Are you tired of the same old dating advice that just doesn’t seem to work? The Selfish Romantic by Michelle Elman debunks common myths about dating and relationships and encourages readers to be true to themselves, communicate honestly, and treat dating as an experiment. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to find “the one” – instead, actively participate in your love life and approach dating with curiosity and an open mind.
The author emphasizes the importance of honesty and authenticity while dating, reminding readers to be themselves and learn more about their potential partners. Whether you’re getting back into the dating world or just looking to improve your experiences, The Selfish Romantic offers practical tips and advice to help you find love on your own terms.
Transcript
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Have you ever wondered can date and not make a complete mess of yourself in the process? That’s all we’ll talk about today.
every one of us needs to show how much we care for each other. And in the process, care for ourselves. Lady Diana, Princess of Wales. Today we’re going to talk about the book, The Selfish, Romantic How to Date Without Feeling Bad About Yourself. By Michelle Elman. After a series of kind of serious podcast topics and thought we’d take something that would make life a little bit more entertaining, more fun, more exciting for ourselves. When I was actively trying to date, I was kind of a mess. I didn’t do very well with guys. I was terrible at it, and most of them liked my friend anyway. And at one point I just decided till she gets married, I’m just giving up dating because this is just not working out for me. It frustrated me. It was struggling and I saw people around me and they seemed to enjoy dating my friend. Like dating people in college enjoyed dating. It didn’t seem like much of a problem, but for me it undermined almost every good thought I had about myself. I think today, if I were to start dating, I probably do a lot better than I did back in the day. I think I have a better sense of myself. I have more confidence in myself and I know better what I want. And this book was interesting because when reading it, I think we have different experiences for sure, but this book almost nearly explained the entire way. I feel about dating. I didn’t enjoy it. I found it humiliating and I just struggled through the entire process. and when reading this book, I realize that she went through a similar process. She found it a struggle. I mean, she had some other issues that I had. I mean, I was a nerd. I’m overweight. I didn’t do like I said very well with guys in general because they always looking for someone more attractive, it seemed to me. But she also has some additional issues. She has some health concerns. She’s someone who has race issues that people have treated her poorly with. and being someone I think who is geeky perhaps, and has some weight issues as well. It was a struggle for her and she didn’t enjoy doing it. and while I don’t enjoy the word selfish, I think I understand what she means because I don’t think it is selfish to also take care of the things that matter to you. I think that was part of the problem of what I did wrong while dating. I was thinking what does a guy think of me? I wonder if he likes me. I wonder where this is going. And it was just a struggle all the time. And she says that we get a lot of pressure from our families. They want to know who we’re going to marry And she says, When are the parents going to get their grandbabies? There’s all sorts of pressure. And she said that if we can be more selfish, Oh, like I said, I don’t think it is selfish. I think it’s just treating yourself as a valuable person in this relationship, which a lot of people don’t do when they’re dating. And she says that the word selfish has a modern stigma to it, and I have some stigma with the word as well. But she says that it means to her that it’s the thing that you can do for other people around you. It’s the responsible thing to do. And it’s basically treating yourself like a human being. I don’t think that selfish. She realized that she learned boundaries of how to get herself to be treated properly while dating. And so while I, again, don’t agree with the word dating, I’m exactly on target with what she’s trying to say here.
