The definitive guide on dating is a column where I give practical advice on how to find and match with your ideal life partner. It is intended to answer the questions that everyone has, but no one has an answer for. You can find the complete list of all my published guides here. The principles in these essays are taught in abstract, so if you need more specific advice, do not hesitate to write me an e-mail.
One of the most ironic things about the society of today is that people feel lonelier and more isolated than ever, even though we have unrestricted access to the most advanced transportation and communication tools in history.
Could it be that those tools are exactly what is precipitating us down this epidemic of societal atomization?
Let us go back to a time before commercial aviation and the Internet made it possible for most people to either physically or virtually be with anyone they wanted to. There used to be a time when the geographical coordinates of where one was born, grew up around, and died barely varied. That meant that if you wanted to have a relationship with someone of the opposite gender, you had to be less picky. You had to choose from the pool of options available to you in whatever area you lived. And then, you had to make it work somehow.
It also meant that people—especially those living in small communities—were forced to be more proactive in developing relationships with family, friends, and strangers. It was a matter of survival. There were no government institutions ready to help you if you lost your means of sustaining yourself or developed a serious illness. Back then, family and community were our safety net. Today, big government is the one who looks out for our employment and our health.
But big government is not going to do what family and community did back then to help you find a mate. It is not going to go around and introduce you to this or that acquaintance of your friends and family. It is not going to point at someone and say to you, “See that guy/gal over there? Go say hi!” It is not going to widen our social circle within the pool of available options that I mentioned before. With the exception of the weird culture of government-sponsored blind-date events in places like Japan, romance is not what governments typically get involved with (it would be quite dystopian if they did).
People are a lot less stationary these days. They move around a lot. And so do their social circles. Having lived in seven different countries over the course of my short and fruitful life, I am a prime example of that. This means that a lot of people have to develop a social circle from scratch more often.
Centuries ago, there was also only so much work you could do in any given day on a farm, for example. But the technology of today enables us to do something productive or useful (or useless) at all times if we choose to. And most of us do. We are busier than ever.
These two factors are quickly making family and community gatherings a thing of the past—or at least—they are relegating those to Thanksgiving and Christmas. All other interaction takes place through the medium of a computer or smartphone screen. So, the ever mobile, ever occupied single had to develop new methods for meeting new people in this brave, new, busy, and fast world.
Before the Internet boomed with memes about boomers, those methods were mostly things like bars, clubs, discos, pubs, and other things of that nature. You would take one or two friends with you to give you support (who might act the part of a “wingman” or “wingwoman”), and then you would walk around the streets, checking out the different venues until you found one with just the right atmosphere and people to keep you entertained. You would then get a few drinks, dance, chat up random strangers, and hoped that by the end of the evening, you would either have gotten the phone number of someone, and/or a warm body to take with you to bed for the night.
But today we have got the Internet. Not only can you meet anyone on there, but you also do not even have to meet them in person at all if you cannot/do not want to. Long-distance relationships are very common, so much so that I have an entire section in this guide dedicated to them. And what about the whole process that you used to have to go through of meeting someone new, spending time with him or her within the social circle that introduced you to each other, and then slowly getting to know more about his or her thoughts and feelings? Forget that! Swipe. Match. Chat instantly!
So, in all likelihood, if you are reading this, and you are actively meeting new people in the hopes of starting a relationship with someone, you are either doing so through the nightlife or the Internet. But are those the best places to meet and get acquainted with a potential mate?
The nightlife
The nightlife has three pervasive characteristics. Let us briefly look at each one individually:
It takes place at night, duh. What is interesting about this fact though is that, while the nightlife is as old as time itself, it was not until electricity became more widespread that it became commonplace. The nightlife is very much a product of the modern age, and so are the habits of labor that force us to socialize at a late hour because people are busy even after the sun has set. The evening is really the only time when they can go out to experience said nightlife.
But this presents a few problems, does it not? Right off the bat, you are a lot less safe walking around on the streets late at night (especially in large, crime-infested cities). There is illumination, but it does not cover every corner. Even inside bars, clubs, discos, etc., the lighting is minimal at best. I mean, if the places were brightly illuminated, everyone would appear a lot less charming, am I right? So, that creates a dangerous environment, especially for women, who get routinely groped and/or attacked. It is not something you see happening a lot during the day.
