[ Cookbook | Book Reviews | Advice | Previous | Next ]
I wish this were the Hitchhiker's Guide to Dating, enclosed in a plastic cover with big, friendly letters on the cover that said Don't Panic. You probably don't know what your goal is, and I just told you to. That's okay. If you don't know what your goal is, your goal can be to find out what your goal is. That's a great goal. Especially if you tell people along the way so they can set their expectations appropriately.
If you don't know what your goal is, you can find books, classes and exercises to help you figure it out. Make lists of what you want. If you don't know anything about what you want, start with a list of what you don't want and then sit back and imagine people (fictional if necessary) who aren't what you don't want. Describe them. If you realize you don't want them, add those criteria to the don't-want list and repeat as necessary. If you have a vague goal (life partner) and are trying to flesh out details, and can't decide how you feel about a given trait (would you date someone who already had a child? More than one? More than two?), that trait can be left off of both lists.
Maybe you have a list. Maybe it goes something like this:
The above list contains what the goal is along with some criteria for how to attain that goal. It is best to keep the latter well-separated from the former. Put aside criteria like where you like or don't like to meet people, or process constraints, until the next chapter. Focus on describing the person you are looking for.
If your list is mostly physical and your goal is something like life partner, you should probably sleep around (or, if for any reason you have chosen to exclude sex from this process, date around) a bit. You need to learn that compatibility is a hard problem to solve. Find out how important the physical traits are, and along the way, you'll figure out what non-physical traits really turn you off (or on).
If your list is mostly behavioral or character trait or philosophical/political or otherwise the kind of thing you get to know over a period of time and your goal is to get laid, you should probably ditch the list for a while, hang out with a bunch of new people of the appropriate gender, engage in small talk, smile a lot, flirt when you feel inclined to do so and the other person doesn't immediately run away. Pay close attention to your level of arousal. Most people have some sense of this, but if you don't, in a pinch, you can periodically adjourn to the restroom to check for erection and/or more lubrication than usual. Hit on those people who turn you on. By hit on, I mean offer contact info (e-mail address, phone number) and suggest meeting for a short date (like coffee or something else during the day and less than a meal) some time. If someone makes a similar overture, in general, I'd suggest accepting proffered contact information, even if you have no immediate intention of responding. But if it bothers you that you might be hurting someone by leading them on, politely reject the ones who leave you limp or dry. Do that for a while and you'll be able to put together a reasonably accurate list of what turns you on (or off).
If you are feeling frustrated and angry at me for assuming you know how to do and are willing to do things like engage in small talk, you may want to skip ahead to the next chapter and come back when those concerns have been addressed.
It is okay, even desirable, to have multiple, contingent goals. Maybe you've been married, had a child or two, and are feeling been-there-done-that-got-the-lousy-t-shirt. If you happen to stumble across Mr. or Ms Absolutely Perfect For Me, you'd do it again, but in the mean time, you just want regular, friendly and occasionally novel, fuckbuddies. That's a great set of goals. Ideally, you should have a large goal that you work towards over an extended period of time, some medium sized goals that contribute to a sense that the large goal is attainable and you are nearing it, and some small goals that are largely unrelated so if you change your mind you don't feel like the whole thing was a complete waste of time.
You may find yourself pursuing completely incompatible goals, like I just want to get laid right now I don't care with who, but I don't want to have sex with someone I think is a poor choice for a long-term, committed relationship. Those who do not realize they have these multiple, incompatible goals may kid themselves into believing they are in love with every idiot they trip at the threshold and fuck on the living room floor. Your friends and family know you do this. They've probably tried to tell you.
If you know you have more than one goal, or if you have come to suspect this is the case, your list will probably break relatively cleanly into several internally consistent but mutually incompatible goals. You may have no way of deciding now which goal is the one you really want, or what order to pursue these goals in, or which goals are more attainable than the others. You can clarify your options by developing separate lists more fully. Once you have done so, ask yourself if all these goals are intended to help you reach another goal, perhaps one that is not specifically relationship oriented (for example, do you think these goals, if attained, would improve your self-esteem, status in life, job opportunities, contribute to financial security, etc.). If so, choose that as your goal, and make plans accordingly.
If you really do have more than one goal, for different reasons, try to impose an order on them. Which is easiest to attain? Which would prevent you from attaining the others, if attained first? For example, if you want to experience a variety of relationships, and also to marry and have children with one person, it would likely be best to get the variety now, and marry later, unless you are willing to constrain your choices of marriage partner to people you would be willing to divorce, cheat on, or arrange an open marriage with.
If your goals diverge, but are not fully incompatible, try to find steps you can take that will lead you closer to many or all of them, but do not fully commit you to choosing one right now. If you would like variety and marriage, meeting many new people of the appropriate gender is a step you can take that might lead to either, or both, goals.
I think, in general, we as humans need to experience a variety of choices in order to learn what it is we truly want and need. With food, I recommend sampling new foods occasionally so your body learns what is in those foods. Once your body has experienced them, if it needs something in one of those foods (vitamin C, or calcium, or soluble fiber, or some obscure nutrient as yet unnamed by science) to be healthy, it will crave that particular food. If you have never tasted what you need, you can only crave what you do not know, an unsatisfactory situation at best. Likewise with friends, careers, lovers and mates. We need to meet many people to learn the kind of people we need in our lives and what we need from those people. (Contact with strangers or near strangers on a nearly-daily basis is also documented as an important component of good mental and emotional health.) The level of interaction to have with those people as we consider what we want and with who (for example, who we choose to have sex with, which jobs we accept while building our career, whose parties we attend while selecting our close friends) is something we have to muddle through and learn by doing.
Really. So the sooner you start muddling, the sooner you'll learn who you need to be happy.
[ Cookbook | Book Reviews | Advice | Previous | Next ]
Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created February 9, 2002 Updated February 9, 2002