And that’s why I think this book is so powerful, because
she
strikes this balance that I was not expecting to find in this book when I first started the book and I saw the title The Selfish Romantic. I thought this was going to be a book about me, me, me. But it really wasn’t. It was about oui, oui, oui. And I liked that part of the book. But she said this book is for you. If you’re having highs and lows with dating, if you want different kinds of results than you’ve had in the past. And in the end, she says that if you choose not to date,
you can’t really complain about dating. You can’t really complain about feeling lonely or not dating because you’re not even trying. I remember I said to my friend, Boy, it’d be nice if I met a guy I really liked. And she says, Well, you would actually have to leave your house once in a while to do that. She was right. I was this nerd playing video games and doing all sorts of stuff on my computer, and I wasn’t getting out there. But she said that keep in mind that when you do feel lonely, people feel lonely, even if they’re in relationships. A lot of the time that we get this image of what relationships are like. Someone told me when I said that there was this one particular love song I liked, which was this Kiss by Faith Hill. And I’m not much of a country music person, but this song really got me. She says, You know, you look at love like a Coke commercial, and that’s probably why you’re struggling so much, because that’s not what it’s like at all. And she’s probably right about that, too. But she said that in this, you’re not going to find times when you’re just never lonely. You feel lonely in and out of relationships. She talks about the fantastic book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, which is really older book, which is an older book, I think it was written in the nineties, but it talks about how people aren’t making connections, that we don’t have the social structures in place anymore. And anytime you hear someone talking about this book, Bowling Alone, they sure think, Wow, I wish there was an update to this book. I want to see what he has to say now, because essentially the book ends with, hmm, I wonder how the computer world is going to change loneliness. And in some ways, computer, along with dating, has made us less lonely. I get to talk to my friends all the time, whether we live here or across the country. But in other times, that also means that maybe you’re not trying as hard to meet people locally. If you’re spending all your time on your phone, in school or at your job, are you really getting to meet your coworkers or the people around you? My friend brought that up to me today that so many people have their noses in the phones. They never really get a chance to meet anybody and anybody who’s local, and they could have a relationship outside the Internet. And that’s where this book agrees to that. It’s a big planet and we
will at times feel lonely. But we have to also come to realize that there’s a difference between loneliness and being alone. Sometimes people feel lonely when they’re in an entire room full of people. I used to go to that nerd conference, Jen Con and I liked it and it was fun and exciting and all the things that Nerd conferences could be. But I have to tell you, I used to go by myself, and I kind of felt lonely in a room of thousands of people. So I get what she’s meaning that we have to really get our definition. Are we lonely or are we just alone at that moment?
She brings up this great quote from Elizabeth Gilbert, who says, We have to learn how to walk into a party or a restaurant alone. Otherwise
we will be willing to walk in with anybody. So if we can’t come to this place
or worse, walk out with anybody, meaning that if we can’t come to a place where we can be on our own alone, then we’re going to struggle. Because then we might break down our criteria for what matters and other people, friends or relationships, because we just feel like we can’t go to a restaurant, we can’t go to a movie unless we’re with someone. And so she suggests that we should learn to love spending time with ourselves, learn how to come to that balance. Because if we just don’t learn to find that stability in with ourselves, we will always struggle and possibly date the wrong people.
Another thing to keep in mind is that we have to stop comparing ourselves to other people. I used to do that a lot when I was in my twenties. You know, I’d see my friends and a lot of them were pretty or even skinny and athletes and so they got along with guys really well. And so then I kept going, Oh, I’m unlovable or I’m behind, or these other people are doing better than I’m doing. And she feels this author and this author feels that we have to stop comparing ourselves. We come with our own schedules or our own clocks. And even if our clock is slower, I mean, mine is really slow because I still haven’t really found someone I love in a romantic way. And that’s really late. But that doesn’t mean anything in the grand scale of things.
And so she just says it’s okay just to be you and come in with your own time.