Another problem associated with the nightlife, is that you are mentally tired and ready to go to sleep at that time of the day. It does not matter if you consider yourself a “night owl”. You may “feel” awake, but your brain is not. Late in the day, the functions of your brain slow down whether you like it or not, whether you feel “more active” or not. Your body releases chemicals intended to put you to sleep. Your reasoning will always be impaired. Nothing good ever happens after 9 PM, because no frontal cortex of no brain can make safe and sound decisions after 9 PM. We go out to party at night because we know that—during the day—we would act smarter and would likely make the “boring” decisions instead. Our bodies have internal clocks that are synced with the day-night cycle of this rock that is flying through space that we stand on, called Earth. And no drug, no habit, no anything can work around that.
Furthermore, the night life revolves around the consumption of alcohol (and often also other narcotics). When you sit around the table with your family or your friends and get introduced to new people by them (like what used to be the norm), you had a chance to get to know your new acquaintance without immediately being left alone with him or her. You could get to know each other without feeling anxious about what to say or how to get the other to open up because there were more people there who were carrying the conversation. And once you felt comfortable enough, you could then approach this new acquaintance alone.
The nightlife does not give you that luxury. First of all, in most nightlife venues, you can hardly hear anyone around you, so you cannot really have a deep and meaningful conversation. You have to yell out brief sentences one after the other in order to communicate. But when you approach someone new and you are immediately left alone with him or her, it can get awkward, especially if you lack conversational skills. It is no secret that people drink alcohol to “loosen up”. The booze not only makes you feel less self-conscious about what you say but makes you say dumber, more forward things as well. Your filters become disabled. You also tend to be less jarred by what the person you are talking to says back to you. You laugh at anything. Any nonsense goes, as long as you are having fun.
But this also presents a few very obvious and very serious problems of its own, does not it? Let us begin with the fact that when you have just enough alcohol to change your mood, you are immediately not acting like your usual self. Whatever impression you leave behind is not going to give the person you are talking with any idea about who you truly are as a human. It is even worse if you are flat out drunk. He or she might be surprised to see that you are far less interesting when you are sober. That is quite sad, is it not? Would it not be better to learn to be an interesting person while sober?
But so much worse than that can happen. Most people astonishingly overestimate how much alcohol they can actually handle before they are totally wasted. I know countless stories of men getting into fights, women getting raped, people cheating on their partners, drunk drivers crashing their cars, and the list goes on. As soon as you take the first sip, you will feel more confident that you will be able to take another, and another, until you cannot count how many fingers you have on your hands. Every gulp lowers your ability to estimate how many more you can take.
And what about the loud music at these venues? Bars, clubs, discos, pubs, etc., are not the kind of places you often see a group of people sitting around and chatting about meaningful things with one another. No one is trying to seriously get to know anyone. It is all meaningless fun, it is all just entertainment. I mean, with the awful noise that is flying all around you, how could you even concentrate enough to come up with something intelligent to say?
The loud music is not there by coincidence though. One does not need to have a degree in psychology or music to understand that it can flip our mood almost as easily as you can flip a switch to turn a light on or off. If you have ever put some “chill-out” music over your ears to do your homework, then you know exactly what it is that I am talking about. Music can instantly change our disposition and behavior. Conversely, because nightlife venues are the socially agreed-upon places for meeting new people, the music must do its part to help folks feel less shy to get intimate.
In that context, I would like to introduce you to what I call “courtship display” music. That is the kind of music you will mostly hear in nightlife venues. If you do not know, a “courtship display” is, it is when animals dance around and do other silly things to attract a mate of the opposite gender. There are certain genres of music that make people get in the mood to do something similar. It is not uncommon for a man and a woman to get touchy while they are dancing together to what is obviously sensual music. Once you go that far, you will likely not be able to say no to whatever the person you are dancing with suggests you do next.
Health considerations aside (people who routinely listen to loud music at nightlife venues often end up with hearing problems), your brain has more “reactive” parts to it—let us put it that way—and under the influence of this kind of music, the parts of your brain that give you a conscience and the ability to reason shut down, and you begin to act from impulse. Unless you actually want to face the consequences, I do not think you want to go about romance the same way animals do, I hope. You are a human, not an animal.
So now, put all these factors together: It is late. Your brain is tired. Your reasoning is impaired. The light is dim and leaves your brain even more foggy. It also leaves you vulnerable. The alcohol lowers your inhibitions. The loud music encourages you to get touchy.
