The Best Dating Advice From A Disaster First Date
Design by @180daysof_not_dating
I was going through what I call a “slow bleed”. That ambiguous time in a dating timeline when you’re not quite sure if things are losing steam or you’re just over analyzing the situation. Usually, during this time, there are two paths to recovery - you share your insecurities and call the whole thing off (perhaps prematurely) OR you slowly collect enough data points (and increase the time you spend in total disarray) until you know for certain whether or not they are actually interested.
I found myself in this dilemma and in an attempt to put some space between myself and the situation I decided to go on a date with another guy. I usually have the attention span to date one person at a time but, in this particular situation, because I was a total psychological mess, I decided to make the whole situation even weirder.
In true New York form, the date was a total disaster, but as I stared into empty space imagining an alternate universe in which I am on my couch watching a terribly bad movie in my pj's, he said:
“it’s important to find someone who fights to enter your world and you have to be willing to fight to enter theirs.”
Hrm. Deciding to Irish after more nonsense, I thought about this phrase all the way home. I thought about the battles I had lost tirelessly fighting, to no avail, to enter someone else's world. I thought about the people who stood on the sidelines, too afraid or uninterested to enter mine. And then I thought, What does it mean to fight to enter someone’s world?
How does one prepare to go to battle? What defense mechanisms do we put in place to keep others out? What self-preservation techniques do we deploy to maintain our familiar world? Is there ever a clear winner?
Let’s start by addressing what I think it's not. It’s not annoying persistence. It’s not being a doormat. It’s not betraying your own boundaries. It’s not losing respect for yourself. It’s not begging to be a part of their world. It’s not manipulating them to lower their defenses. It’s not lying to get the upper hand. It’s not being a future faker. It’s not pretending you are someone you’re not.
But it is patience and bravery. It takes patience to slowly unravel their world and bravery to meet the challenges that lay in doing so. It means not feeling uncomfortable when they share dark experiences. It means being present when their own world falls apart. It also means being hyper-aware to their treatment of you. Are they giving you the same care and attention as you? Are you listening to your intuition when it tells you you’re giving more than what you’re getting? Are you having an honest conversation with yourself and them when your needs are not being met?
We begin to gain ground by showing up - open and vulnerable, and strong and compassionate. And in doing so we tear down others’ defenses. At the end of the day, we’re all afraid to unfold our world to others. We’re fearful of their rejection, which ultimately says we're not enough. So we live each day with our world held tightly to our chest, tired and cynical, tallying up proof we live in a malevolent world. But what we don’t realize is we play a dual role in this life. We are both the attacker and the defender. We won’t be allowed in someone else's world unless we lower our own defenses first.
But instead, we live our lives attacking others and defending our status quo. If you want love, you have to be willing to give love first. And that's fucking scary. But think about it this way, at the end of your life, when you're lying in bed about to kick it, is it really going to matter you told Tinder lover #3456 you liked him first? When you think about it this way, it's such a trivial and irrelevant detail.
So break the cycle. Be the catalyst. Put all your cards on the table and show them your fucked up shitstorm of a life. If they bail, then you saved yourself months or years of emotional turmoil. Accept others as imperfectly as they are, and hope they do the same. If all else fails, I hope you meet your own Ever from Honduras, and find meaning among the nonsense.