How to Date If You Don’t Want a Relationship

It is absolutely, positively okay to date if you don’t want a relationship.

Clarity is required to do so ethically, which you do want to do. That’s its own reward, and you’ll regret it if you treat people poorly. You can’t do that if you want the world to be the kind of world you want to live in.

However, it is totally acceptable to date casually.

Sex and love are different things. There’s an overlap in the Venn diagram, but you can have sex without love, and you can have different kinds of love, and you can absolutely have love, sex, or both without a committed, serious relationship.

You don’t have to share a Netflix account to share intimacy. The world would be better off if we really opened up the idea of what intimacy can be.

If you want to date, but you’re not sure you’re ready for a lifetime of committed, monogamous bliss, forsaking all others, here’s what to do.

Kill the shame

You’re not a bad person. You’re not a “player” or a “slut” unless you want be, in which case you should be good at it. (You can be an “ethical slut,” to borrow the title of an early and still useful guide to open relationships.)

There’s a pervasive sense of shame surrounding these things. Our society is geared toward monogamy, marriage, mortgages, and kids. That’s changing, but there are people that are committed to that.

There are people for whom monogamy works, and they might want to date you, and they might be upset with you for not fitting that set of specifications.

There are people who are outwardly committed to it but inwardly harbor significant doubts, and it makes them angry to see you break the implicit taboo against doing the things that they don’t want to let themselves know they have the freedom to do.

There are people whose morality includes forcing that morality on everyone else.

Be prepared. If you date without the intention of getting into a serious relationship, some people aren’t going to like it. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.

Be very clear on what you actually want

There is a wrong way to do things, and that’s doing things without thinking or feeling them through ahead of time. That makes it much more likely for confusion, miscommunication, and hurt to result.

So take the time to fearlessly interrogate yourself. Get clear on what you want and why, and what you don’t want and why not.

There are plenty of reasons you might not want a relationship:

Fear of losing independence
Fear of “settling” for an unsatisfying relationship to please the other partner
Unwillingness to sacrifice friendships, passions, or career goals
Unhealed wounds from past relationships
Monogamy doesn’t work for you, and you want to be honest about it

If you really do want a relationship, pretending you don’t want a relationship is not gonna get you there. And a lot of people are going to get hurt. One of those probably going to be you.

So get really clear on what you actually want. This process of self-inquiry can take many forms, including meditation, journaling, or conversing with a trusted confidant, coach, or therapist.

When you’ve got that…

Communicate!

Let yourself be known and be heard. Be proud of what you want. Put it up front.

With an online dating profile, this is easy enough. Sure, a lot of people don’t read the profiles, but that’s really not your problem.

Use the right channels for you. Tinder is more geared toward casual dating. Feeld is one that’s less well known, geared toward different configurations, including poly and kink lifestyles.

You’ve taken the trouble of thinking through what you want. You can give somebody else what they want.

You are someone’s fetish! There are people that are into the same things that you are. But you’ll never know if you don’t trumpet your truth.

There’s not much long-term reward from tricking people into liking you.

It may require some patience. There may be some disappointment. You’ll meet people you like but are not philosophically aligned with.

Remember, if you lead with what you want, you are more likely to get it. Plus, if you’re honest, the world is your memory. It makes things easier, and it opens up your energy channels for real intimacy, which, to reiterate, you can have with somebody that you’re not in a relationship with. It happens all the time.

Don’t make it weird

This is one reason to get clear on what you want ahead of time. If you start changing your mind, or if you really want something you’re not letting your partner know you want, or if there’s something you want that you don’t know you want, it gets weird.

You send mixed signals. Your words say one thing and your actions say another. You’re wishy-washy and flip back and forth. That’s another way people get hurt, angry, and bitter. And I can’t say I blame them.

Bringing this up is a delicate process. If it wasn’t established before the first date, it’s got to come up sometime.

With the right people, under the right circumstances, it might make sense to put it right up front. But it might seem presumptuous. You might scare people away in much in the same way somebody might scare you away by demanding lifelong, exclusive monogamy on the first date.

