My third marriage lasted eight months. We dated for four years. He proposed one morning by waking me up, presenting me with a ring and saying, “Even though you look pretty rough this morning, will you marry me?” Do you think that might have been a clue to the short duration?
“Courtship requires that prospective lovers reveal their feelings and that they do so more creatively and sincerely than their competitors,” states The History of Romance on the website for the National Women’s History Museum.
Tell that to Tinder, Grindr, or any of a number of other so-called dating sites. We seem to have forgotten how to flirt with and court one another in effective ways. Effective meaning that we find and maintain a long-term loving relationship partner.
My three main relationships were formed before dating apps. There was a certain amount of courtship involved in those three, although less than I wanted in two of them. After that, all romance, other than what I bring to the experience, has gone out the proverbial window. But why?
When parents stopped arranging marriages in order to consolidate fortunes, political ties, or land, modern westerners were thrown into the romantic arena on their own. They were, and we are, tasked with finding “true love” on our own in the person of a romantic and usually sexual partner. On the whole, that hasn’t worked out so well.
It isn’t just that the divorce rate in the United States has hovered around 50% for decades. It is also that marriage rates themselves have dropped from a high of approximately 16 marriages per thousand people in the late 1940s, to the current 6.5 per thousand people today. Interestingly, my first two marriages happened during times the marriage rates were rising. Could cultural zeitgeist have a bearing on romance?
Gen X writers, such as Yael Wolfe, bemoan the lack of romance and commitment today, and I certainly see it with my clients and in my own search for love. Most of my clients are millennials, and they struggle just as much with the same lack of romance and emotionally distant partners that we older folks do. Is it really that all of us are deeply wounded and must have therapy to stop attracting the “wrong” lovers? Or is it a sign of the times? Probably some of both, and one other thing.
Like Yael, I spent time in therapy looking at why I attract men who are emotionally distant. It’s true, I have psychological reasons for being attracted to those guys. However, as Yael points out in a recent article, it isn’t our fault that emotionally unavailable people are attracted to us.
Her main point is that many of us are bringing our own vulnerability, maturity and emotionality to the game. Emotionally distant partners are drawn to us because they don’t have those things and subconsciously want them. They don’t, however, want to do the work to either achieve them or to form a truly viable partnership.
Narcissists are drawn to us for a similar reason, but also because our vulnerability, empathy, and emotionality make us the prime targets for those with narcissism. It’s difficult for us to comprehend the depths of Narcissistic Personality Disordered individuals and how they think. They are as foreign to us as beings from another planet.
Add to all that the anonymity possible on dating sites, and the emphasis on looks alone, and you have the prime recipe for heartbreak, scam, and being treated as a commodity, not a person or potential long-term love partner.
Granted, dating apps and IG have broadened our choices extensively past those available to people in the 18th century and beyond. Especially for people in smaller towns, cities, and states. I’ve dated men from both the west and east coasts of the United States, as well as a couple of states in between, that I “met” online. On the other hand, some of my high school friends who met their mates close to home are still married to them.
I’m not saying marriage is the end-all, be-all, or even what I or many of my single friends want. Many of the young women I talk to who met their guys on apps like Tinder do still want marriage and find themselves being the ones to push for it. The more some things change, the more they stay the same.
Daniel Jones, of the New York Times Modern Dating column, asks the question, “After all, why settle on one match when there may be someone better just a swipe away?”
That strikes a chord with me. My second husband, when we were dating, admitted once that he worried there was someone “out there” who might suit him better. This from a man who had been divorced and single for years before we started dating. He knew what was out there. He even knew what he had in me. He was emotionally unavailable at the time, and this was his excuse.
Today, though, it’s more than an excuse. It’s reality, that if someone isn’t “perfect” for you, there are hundreds or thousands more online to try out to see if you can find one who is.
The faulty logic, of course, is that no one is perfect, much less perfect for us. My argument is that we’ll never find out who is even the closest to best for us without romance and the effort that goes into courtship. What if we swipe left on someone who could be that person? What if we swipe right on someone seemingly perfect, but who is emotionally unavailable or narcissistic?
Even scarier, narcissists often are the most romantic. At first. They love bomb you at the beginning until you give in. Then they resort to intermittent rewards of romantic words and gestures to keep you around.
Emotionally unavailable people are seldom romantic until they do commit, and then can do the expressive things, like bring flowers, plan romantic dates, plant sweet surprises. I base this on my own experience with husband number two, but he also did the therapeutic work to get there.
What if you really don’t want someone emotionally unavailable or narcissistic? And who ultimately does?
Instead, you want someone who treats you the way you treat them and the way you want to be treated. Then do romantic gestures for them, court them, and see if they reciprocate. Tell them what cranks up your romance response meter, and ask what they like. If they reciprocate, you may have a winner in the courtship lottery. If not, then for whatever reason, they aren’t who you want and you can move on.
Try to “reveal your love more creatively and sincerely than your competitors” and only accept the same in return.
Will you find that on a dating app? I have no idea. Still, you might even the odds some by offering sincere romance and only accepting it in return. It’s still better than having your parents arrange a union. Or is it?
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This post was previously published on P.S. I Love You.
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