She said that one of the things that empowers dating is to have knowledge to know exactly who you are or what you’re about,
and that it’s impossible to know what you don’t know. You know for sure. But that’s what this book is about. It’s trying to help us figure out what it is we need to know. She says the first thing is, is that when we’re looking at people, sometimes we look at toxic narcissists, she says. And I thought, this is where the book was going to go, that she was you know, obviously we don’t want to date toxic narcissists for sure. But here’s the problem that she really found that we’re diagnosed people that we go around in relationships and we say, oh, that person’s toxic, that person’s a narcissist, this person’s a this or this person’s or that. And it’s interrupting her ability to have relationships with people. Obviously, if the person is a narcissist, you want to stay away from them. But people are getting classified as things with no real reason in place at all
and that we have to get away for that or we’re just going to have these rules that keep us away from having a romantic relationship. We’re robbing ourselves, she said of Opportunity for growth, for meeting new people, from learning from other people, all because we’re classifying them. We classify them because they disagree with us, or we classify them of a thing because they belong to the wrong political party or the wrong religion or the wrong something. And if we keep putting people into boxes, we’re never going to have that kind of deep relationship with people. She says the true measures that you want to make sure that you’re involved with people who are emotionally available, and that means that they’re able to have an emotional relationship with you. She said that the hard truth quote, she says, quote, The hard truth is that people don’t want to hear that if you date emotionally unavailable, people means you’re unavailable. It means you’re emotionally unavailable to that. If you get drawn to people who can’t have a relationship with you because maybe they already have a relationship or they’re very distant and they’re just not there. The thing that attracted you to them is probably the fact that they’re safe. You know, you can’t have a relationship with them because whatever reason, they can’t have a relationship with you. And so that might say a lot about you as well. The best way to find emotionally available people is to become emotionally available yourself, opening yourself up, being open to relationships, maybe even allowing yourself to get a little hurt. But if we consider ourselves unlovable or undesirable or we’re removed from people, we keep pushing them away and we’ll get rejected. Then we start thinking, Well, maybe I am really unlovable, maybe I am really ugly, or maybe I am. All these things that I think about my deepest, darkest thoughts about myself. And it makes us
and it makes us afraid to to go out with people. It makes us unavailable. And I think that’s where I was going wrong, too. In the past, is that I thought, Oh, well, they’re just going to fall in love with my friend anyway. Why should I even bother? And so in a sense, she says that this looking for emotionally unavailable people is almost a protection mechanism so that we don’t get hurt and we have to become available to people. And once we do, we may get hurt, but it will also make us
feel available to other people.
She had this interesting point that all the love life advice is always contradicting. You know, if you read the magazine, if you read the Internet, you see all these things. There’s all this advice that will say information like
what is your attachment style and all these different trends in relationship. But in the end, those trends, they don’t mean anything. They don’t get you love and they don’t get you relationships. The real question, she says, is would you date you? And that’s where she talks about having this dating mindset that’s going to help you get there. She is really not into gimmicks, tricks, code words. You know, all the things that you find typically in Web articles and other things. There’s no trick to this at all. And that’s what I liked about her book. This is so straightforward. She says that
even if we’re really independent people, even if we’re people who strive to do things on their own, we also have to be the kind of person that sometimes asks for help. We have to be the kind of people who get close to other people who allow ourselves to be close. And that, she says, quote, Humans are not meant to be islands. We are designed for human interaction and connection
and I thought that was so good because, again, I was prepared for a different book. I don’t know what I was prepared for, but I was so entertained every time I went around a corner in this book waiting that she was going to say something selfish. And instead what she’s just saying is have boundaries, have standards, know yourself, so you know what the right people for you are going to be like. Don’t diagnose people. Don’t call them names. Don’t try to call them narcissists. And she says that if we always put red flags on, everybody will not communicate with them. We’ll never actually have conversations with them. And all we’re doing is we’re being emotionally unavailable to them. We’re being defensive with them. And that is not the basis of any type of relationship. I know because I had an alcoholic parent, I was very concerned about marrying an alcoholic. I saw what a devasted dating situation that put on my own family. And I thought, if I can avoid an alcoholic or a drug user, then I could have a pretty good shot at having a happy life.
