3 Huge Misconceptions About Dating Everyone Should Know

We all enter the dating and relationship world with invisible baggage of information and expectations.

How?

No thanks to novels, social media movies and dating and relationship advice from friends or gurus.

All of which one way or the other made us start believing things that aren’t true, things that make dating harder than it has to be.

So what happens?

We end up measuring ourselves against unreal standards, expecting to just wait and love will automatically find us, we expect the right person will fix our problems, expecting instant chemistry and all.

Although most of this advice sneaks into our minds, they actually shape our choices and decisions in huge ways.

They have created a lot of misconceptions in our minds. Some of which are probably actually holding us back instead of moving us forward.

Once you recognize some of these misconceptions, you’ll probably start seeing dating in a completely different light.

It helps you to recognize every dating experience as an opportunity to explore, learn, and connect with someone who actually fits into your life, rather than the impossible idea of what love “should” be.

Here are 3 major misconceptions everyone should know about dating.

1. “Be Yourself and Love Will Find You”

We’ve probably heard this many times from parents, friends and family. This is easily the most thrown around dating advice.

This advice looks kind and sounds innocent but it’s really harmful for anyone to believe it. It promotes stagnancy and dormancy.

It contradicts the growth mindset that’s necessary for success in dating. It invariably says if you’re still getting the same result in dating and relationship, you don’t need to change, and still, the right person will find you.

Think of it like shooting a video. A cameraman doesn’t just stay in the same point and hope to perfectly cover every scene.

He shifts angles, adjusts the focus, tweaks the lighting, and frames the shot carefully to make the footage look its best. Although the scenes are the same, the angles are different.

How he captures from each angle determines whether it is going to be compelling or blurry, flat, and forgettable.

That’s how dating works too. You need to work on yourself and adjust yourself to be attractive: work on how you communicate, develop confidence, approach, set healthy boundaries and show the best version of yourself without pretending.

2. “If It’s Meant to Be, It’ll Be Easy”

This is another dangerous and lazy one. And a lot of people fall for the idea. It implies if a relationship is right, it will happen without stressing you, effortlessly or without you budging.

Like there’s not going to be any tension, disagreement, confusion or awkward moments. That’s a kind of fantasy that’s still keeping many people single. Because if reality doesn’t match a fantasy, panic and confusion ensue.

Think of dating like a garden, you’re the gardener, you want to plant a seed, will you just toss it (the seed) into the soil and hope a full-grown tree magically appears the next day?

Of course not.

It requires you to work. You need to water it, adjust its position for sunlight, prune away dead leaves, remove weeds, and protect it from pests.

That’s not all, sometimes there are even situations that will affect the plant: the storms knock it down or it grows slower than you want or expect. But instead of just giving up, you put in more work, effort and attention with patience the seed will eventually grow into something strong and lasting.

Relationships are exactly the same. Connection, synergy or chemistry take time to build. That’s not all, although you’re compatible, you share a strong chemistry and your connection is nice. There would be moments of misunderstanding, disappointment, disagreement or arguments.

Ups and downs are part of the deal. People who believe that love should always feel smooth and easy often give up before the “tree” even has a chance to take root.

3. “Nice Guys / Nice Girls Always Finish Last”

This is the most recent of all the misconceptions on this list. And people are still easily throwing it around even without thinking much about it.

Unfortunately this must have turned many nice people to feigning being bad, just to avoid “finishing last”. It implies if you’re a considerate, kind, caring, and respectful person somehow, because of these nice attributes of yours, you’ll be unattractive to prospective partners.

This seriously must be from the pit of hell!

Think of it this way, if there’s a beautiful house but it doesn’t have a fence.

This house is clean, well-designed and is in a nice environment. Anyone would want to live there. But there’s no fence, no gate, no boundary.

People can walk in and out whenever they want. Some respect the fact that it has no fence, many don’t. Over time, the house gets taken for granted, not because it isn’t valuable, but because it has no boundaries.

That’s how niceness is if taken for granted in dating. The “has no fence or boundary” here signifies someone who is kind or mice without boundaries. Someone who overdoes, they over-gives, over-explains, over-tolerates disrespect without complaining.

That’s not kindness, it’s lack of wisdom. Attraction grows when attraction is paired with respect, boundaries and clarity.

People don’t lose interest because someone is nice, they do when you’re consistently giving away your kindness without reserve. This shows you lack respect for yourself and you’re not worthy to be taken seriously

They lose interest when someone shows, over time, that they don’t value themselves enough to be taken seriously.

Conclusion

Dating gets confusing and uninteresting or boring with most of the ideas or myths we carry around.

Most of the frustrations, confusion or heartbreaks many people feel doesn’t come from love itself, but the misconceptions, myths or baseless truth being thrown around harmlessly.

You need to guide your mind or start questioning those beliefs, that’s when dating will stop being guesswork for you because you’ll start operating from the angle of clarity, self respect and choice.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.