Mark Manson offers up some refreshingly simple solutions for why you can’t seem to find a healthy relationship.
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Nobody wins on Valentine’s Day. The holiday puts everyone in an awkward situation.
If you’re not seeing anybody, then it’s an incessant and unnecessary reminder of your solitude. If you are seeing someone, but aren’t serious yet, then you have this awkward, “Should I say something? Should I not?” situation where you’re afraid that no matter what you do, it’ll give the wrong impression. And if you are in a relationship, then there’s all sorts of heightened expectations for chocolate and dinners and candles and violins and puppies and other crap, all of which will at best come across as forced and at worst be entirely disingenuous.
Sorry, but romance is kind of like a fart: if you have to force it then it’s going to be shitty. Just let it, err… come out.
With that said, amidst the seas of flowers and ponies, I do make a point to write some dating advice on Valentine’s Day each year. It’s usually pretty brutal dating advice as well. Call it my little tradition.
Last year, I wrote a how-to guide on breaking up properly. The year before that I wrote a dry theoretical explanation of why needy behavior makes you hideously unattractive to everyone within a five-mile radius.
So let’s keep the streak alive. This year I’m going to cut to the chase: Why people who are perpetually single and don’t want to be… are perpetually single and don’t want to be.
A.k.a, the “Why Nobody Loves You” post.
(Ouch.)
(I’m just kidding, *I* love you.)
(OK, not really.)
So cozy up on the couch in a nice pair of sweatpants, grab a tub of ice cream and a fresh box of Kleenex — you know, like you do every weekend — and get ready to be truth-slapped in the face. Yeah, you know you like it.
1. YOU DON’T RESPECT YOURSELF
The respect and admiration you receive from others is proportional to the respect you receive from yourself. If you take care of yourself mentally, emotionally and physically, then others will be attracted to the prospect of taking care of you mentally, emotionally and yes, physically (giggity).
Don’t believe me?
Try it for a month. Take care of yourself. Exercise and eat well. Sleep well at night. Work hard and plan ahead. Be social. Eliminate bad habits. Speak about your ideas without inhibition and expect nothing in return. Cure cancer. Share things based on the simple pleasure of sharing. Pursue others out of earnestness and not out of obligation or desperation. Don’t accept judgments made by yourself or others. Don’t take rejection personally. Save a puppy from a burning building. Rather than see the world in terms of ranking and competition, choose to see the world in terms of compatibility and incompatibility. Then take it on as your job to find the compatibility.
Try it for a month and see what happens.
I realize it’s not easy. But that’s kind of the point. Being an emotionally functional human adult is actually a difficult endeavor. But if you want to date an emotionally functional human adult, then you need to be an emotionally functional human adult. It’s a radical idea, I know.
2. YOU HAVE ABSURD EXPECTATIONS
There are two new dating stereotypes that have cropped up this generation. They are:
- The man who is fat, balding, underemployed, anti-social, unhygienic, who decorates his apartment with his collection of original, mint-condition, Star Wars action figures (all in fighting poses), who spends his weekends engrossed in Manga comic books and internet porn, and who is then perpetually frustrated that every woman he likes is somehow unable to appreciate all of his amazing qualities. He then comes to the conclusion that — obviously — there’s something horribly wrong with the women in the world.
- The fashionable, beautiful, 30-something, career woman who wants to settle down, but despite having dates lined up every night of the week, she laments that there are “no good men out there.” The last man she dated was an accountant, played racquetball and spoke French. But she dumped him because he had bad fingernails and didn’t want to go to business school. The man before that won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, but she dumped him because chemistry is such an impractical profession anyway — I mean, really, get a clue!
The man feels entitled to date anyone despite the fact that he brings basically nothing to the table in an intimate/sexual relationship. The woman brings something to the table, but feels entitled to date someone who brings everything to the table in an intimate/sexual relationship. Both are terribly delusional in regards to their dating expectations.
These flavors of delusional expectations come down to perfection — people who expect perfection in others and people who expect others to acknowledge the perfection in themselves. It’s debatable which is more insufferable.