And I remember when I was dating back in the day we got dinner, I would literally be sitting there counting drinks. Well, that was the third drink. Can she going to get a fourth drink? No, a fourth drink. And again, I’m diagnosing, you know, and sure enough, you know, you want to make sure that you get the right person for you. But if you’re sitting there and waiting to throw the flag down on people before they even have a chance to talk, there was a fellow that I liked. And like I said, he pulled that fourth drink out of a dinner. Later I found out he was just nervous and he liked fancy drinks. It wasn’t really that much of a drinker in general, but that first date, boy, I counted the drinks and I was worried. So she’s saying this is where we need to talk and communicate and express our needs. And if we keep just finding reason reasons, and if we keep finding reasons to veto a relationship, we’re just not going to get there.
So we’ll stop there. I think that so we’ll stop there. And then next week we’ll talk about what can we do to actually break through on some of these dating situations. We’ll cover some of the myths and some of the things that we can do to bring out in ourselves what we’re really looking for and how we can date again without wrecking ourselves. So my challenge to you is think about ways that you’ve thrown flags at people, ways that you’ve made yourself emotionally unavailable to people. Do you strike them down before you give them a chance? Do you classify them before you really even know them and start thinking? Is there a way that you can actually expose a little bit of yourself so that the relationship and the conversation can continue? You already one. Thanks so much. I appreciate you listening to the podcast. This is a big note for me. I registered the domain name for START was small steps dot com. I still have small steps Paycom. I’m going to have it for a long time. That’s what the feed is on. But now my website is going to be start with small steps dot com. The old site redirects to the new site so there’s no problem there and you can email me at either emails. They’ll both come to me. But the new email is Jill at start with small steps dot com.
Please remember that you can always tell a friend about this podcast if you find it interesting and you’re always welcome to email me if you have something I’d like and remember that you can always email me if you have something that you would like me to talk about, or maybe you disagree with me, or maybe you agree with me, but I’d love to hear it. Thanks, everyone. Have a wonderful week. And remember, we can start that walk towards other people by taking small steps.
Have you ever wondered if myths about relationships and dating is holding you back? That’s what we’ll talk about today.
Today, we’re going to continue our conversation
about the book, The Selfish Romantic
How to Date Without Feeling Bad About Yourself. By Michelle Alman. As I mentioned last week, I don’t know what I was expecting with this book, but I was pleasantly surprised at how kind it was both to yourself and to other people and how finding that balance is going to be a big strength in dating. That when you’re not only just doing something for the other person, that you’re not always looking at what that other person wants or what their needs are, or trying to figure out if you can make this relationship work. Instead, we’re going to talk more about how this is a way of building a relationship together. And I like that about this book. I don’t know that I’m going to start dating again, but I’ll tell you, after reading this book, it made me feel like I should really try again. I didn’t have a good time the last time. I didn’t have a good time. When I was in the dating world, it wracked me. I had a pretty good life. And then every time I get involved in dating, I just felt miserable all the time. I didn’t like wondering, what does he like me? Does he does, Does he not like me? Is he the one? Is he the one that’s going to be the right guy for me? I mean, I hated that. And I was putting so much pressure on just a single date that no wonder it didn’t take off at all. So that’s where we’re going to pick up this week, where she talks a lot about some of the myths and some of the other ideas that we have about dating that’s really holding us back.
