Why You Should Kiss Dating (Apps) Goodbye.

In America, we seem to have fully absorbed the idiotic notion that more options are always better. The truth is, the more choices we have, the more time and energy it takes to make one. By now, many people are familiar with the idea of decision fatigue, and while it may be a hotly contested topic in a clinical setting, the truth is, we all know how difficult it can be to make a choice when faced with too many options. While we love the idea of having so many choices, what we rarely stop to think about is the cost of having that many choices.

Unfortunately, we have carried this same idea into dating. We seem to believe somehow that having more options is better. In reality, however, what tends to happen is that we just spend more and more time flipping through available options and less time actually dating - or perhaps even better yet - simply living our lives. What I would argue is that all the time we spending looking is actually cutting into the time we could be out doing things that actually make us happy, or, at the very least, spending on ensuring that when we do find someone we are truly compatible with, we are actually ready to be in a relationship.

In 1997, a book came out that took the world of Evangelical Christianity by storm. It was called I Kissed Dating Goodbye. To this day, there are few books that have caused as much controversy as this one, but what is most ironic about that to me, is that only a small handful of the people that either used this book to cause harm or people who consider themselves to have been harmed by this book seem to have ever actually read it! Like almost all books, there were certainly concepts that could have been used to harm (and clearly were), but there were also a lot of really great nuggets of truth to be found as well.

I admit, I read this book in my mid-to-late 20's and found it to be incredibly helpful. I understand the harm that it seems to have caused many, but most of those that feel they were harmed by this book also seem to feel that "purity culture" is something that suddenly appeared in the early 2000's. They completely overlook practices that have been around for centuries, such as women wearing white for their weddings, the origins of the Iron Maiden, and the fact that one of the original, and perhaps most influential, groups of colonizers of America were called Puritans.

One of the very helpful nuggets I took away from this book is that the time we spend not dating is precious and valuable, and I think it's particularly important for women. While men have always been encouraged to go off and "find themselves" ( or “sow their wild oats”) before “settling down,” women have largely had no such encouragement. I also believe an argument could be made that women date more because they feel societally pressured to do so, while men date more because (and only when) they want to.

While there is nothing wrong with dating and I think dating is a good and healthy thing, I think the enormous amount of time people spend pursuing a relationship now is time that could be better spent growing as a person and getting to know yourself better. Call me crazy, but I am a big believer in “if you build it, they will come.” What I have also learned from my own life is that the more time I spent working on myself, learning to overcome my own fears, doubts, inhibitions and to be my own best friend, the lest desperate I felt to be "in a relationship." We think the antidote to that desperation is to be in a relationship, but I think the opposite is actually true. The more desperate you are to be in a relationship in the first place, the more unhappy you will be when and if you finally find one.

While I don’t completely buy into the Law of Attraction as it was laid out in the wildly popular book The Secret, I think that like all books (including I Kissed Dating Goodbye) there is certainly an element of truth to it. Particularly when it comes to “attracting” a mate. I think we waste a lot of time looking instead of spending it getting ready, so when someone highly compatible actually comes along, we often are not ready for the very relationship we spent so much time, energy and effort pursuing in the first place.

Mating is like buying a home, dating is like renting

One thing you'll notice about people getting ready to buy a home is that they plan for it carefully. Often years in advance. For one thing, they start cutting their expenses, which inherently has the effect of literally changing their lives, lifestyles and habits. They understand that buying a home is both a huge commitment and a huge financial burden, and so they plan carefully for it. If only we applied this same understanding to dating.

Dating is like renting - it's expensive, but not nearly as expensive as preparing for the long term commitment of buying a home (preparing for marriage/ long-term committed relationships). People don't buy homes because it's actually cheaper than renting - it's not. Far from it in fact. The reason people buy homes is that in the long run, you build up equity, the same way you do in your relationships.

I don’t believe in this idea of The One. I think mating is a lot more like buying a house. The longer you save, the more research you do and the more patient you are, the more likely you will be to end up with a home you will be very happy with for a long time to come. That being said, while you may have some idea of where you want to live and what you’re looking for in a house, there will always be at least a few compromises that will have to be made. The same is true of relationships.

In addition, just like buying a home, while you may have a long list of things you want, what it comes down to is a combination of what is available when you are ready to buy and what you can afford. That being said, the more desperate you are to buy a home/ be in a relationship, the more likely you are to make compromises that could leave you very unhappy, very quickly.

What few people seem to understand is that unlike buying a house, the biggest cost in relationships is not (usually) a financial one, it's emotional. In fact, if the biggest cost of your relationship is financial, I wouldn't count on it lasting too long, or expect it to be hell if it does.

Dating is like renting. Some people may never want to buy a house ("settle down") and that's okay. But if you do want/ plan to get married or settle into a long-term committed relationship, then it's important to understand that dating is expensive and the more you do it, the fewer resources you have. Imagine you want to buy a house. Do you think it's a good idea to move every 2-3 months, or even worse, bounce from hotel to hotel?

Unfortunately, we are given far better advice about how to prepare to buy a home than we are about how to prepare for marriage or long-term commitment. In fact, it's rare for anyone to even think of marriage or long- term commitment as something we even need to prepare for. Some people date just for the sake of dating, but would you chronically be house hunting if you had no interest in buying a home? And then, if you went to an open house and took up a realtor's valuable time only to tell them you had no interest in buying, would you expect them to not be upset?

Always remember, dating, like all relationships, is an investment - it takes time, money and energy. If a long-term or lifelong relationship is like buying a house, then the more resources you invest in dating, the less you will have to save up for buying a house. Again, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t date, it simply means you always need to be balancing your short-term expenditures versus your long-term goals.

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