4 BAD DATING HABITS YOU SHOULD BREAK

Finding a compatible partner and creating a strong relationship usually starts one way: dating. As a process of getting to know someone to figure out if they’re the right fit, dating can feel like more of a burden than a joy these days, especially if you’re navigating the dating apps or striking out on your own at singles events.

Even if you think you’re putting your best foot forward while dating, you may still be holding on to bad habits that are holding you back. As a matchmaker, I’ve talked to dozens of singles who bemoan the drudgery of dating, yet continue negative cycles that hold them back from finding a healthy relationship. Here are the top bad habits that you can edit out of your dating life to increase your chances of finding the right partner. 

Endless Messaging Before Meeting in Person

Women, most commonly, feel the need to start conversations over the apps for safety reasons: the misogynistic society that we live in allows men to behave poorly without consequences, and women need to take safety into their own hands way too often. Messaging over the dating apps, or even just texting, gives women a means of finding out whether or not the guy they’re about to meet in person is a creep or not. 

But in many instances–and regardless of gender or sexual orientation– messaging with a complete stranger creates opportunities to NOT meet in person. And, after all, meeting in person is the whole point of dating! After a slew of app-based messages, it becomes more and more likely that you’ll find something you don’t like about a person: they don’t use punctuation correctly; they end up sounding snarky instead of witty and sarcastic; they don’t respond within a given time window and seem lazy, etc. 

A good work around for this is using the app-based video-call systems. Rather than writing a novel back and forth with your potential date, hop on a 15 minute video call to get a better sense of their personality, vibe, and sense of humor. As a medium, writing only works if someone is REALLY good at it, and honestly, most of us are not. Holding someone accountable for what they write when you barely know them leads to disappointment – unless of course you’re messaging with David Sedaris or Joan Didion.  

Relying Too Much on an Immediate “Spark”

Our Disney-fied society has conditioned us to believe that true love happens immediately and that everyone knows when it does simply based on a “spark” or “chemistry” they feel upon first meeting someone. 

Quite often, love doesn’t happen that way. It sneaks up on you slowly, and over time, you’re head over heels for a person who truly understands you because they’ve taken the time to get to know you. 

The “love at first sight” myth is pervasive and damaging because it prevents people from really getting to know each other. It takes time (at least more than one date) for someone to really show you who they are in terms of values, life priorities, temperament, and sense of purpose.

People are complicated and looking for an immediate spark is a great way to reject potentially good partners simply because they didn’t arouse a pre-conditioned response in your brain. 

Always Sticking to Your Type

Speaking of conditioning, that “type” that you think is so important for you to stick to? It’s really a result of experiences you’ve had earlier in life that created a template for your future attraction, meaning you only feel attraction when a person fits into that template, which can be good or bad. And many times we’re attracted to the wrong people, simply because that’s what our brains have been conditioned to recognize as attraction rather than healthy attachment. 

Paul Carrick Brunson writes that dating based on type leads to ignoring the complexities, nuance, and realities of another human being. In his book “It’s Complicated But it Doesn’t Have to Be,” Brunson observes that the gender stereotypes that we’re conditioned to stick to, (ie, preferring tall, athletic men, or being attracted to “bad boy” types) are “an oversimplification and not useful for dating or determining who your partner should be.”  

Instead of relying on type, consider focusing on what values and character traits are most important to you and identifying potential partners who display those. Again, this may take more than one or two dates, but it’s a better indicator for true relationship potential than “She wears too much makeup,” or “I don’t like his taste in music.”

Multi-tasking

The dating app landscape has skewed our perception of our real romantic options. When we’re delivered countless profiles of attractive people on our phone screens at all hours of the day, we start to believe that anyone and everyone could become our partner, when the reality is that your best fit is likely to be part of a smaller pool of people who share similar values, life experiences, and interests. A pretty face on a profile is simply that - a pretty face amongst a sea of other options. 

And when it comes to dating in person, it’s best to focus on one individual at a time in order to make the most informed judgement about how you might mesh with that person in a relationship. When you’re juggling multiple people, your brain will naturally begin comparing them against each other, and comparison games are always detrimental to starting a relationship. Evaluate people on their own unique terms based on how they make you feel (ie, do they treat you with respect? Do they listen? Do they make you laugh?) rather than pitting them against each other in an imaginary boyfriend/girlfriend pageant. The only way to do that is to give each potential relationship the time and space to grow naturally, without outside influences or comparison-fueled pressure.