First of all, she says with dating myths, this idea that all the good ones are taken. I know I felt that way. Thought, man, you know, all the good guys are all attached to someone now, like my friend. But it’s really this bad idea from the get go because it almost says that the good ones are a thing. And the reason and the true thing is, is that people have strengths and weaknesses. Some people are good at this and good at that. And if we say the good ones, what exactly does that even mean? Because what I like in a guy is going to be different than what you like in a dating relationship. And so there’s no such thing as the perfect person. In essence, that is all going to be a mix of things that we gel with people and some things that don’t gel with other people. And so that whole idea of the perfect person is just not true or disparaging people. You know, you always hear, well, men do this and women do that, and we get all these types of anger towards the other people. And that’s just not true. Again, men are a mixed bag. Women are a mixed bag. People are mixed bag of things again, that gel with us and things that don’t gel with us,
she said. Another myth is that opposites attract. It’s not always exactly true because again, people are a mixed bag and so some things will be a lot like you. My best friend and I are opposites in so many ways and we get along so well in so many other ways. Our philosophy on life, the way we look at the world, is right on target. But when it comes to how we go about certain things, yeah, we’re opposites. I tend to be more type B, I tend to be a little bit more relaxed. She’s more organized and there’s a lot of different ways we go about things, but it has made us great friends because we complement each other really well. And so I think that’s true in a relationship also is that you may compliment the person as compared to
and you may compliment a person in ways that you’re different and you may go together well in other ways that you’re not different. I dated one guy and we had great conversations. We had great times When we talk and go out and we would do certain things, you know, out. And when we would go out, we had a lot of fun just talking. But we were also very opposite when it came to certain things. Strangely enough, I liked football and fixing cars and computers, and he tended to like things like interior decorating and cooking. And he was great at all of those things. When we had football parties over at my house, he’d make all my friends snacks, so it worked out really well. But we were opposites in a lot of different ways, but in the end it complemented.
But in the end, you know, but I think that it was complementary in a lot of different ways. She says another myth is that when you least expect it, you will have that dream relationship. And I get what she’s going where
she’s saying that. Would you find your dream job if you just stopped looking for a dream job? Then how? Where in the world are you going to find a date if you stop looking for people? I think that what it meant is that people got desperate. You know, They really wanted to be in a relationship. They desperately wanted to be with someone. And that desperation made them seem hard to have a relationship with that desperation to be with someone made it difficult to actually date them. And she said that the real answer is that you have to be an active person. And she says, quote, You are an active participant in your love life. So it means that you can’t just not expect it or not try or look away. You have to actually be involved in dating, finding dates and making the relationship work. But that also doesn’t mean that you should be that desperate about it. You should be your own person. She says another myth is that you’ll know who it is,
that you’ll know instantly when you find the one. And that’s not true. Relations take time. They take learning. They take learning about each other and so it’s not quite that easy. The next myth Love conquers all. Love can’t conquer all. We should never overlook things just because we think love will conquer all. I’ve seen people I’m friends with in the dorms and other things. He just thought, I just love that person and this will work out and it just doesn’t fix just because love fixes things. In the end, were real people. I think if you got into a relationship and something just makes you upset, but you say, Wow, love will conquer all that might work for the first part of that relationship. But five years down the road, ten years down the road, it’s not going to really help because you have struggles and you’ll need to have more than just whatever it is that we think is love. We have to have that deep connection. We have to have what I think is important is God in the mix. We have to have more than kind of this Diet Coke. We have to have more than what my friend called the Coke commercial girl type of love, where you’re running through a field.
She also says that another myth is that when people say you’re just too picky and
it’s important
to be picky. I mean, she mentions Chandler Bing and Friends and the fact that he was way too picky. But we also have to get what we want out of a relationship. We have to like the person that we’re with. We have to be able to communicate with the person. And so it may not be that you’re being picky. It may just be that you need to find more people to date, get a different type of person from a different location, from dating. You need to communicate what you really need in a relationship.
And even if that doesn’t mean that they’ll change, you know, sometimes we get in a relationship and we think the other person will change. The important thing to realize is that they can’t read your mind. They don’t know what you need and they don’t know what is upsetting you. And I think that when I did go out with people and it wasn’t working out, I just broke up with them because I thought, well, I don’t want this person to change for me or I just want this person to be themselves. And obviously this isn’t working for us, so we should break up. I don’t know that I ever told anyone why or talk to them about whatever it is that was bugging me ahead of time. I thought, you’re you and me. I’m you’re you and I’m me. And if it’s just not working out, I don’t want to make you into another person. I remember dating one person, and the
more mean I was to him and I wasn’t trying to be mean, but eventually I’d get frustrated because he was really treating me very poorly in some ways. And I get mad
and then he would be apologetic, try to come back, you know, let’s just try again. Let’s try to do this again. And I thought, Well, I just don’t want to spend my life being mean to a human being just so he’ll be nice to me. But did I ever sit down and talk to him about it? No, I didn’t really do that. So that’s where she’s saying that all these myths and all these ways that we treat people. In the end, we have to communicate what we need.