Of course, these absurd expectations occur in each gender and take on many forms. I once met a woman who was unhealthy and overweight and, with a straight face, stated that she would only consider dating a man if he had six-pack abs (unsurprisingly, she was still single). I had a friend in college who once dumped a woman he had been crazy about because her taste in movies made it impossible for him to respect her opinions.
There are people who assume that any sort of disagreement or argument signals a deathly incompatible and a future of pure misery, so they end it. Then there are people who expect the opposite sex to fall down and beg for their attention and affection and then get genuinely pissed off and vicious when they don’t. There are people who think that because you shared a chicken basket and watched a Tom Hanks movie together, you’re now owed a phone call every single day and if that phone call doesn’t come they go on a screaming tirade.
It’s really simple: We all have our own imperfections. Everyone we date also has their own imperfections. Intimacy and romance is determined by people who have comparable and complementary imperfections to one another.
Learn to appreciate some people’s imperfections. Learn to appreciate and improve upon your own. Otherwise you’re going to be single (and angry) for a very long time.
3. YOU HAVEN’T DEVELOPED THE SKILLS FOR INTIMACY
A lot of people are great “on paper” daters. What I mean by that is that they go on dates regularly. They’re attractive, attentive, have good jobs, interesting skills and hobbies. They do the dinner conversations, they laugh in the right places, they talk about their lives, their families, their careers, their aspirations, their dog’s strange bathroom habits. They nail everything and yet…
…nobody sticks around.
Eventually, the phone stops ringing, the lame excuses pop up, or the ubiquitous, “We should just be friends” comes out.
Ultimately dating and finding a partner is an emotional process. People like this get the surface-level behaviors right, but they never engage the depth of their emotions and connect where the real life is. It’s like the difference between composing a concerto on piano and simply performing somebody else’s concerto.
Generating intimacy in a relationship requires emotional investment and vulnerability. That means you to open up about yourself in ways that may not be completely comfortable. It means exposing yourself. It requires you to share opinions and values that may polarize people and generate rejections. It requires you to be bold and take risks in going after what you want.
To generate emotional intimacy with others, one must open up and discover the emotions within oneself. In our culture today, sexual/romantic relationships are objectified. They’re treated as boxes on a checklist or entries on a resume. They’re seen as an exchange of time, information and bodily fluids.
But intimacy is something that happens organically through the mutual expression of emotions and values. It’s a box that can’t be checked. It’s a resume that can’t be filled in. It’s unconscious and personal and unnameable. And one cannot generate that deep intimacy if one is not open to those deep emotions and values within oneself.
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Originally appeared at MarkManson.net
Photo courtesy of DepositPhotos.com
I agree with all three points, in theory. But here is where I disagree. Having been single most of my adult life, I find it frustrating that people who are single are always being told they are doing something wrong. “You just haven’t followed the instructions properly for how to be in an adult relationship. You haven’t yet whipped yourself into emotionally-mature shape. Because, if you do, *then* you will not be single anymore.” Trying to make yourself “fit for relationship” becomes as impossible and self-defeating as the pursuit of perfection … or like trying to achieve an ideal goal-weight.… Read more »
Thanks for putting it out there, Kem.
I really agree with you.
Thanks, FlyingKal, for understanding. 🙂
Bottom line,
You can do everything right and still be wrong, while others (some) can do most if not all wrong and still be right. It’s not you, it’s the system, but we still have to live it.
Dare I say, there is truth in humor? I really enjoyed this article. I would like to make a special request that I believe many, many singles, like myself, would appreciate. Write the article that addresses your statement “Intimacy and romance is determined by people who have comparable and complimentary imperfections to one another.” A entire nation of singles may get married within the year of reading such a piece. I’m talking scales falling from the eyes kinda stuff. Who would have thought that there is a such thing as “comparable and complimentary imperfections”?. Oh, and I will proofread it… Read more »
Then again, the articles telling us that a prospective partner should neither complete nor complement us, are like 20 to the dozen here.
