.” The unstated directive is to relax and let things happen naturally.

That advice is frustrating. Most of the time, we’re told to go out and get things if we want them. Want to lose some weight? Improve your diet. Want a better job? Send out some applications. But when it comes to romance—when it comes to building perhaps the single most important relationship in life—you want me to sit back and wait for my future partner to appear out of thin air? Nice try! Sounds like something Big Dating would say. It’s counterintuitive.

Despite being annoying, the advice is probably useful. But I had to see a new perspective to understand why—and I’m not sure how to implement the advice, although I have a couple of ideas.

II.

On a podcast, Lex Fridman and Matthew McConaughey talked about relationships. Lex asked, “What advice would you give to people on how to find love?”

McConaughey said that he was getting into his late thirties before he met his wife. Things hadn’t really gone the way he’d hoped, relationship-wise, in life. He became anxious and started to think “maybe she’s the one” whenever he met a potential partner.

But when we fall into the trap of “the one,” according to McConaughey, we can become intrusive; we can trespass on the other person’s space. We forget our own constitution, our own values. We forget to sit back and be ourselves. That mindset causes us to step outside of ourselves—overly impressed by others, not as involved in the present moment, as McConaughey would say. And if you’re inauthentic, you’re less attractive.

Then McConaughey said something interesting, especially for those of us who might want to find love just a little too much.

He described a dream, which he said was a beautiful dream, about being an 88-year-old bachelor who never got married.

“[I thought], ‘You may not find the woman for you and get married and have a life with her. That may not be.’ And for the first time in my life, I was OK with that. Not just intellectually, but emotionally.”

And shortly afterward, he met his wife.

III.

People say that you have to let go and stop trying so hard, and then love will find you.

When you want it so badly, when you want it so badly, that’s when you step outside of yourself. You have to, somehow, accept the possibility that you might die an 88-year-old bachelor who never marries. You have to really, truly see the beauty in that timeline.

You have to stop wanting it so badly. You have to envision a life that does not include a partner but is still a life worth living.

I’m a romantic, and that life doesn’t sound fun. When I think about how my later decades will go, most of the happy thoughts involve having found that special someone. I’ll get to share the thrill of traveling to new countries with her. We’ll host Christmas parties, maybe with kids, and maybe even with some grandkids. A life without those things sounds like a life devoid of the greatest moments of love and meaning you can have.

So… how to care less?

In his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote a story about a person who goes for a walk on a mountain trail. Suddenly, a troll jumps out of the bushes and kills the person. But they are immediately reborn to the same parents, given the same name, and live out the exact same life.

Then one day, the person walks along the same path, is killed again by the troll, and is reborn again to live the same life. And so on.

The point of the story is to encourage reflection. If it sounds like hell to live the same life repeatedly, then perhaps you should make some changes to your life now, while you can.

I would add a condition to the reincarnation thought experiment. How can you build the kind of life that you would want to relive, even if you never found that one person to share it with?

You need to be able, in the 88-year-old bachelor scenario, to reflect on the reincarnation story and think, “Yeah, I would do that again. That was worthwhile.”

We can look to the evolutionary science of human motivation for ideas on how to do that. Let’s assume that, broadly speaking, people derive meaning in life from setting, striving for, and achieving goals. The renovated pyramid of needs is a collection of fundamental goals that most people have—some a bit more, and some a bit less. Some people are fearless adrenaline junkies and other people are scaredy-cats (self-protection). Some people are driven by visions of riches and prestige and other people are content to be starving artists (status/esteem). The point is that these fundamental goals, or motives, are held by most normally developing people.

Also, these are broad categories, and the activities that fulfill a motive can be similarly broad. For example, a lot of people don’t have kids, but those same people might satisfy the parenting goal by nurturing plants or pets.

In our hypothetical 88-year-old bachelor scenario, we would cross out mate retention on the pyramid (and depending on your views on sexuality, maybe also mate acquisition). That leaves a few options for us to build a meaningful life. Here are a few ideas.

Affiliation. Find meaning in deep friendships. Spend quality time with people you care about. Express your authentic appreciation and affection for them. When you think good thoughts about other people, gift them. People can’t hear too many genuine compliments.

Status. Grinding for status on a corporate ladder doesn’t sound like the most enriching life to me. But some evolutionary psychologists think that human expressions of creativity—painting, making music, poetry, etc.—were originally used as displays of cognitive ability. Therefore, proficiency in a creative domain was a marker of mate quality and status. Getting really good at a creative hobby and nerding out with like-minded people in a niche subreddit sounds pretty fun to me, and depending on how committed you are, it could become quite meaningful.

Parenting. Taking care of something or someone who needs your help to thrive could be another way to live a meaningful life. For most of human history, people satisfied this motive by simply having kids. But today, satisfying this motive could mean taking care of your pets. It’s especially noble to foster animals. I do think, though, that the evolutionary hardware that wires our nurturant tendencies is most responsive to other humans. So, close mentoring could also feel very meaningful.

But of course, it all has to be for the right reasons. You shouldn’t pursue deep friendships with the ultimate goal of sleeping with your friends. You shouldn’t learn how to play the guitar just so you can post about it on social media. You shouldn’t pursue mentorships with the goal of adding a line to your resume. These things should be pursued because they are enjoyable in their own right.

OK—a caring group of friends, a hobby to which you dedicate the weekends, and a job that gives you opportunities to impart your wisdom to others? That sounds pretty good.

And hey, if all else fails, just remember: it’ll happen when you least expect it.