But if we, she thinks, become emotionally available people, we start communicating with people. We get away from the drama and then we tell them what we need. We tell them,
you know, exactly what we need in a relationship or need in a partner. It’ll start to work out or it won’t work out. But it’s not because of these myths. It’s not because you’re dating the bad boy or dating the good boy. It’s you’re dating a human being. And once you start having that communication, you’ll be able to start connecting with people and if you date someone who treats you poorly, you’re not going to feel great
If that in and if that person was someone that you want to have a relationship with and they want to have a relationship with you, you don’t have to do everything to have that relationship. You won’t have to go to the ends of the earth to make the relationship work. Instead, you have to stop being so attached. You have to start being you have to stop being so dramatic about everything. This will be the end of everything. And she says, quote, You are breaking your own heart every time you exaggerate the importance in there.
Every time you exaggerate your importance in their life you know, you’re trying to
you’re trying to make it more important and stick to this relationship and trying to turn it into something you can communicate what your needs are. You can talk to the person. And if they’re not going to get there, then you can, of course, break up with them. But you have to realize that this relationship has to be good for both of you. It’s not to just get into a relationship. It’s and it’s meant to have a good relationship and a good relationship is the same kind of good relationship that you have with friends or your parents or other people.
She gave a quote from Greg Bernhardt and Liz took out from Greg Bernhardt in a 2004 book. When it comes to men, deal with them as they are, not how you would like them to be. Stop focusing on who.
And she brings out that it’s true. You can’t sit there and imagine who they’re going to be and try to turn them into that person. I remember once talking to someone at my church and she was kind of patting yourself on the back. Oh, when I first met this guy, he was kind of a mass. And look, I changed his clothes up. I changed his hair up. I did this, I changed that. I changed the other thing. And I thought, I don’t know that you want to go through in life changing people. Won’t they end up just resenting that? Won’t they end up just hating the fact that you’re constantly changing,
that you’re trying to change them or turn them into this fantasy person? So instead of this kind of
either being a hopeless romantic and never getting what you want and having drama about it, or trying to manipulate the other person into being what you want them to be, why not figure out what it is that person is a realistic look at them and a realistic look at what you need in relationship, what the other person needs in a relationship, and find a way through it.
She has this chapter called What If I’m Too Ugly to Date? And, you know, I think because of my weight and other issues, I thought that was true for me. I thought, you know, maybe I’m just not attractive enough to always like my friend and she’s cute and I’m not cute, so therefore, I’m just never going to find someone. And she says that you’re, quote, trapping yourself in a story that serves no purpose. It’s just making us feel bad. And it’s really
putting us in this bad position that we have to change. We have to fix ourselves in order to find love. And she said that even in a lot of the movies, you know, get into that everything from Grease to my big to my big fat wedding, you always have to change yourself in order to get the guy when instead that’s never going to make you happy. You could, of course, change in the short term to make another person happy. But again, five years down the road, ten years down the road, is that something that you really can do is to make another person happy by not being you. And we just have to get past thinking that we’re ugly or thinking that we’re not attractive. So that love’s a lot more complex like that. She says that dating is a lot more complex like that, and she says that
when we look at a first date and then we wonder if there’s a second date.
It’s a whole big complex of things. Not only do people have what they like, they, you know, have people that they like. There have been guys that I liked that had nothing to do with the checkboxes I would have had in a relationship because they had other things that made them really interesting, fun to be with.