Wow, Wes.
By “Wow”, does that mean you disagree? Robin Williams was nothing more than an appliance or ATM to his ex-wives. He was selling his house and taking jobs he didn’t want just to keep the money coming in. It didn’t matter that he was depressed and was in the beginning stages of Parkinson’s disease. How many other men have been in the same situation?
Is that what you read on the MGTOW misogyny cave? I mean, MGTOW forums? And I do not know how many men have been in the same situation. But hey, contracts. Many women have been in the same situation as well, and hey, contracts. And the more women advance in the society, the more they will be paying alimony. Fair enough. Why so many 50y/o+ men marry 20 somethings women and believe they are in love with their not that hard anymore penises, worthless sperm and flabby bodies (and oh so great intellect), though? Please. Young women who sincerely love… Read more »
It’s interesting that you have so much anger towards me and so little compassion for men like Robin Williams. Is any criticism of women now considered misogyny? I never said his ex-wives directly caused his death, but they certainly contributed to it, along with a legal system that is rigged against men. By the way, MGTOW is for men who are opting out of marriage or cohabitation. They don’t want control over women, or anyone else but themselves. How is that in any way hostile? I would suggest reading The Manipulated Man by Esther Vilar, a woman who was attacked… Read more »
Robin Williams might still be alive if he had been single.
I believe Parkinsons isn’t caused by women, nor is clinical depression, addiction or Bi-polar disorder.
In more positive news, Wes has managed to demonstrate why he is single…so get to work on that utter lack of empathy or humanity there bud.
I never said Parkinson’s was caused by was caused by women. Or his depression. These were simply more pressures he had to deal with on top of his financial problems. I have empathy for him and all the other men like him going through the same thing. Or are they not worthy of compassion?
Williams himself said, “The worst thing is not being alone. It’s being with someone who makes you feel alone.” You might want to think about that before you make assumptions about others.
” Robin Williams was nothing more than an appliance or ATM to his ex-wives. He was selling his house and taking jobs he didn’t want just to keep the money coming in.” Hypocrisy about assumptions much? Neither of us can directly speak to the state of mind of Mr. Williams and what led to his choice of suicide-but what you choose to vomit out, an accusation that his current/ex wife(s) CAUSED it, is an utterly vile and disgusting piece of MRA propaganda. You forgot to mention his adult daughter in that Wes, as a woman and by your demonstrable rationale… Read more »
Everyone has a breaking point. The medical/psychological problems he had were aggravated by the stress of his financial ones. Two of his most telling quotes were, “Being alone is not the worst thing. The worst thing is being with someone who makes you feel alone.” The other was, “Divorce is like having your wallet ripped out through your genitals.” You are free to make your own conclusions, but it seems pretty obvious to me.
““The worst thing is not being alone. It’s being with someone who makes you feel alone.” You might want to think about that before you make assumptions about others.”
Yes, and that phrase totally means it was about his own life. If it was, it could still pretty much be about past experiences. You are making the assumptions, MGTOW lunatic.
4. Everyone you meet is already dating/married.
Hi Mark, This is SO perfect and wonderfully written. I’ll be sharing generously!! Wanted to point out one issue I’m seeing with this part: “That means you to open up about yourself in ways that may not be completely comfortable. It means exposing yourself. It requires you to share opinions and values that may polarize people and generate rejections. It requires you to be bold and take risks in going after what you want.” I’ve got male clients who tend to spend 5-9 hours with “amazing women” on the phone as they begin the “getting to know you” phase. The… Read more »
You are exactly right. Premature intimacy freaks me out.
Mark: I both liked and hated your article. While I agree with some of the points made, some of it came across as very arrogant and simplicitic. ” choose to see the world in terms of compatibility and incompatibility. Then take it on as your job to find the compatibility.” This line for me was one of the best pieces of advice in point #1, “We all have our own imperfections. Everyone we date also has their own imperfections. Intimacy and romance is determined by people who have comparable and complementary imperfections to one another.” Point#2 Imperfections are subjective. You… Read more »