It seems like every morning when I open Medium, my feed is flooded with stories from women bemoaning the dearth of men who are acceptable matches or proclaiming their desire to remain single.
(I suppose it’s my fault for falling for the clickbait …)
The narratives are predictable and repetitive:
“Men are entitled because of patriarchy”
“Men are threatened by an independent woman”
“Men have toxic expectations”
“Men won’t invest the emotional effort that I need”
The list can continue, but I’m sure you get the idea. Women are frustrated by their experiences with Men.
You Have The Right To Be Picky … So Do They
An important thing to understand is that nobody has the right to tell you what your standards should be.
This also means that you don’t have the right to tell anybody else what their standards should be.
You Have Options … So Do They
What this means from a practical perspective is that there are options you have as a person, based on your overall attractiveness to potential partners, and each of the people you are attracted to has options of their own.
The more items you have on your ‘list’ of criteria for a partner, the more desirable they are likely to be, and the more options they will have in the dating marketplace.
This means that you may not be perceived as their best option.
I know … ouch!!!
Dating Apps Have Increased ‘Options’ and Killed ‘Authenticity’
Much of this problem stems from dating apps.
By aggregating users from a large geographic area, dating apps create the ‘appearance’ of unlimited options.
This makes it very easy to justify investing low (or no) effort into building a relationship.
Further, to get noticed you need to ‘put your best foot forward’ which means carefully crafting the images and information you communicate so that it captures & holds people’s attention.
This is fine if you’re “Here for a good time, not for a long time.”
However, if you want to build something meaningful, starting from a false persona is going to create a conflict when your real self comes out and it’s different from the face you showed online.
Bold Strategy: Be Your Authentic Self and Make it Safe For Them to do the Same
With all of this said, I advocate for an approach that’s drastically different from all of the popular dating advice.
Instead of presenting your most attractive self, present your authentic self.
This can feel scary, but it’s the most reliable way to find a compatible match. (By ‘compatible’ I mean a person where the two of you are in harmony together without the expectation that either person change)
If you want to take this strategy to the ‘Pro’ level, make it emotionally safe for the person you are connected with to present their authentic self, and don’t judge them for it.
It may be that you’re not compatible, but even if that’s the case, there isn’t a need to be judgmental. Simply bring your authentic self and hold space for them to do the same.
The unfair advantage you will gain from this strategy comes when you do find a compatible match since you will be starting from a frame of authenticity instead of peeling away the layers of false persona that have been put in place to ‘maximize options’ in the dating marketplace.
Final Thoughts
Authenticity is emotionally threatening … it requires placing your ‘real’ foot forward and risking people’s judgment.
However, if the goal of your efforts is a genuine, compatible connection, the juice is definitely worth the squeeze.
If this story resonated with you, they say you can clap up to 50 times. Don’t believe me? Try it and find out!
Your response is a way of saying “I hear it and I feel it.” 👏😊
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Shamim Nakhaei on Unsplash