So it would have made up for all the other things that I kind of imagined what the perfect guy for me was going to be like. We are just a mixed bag of people, and if we stop treating ourselves in a corner or she’s talking even about like the online application and she’s even talking about the online sites where you find dates, if we just say things that incriminate us. Like So have you ever dated someone that’s overweight? You know, you’re suddenly
putting them in a box as someone who can’t love someone who’s overweight? Or do you like nerd girls? You know, whatever it is, you have to realize you’re more complex dated than just an overweight nerd girl. There’s a lot more going on to who you are then. Just the things that we put ourselves in the boxes. You know, the beginning of the book, she says, Don’t put other people in boxes. Will stop putting yourself in those boxes. Either you are more complex. The people you are dating are much more complex. And by just not treating people as a complex human beings who have likes and dislikes, it’s bad. It’s bad on both the sides.
She said that she had even convinced yourselves that no one was going to date her, and if they were going to date her, they were just going to treat her poorly because of all her inc of all because of all her own insecurities, and that if she was just going to sit there and beg people to date her because of all these problems, it’s not going to go well for her. So she says that if you’re ready to get back into dating and start really trying to do it, well, you’re going to have to do is come to peace with yourself and who you are and your strengths and weaknesses.
And think of dating as a little experiment. We’ve talked in past podcasts about trying small experiments, like I mentioned, that if you wanted to own a restaurant, try working in a restaurant. But instead of looking at dating with all this drama and all this impact, instead we should be looking at this as an experiment. Our lives. We’re going to get to meet a new person. We’re going to get to talk to that other person and find out more about them. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But stop trapping all our self-esteem, all our drama, all our hurts into this thing, that makes it completely untenable, completely unable to get us feeling good about dating. And she said that dating, of course, will trigger those old things. But we have come to a peace with it. We have to realize when we’re ready to date again. She says that it’s about curiosity. I want to learn a little bit more about you and just try it and see how you go.
She says it’s important that if we do try to get back into dating and we feel like we can get past a lot of the things that are holding us back that
we should show up as our real self. You know, a lot of these dating apps, you know, there’s all the different things about how to make the perfect profile. And she has a very good template and she talks a lot about how to make a good profile, but an accurate profile, because if you make something where it doesn’t look like you, you get a professional photographer and you get all dressed up and fancy like, but that’s not who you are. It’s kind of weird, right? Because you’re not bringing your real self to the date. You’re sending this fake date image out there. And instead, she says that when we work on dating, when we work on apps, we should come as ourselves. She says they work the dating apps, and if they didn’t work, people wouldn’t use them so much. But they’re, she says, very amazing. They’re very convenient. We get to be lazy, but
and if we get rejected, she says that rejection she says, quote, Rejection is always better than regret. We might feel bad about it because we, you know, got on some app or we found someone to date and it didn’t work out. But what did you really want to have in that situation? To have a relationship work out when it shouldn’t have worked out? Do you want to be a different person so that the date worked out, or do you want them to be a different person so the date worked out instead? If you go into this as an experiment, you go into this as, Hey, I’m just curious, I’m going to find someone and maybe it’ll work out. Maybe it won’t. Maybe we’ll have a second date. Maybe we won’t. But we’re going to learn more about each other. And it’s just kind of fun.