Why future-trip? Enjoy the moment responsibly. When you get into the moment and get mindful, you’ll get better at this. You’ll get better with experience. Mindfulness and experience feed into each other.

You’ll learn to be present for your experiences, which can also supercharge intimacy and save you the trouble of making it weird.

For example, a friend of mine had two great dates with a guy who then said, “I’m not really looking for a relationship right now” as she was giving him a blowjob.

Try not to be that guy. Read the room. Timing is everything, and you can learn it through experience, trial, and perhaps some error.

In a “friends with benefits” situation, there are a few methods of preventing confusion:

Limit intimate moments and intense emotional bonding
Maintain the “friends” part of the equation
Have other hobbies, interests, and friends who don’t know each other
When feelings are caught, be prepared to release them

CW: Satire

Be adaptable (and keep your sense of humor)

Because you know it’s going to get weird anyway, even if it doesn’t involve a relationship. Sex involves people. Dating involves people. People can have fun together, and they’re always going to make things weird for each other in one way or another. That’s what we do best.

Understand that the situation on the ground is subject to change. There will always be things that aren’t communicated with crystal clarity. Anyone who’s 100% honest in this country will be thrown in jail or shot. We don’t always know what’s going on in our hearts, and that can change.

Be open to that. Be like water. Pay attention. Learn to take care of the people around you.

To be casual is not to be callous. In intimate situations, you have an obligation to treat people the way you want to be treated. That’s not a moral judgment. Lose sight of this, and you will regret it.

Learn about yourself

Pay attention as your needs evolve. Continue to communicate. Real intimacy requires ever-escalating vulnerability and strength.

Through your dating adventures, give yourself the chance to learn who you are. No one survives in a vacuum. You can’t breathe in there. We are who we are in relation to others. And to see yourself through the eyes of another, perhaps multiple others, gives you different perspectives.

Take in the kaleidoscopic panorama of who you are, who you can be, your beauty, and your potential.

Don’t waste that opportunity. Stick with it. Stay in the moment even if it gets weird. You got this. It’s not “confidence” that’s sexy so much as the ability to hang in there when things get weird.

Know thyself; be thyself

I love sex! The world would be a better place if everyone had more of it. I’d rather be having sex than doing this right now.

I also recently went through the Reservoir Dogs of divorces, the logical conclusion to a marriage in which I was gruesomely humiliated by someone who wanted an open relationship, but only for her, not for me. I’m not at the peak of my emotional availability right now, and certainly not what rom-com screenwriters call “relationship material.”

But “Dildo With a Thesaurus” is a part I know how to play, and there’s certainly a market for that, which is one reason it behooves me to be extra-transparent.

CW: Satire

For a couple of months, I was friendly with a woman I wasn’t romantically interested in. I could tell she was developing feelings I couldn’t reciprocate, and when she brought them up, I explained myself as clearly as I could. She lashed out at me because she’d decided I should be her boyfriend and thought my beliefs about monogamy were impeding her happiness. Although I am easily guilt-tripped, I didn’t allow myself to lose much sleep over this. We are no longer “friends.”

I also think the currents are on my side.

Relationship configurations are changing. There’s more self-reported cheating, particularly among women, and more divorce. Monogamy works for some, while others see it as an evolutionary mismatch. And there’s no need for either group to cater to the needs of the other.

People are realizing that making promises they don’t intend to keep doesn’t serve them in the long run. It’s better to cause a little bit of frustration now than a whole lot of pain down the line. Don’t betray other people because you haven’t been true to yourself.

So many painful situations are based on misinformed assumptions. And so much of our disappointment is about expectations that we never bothered to tell anyone about.

Nevertheless, we get mad when they let us down. These people aren’t our parents. It’s up to us to do the work of keeping it real.

Emerson Dameron is LA’s number-one avant-garde motivational speaker and the host of Emerson Dameron’s Medicated Minutes. Download his album An Emerson Dameron’s Medicated Minutes Reader now.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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