And instead of feeling rejected or hurt by it,
just make it fun and interesting. And she said that the most important thing is, quote, People don’t say hi, but they say hi back, meaning that if you’re just ignoring people, if you go into a bar or a church or a book club and you don’t talk to people, they’re not going to talk to you. But if you start saying hi, if you start up a conversation, I know I’m one of those people who talks to people everywhere. It has the potential to turn into a relationship. And if they’re rude, if they reject you or you didn’t want them anyway, so don’t put drama into it and don’t put bad feelings into it, she says. In the end that if you do create a dating profile or you know, any type of image out there, she says that make sure you state what you want. You know, don’t go on this list like I don’t want this and I don’t want a drinker and I don’t want these things. It’s not the way to go. Instead, make it a positive thing. So that you should present who you actually are. She said that you should actually be lenient about who you date and just see where it goes and see if the relationship allows you to go further. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And she said that
she said that the profile should be so identifiable with you that if your friend read it, they would know exactly who it was at. It’s you. So it’s about being honest. And even if we go into these dating apps
and we act superficial or we’re not ourselves or we’re misleading someone by hiding who we really are, it’s just a recipe for disaster, really. So the book goes into a lot more conversation about how to get out there and how to get into like dating apps or using those things
and how to use those successfully. But she said that you have to be yourself, that you wouldn’t share
information that you wouldn’t share if you just met someone at a party or a book club or something like that. So don’t overshare because, you know, you should security and matters too, and that in the end don’t feel rejected if it ends up not working out well, it may hurt, obviously. It may hurt about that. But
instead, if it works, it works out great. And if it didn’t work out, that’s okay. It’s one person who just didn’t work out and make sure that you realize it. It’s not
and make sure that it’s not something on you. Again, people are a mixed bag, and if that person wasn’t for you, then they weren’t for you.
She also says that, you know, if you start texting the other person, make sure that you
are again honest with the person, that you’re not making them your top priority. You just Matt, you just started dating. You maybe had a date and she says that if you feel uncomfortable about dating, the best way you’re going to get better at dating is to date more people or go on more dates. You’ll start getting comfortable with it.
And she says in the end that you don’t have to go on a date that you that you don’t need to like someone to go on a date with someone. You just have to be curious and interested in what they’re about,
but also have those boundaries. Because again, if the person’s a stranger, she says that we should treat them like a stranger because it could put ourselves in physical risk. Certainly we have to have boundaries. We have to make sure that we’re also physically safe, but that we also share a little bit. And the more we go on, the more we share, the more curious we get. But again, set it at that right level where we’re safe and secure, but we’re also available and expressing curiosity and that if we see each date like a set as an experiment, a good story, or maybe a potential relationship, then we’re going to be well on our way towards dating,
she says. If you do go on that date, don’t knock out your dressing and be in the super high heels and all the things that you’re not really. You. I’m not much of a dress wear. I’m not much of a person who wears high heels. So why would I want to maybe go on a date like that? It’s sort of sets up a wrong expectation. Says in the end that first dates are low stakes. They’re a way for us to just communicate with a new person and that we shouldn’t have to work this hard in making someone interested in you. If it’s that hard, that person’s probably not the right person. We’re all going to say stupid things. We’re all going to screw up and drop a drink on our lap. I mean, there’s things that’s going to happen and we can’t get burnt up about what we did wrong. I mean, I remember I used to go on these dates and I would just recall all night long, I shouldn’t have said this. And I’d stumbled over that thing and nearly fell on my face, you know, got a get away from all of that and instead just communicate, just be a real person. And if it happens, it happens. But there’s no rush. Again, this is experiment, a trial period, fun to get to meet another person. And if we start putting all this pressure on us, if we stop trying to get certain points across or present ourselves in a certain way, or having this end in a perfect way, we’re just going put so much pressure on ourselves, we’re not going to have fun. But in the end, she knows, you know, if it doesn’t work out, there may be loss involved and maybe Greece in law there may be some grief and we’ll heal over that. But again, the best way to get better at dating and to treat it more like an experiment is to start dating more. I really love this book. I think it has some great tips in it, and so I recommend it to you. If you were looking for a way to do better at dating or maybe get back into the dating world. So my challenge to you is think about how you could date more genuinely, how could you be more of yourself? Are you that person who puts up an image that’s not really true, either physically or emotionally? Think of three ways that you could be more yourself while you’re dating. Are you one? Thanks so much. I appreciate you. Listen to the podcast. Remember, you can email me at Jill at Start With Small Steps. You can email me at Jill at start with small steps dot com contact me on Twitter, other places. It’s all there on my website. Start with small steps dot com and remember that our road to new relationships starts by taking and just remember treating dating like an experiment like we’re curious and other people will start with small steps.