Is it any surprise then that so many bad things happen when people go out to party at night?
If I had a nickel for every person that comes to me with a tragic story that begins with, “I went out the other night…”, then I would be a millionaire by now.
From sharing a drink to happily ever after
So, when you go out at night, you place yourself in unnecessary danger. But what if the risk is worth it? What if you go there and meet the love of your life?
The chances of you finding the right boyfriend or girlfriend at nightlife venues are nearly 0%. Why? Well, have you ever met someone who told you, “I am going out tonight to find the person who I will marry and have children with”? You have not. That is not the mentality of your average partygoer. Generally speaking, people might be interested in a serious, committed, long-term relationship. But everyone consciously knows that that is not what they are at a bar, a club, or a disco for. You are there “to have fun”, first and foremost.
People know, subconsciously, that you cannot leave a party—being completely drunk and tired—and then take the new person you have met somewhere else to sit down and have a serious conversation with. No. The first thing you will do is to fool around (probably hook up), which in turn will encourage you to keep fooling around for the first few dates, and only much later—when you are sober and the hormones dwindle—will you begin to feel uncomfortable having an intimate relationship with a complete stranger. It is then that you will begin to ask the question: “What are we?” But by then, it will be too late. You are emotionally attached because you got physically attached. A breakup is imminent, and it will hurt. A lot of people endlessly repeat this cycle. They live in perpetual pain.
You see, when you go out to pick up a man or a woman at a bar, you are essentially playing in a lottery. As you know, lotteries are intentionally designed to make you lose. The game is rigged against you, yet you play it hoping that you will be one of the lucky handful who will meet the love of their lives after sharing a dance and a few drinks. The thing is that—contrary to a lottery—at a nightlife venue, you cash in the “prize” (a relationship) before you even know that you have won, and then you have to give the prize back because it was not meant for you (it was not “compatible” with you). Do you see what I am getting at? You are setting yourself up for heartache every time you go out on the hunt for a mate at a nightlife venue.
I know that happy couples who met at bars do exist, but out of the thousands of people I have talked to over the years, I personally do not know a single story like that. It is always this “I know someone who knows someone” kind of deal when people argue with me.
Save yourself the heartache. Do not waste your time, money, and emotions on a lottery. Stay away from the nightlife. It is not a good place to spend quality time with friends, and it is an even worse place to search for a mate at.
Dating apps
Badoo, Bumble, Hinge, Meetic, Tinder, Zoosk, etc., all of these oddly-named services, make you the same promise: “Give us your attention, maybe a little bit of your money, and all of your private data, and we will make sure to match you to the love of your life; all from the comfort of your smartphone.”
This is how these services should be advertised anyway. It is not like people do not know the truth though. They do. They know that the chances of them finding the man or the woman they will grow old with while sitting on their couches at home and swiping left and right while sipping on a glass of wine and petting their cats are slim to none. But they are powerless to stop because it is addictive. It is the gamification and commodification of love. It does not work, not for most, but it gives people the dopamine rush they crave, so they keep doing it.
You have to remember something important: If these services actually delivered on their promise, they would quickly run out of business. The purpose of dating apps is to keep you dating. That is why they are called dating apps and not marriage apps. These apps want to remain installed on your smartphone. They want to keep feeding you ads, taking your money, and collecting your private data to sell to third-parties. They are not designed to help you settle down and live happily ever after.
First of all, most of the users will not even get any meaningful matches. The algorithm is intentionally rigged against them. But occasionally, it does produce a match. The intention there is to give you a dopamine hit so you keep on swiping. It is every bit like a slot machine at a casino. Your brain is biased towards the small wins and totally ignores the big losses. But even when a match does occur, most the people on the other side of the screen—exactly because they are the type that uses dating apps to meet new singles—are just too shallow to have the motivation to write anything more than, “Hi. What is up?”
But once every blue moon, a match does turn into a conversation partner. If you have ever used any dating app, you know what those conversations are like. They are entirely meaningless. You start off by pointing out all the childish likes and dislikes the person you are chatting with listed on his or her profile. You may then exchange memes or talk about entertainment. You are texting a complete stranger and you are desperately trying to give a good impression of yourself, so you keep your cards close to your chest and do not reveal your true colors. The conversation remains at surface level.
But this poses a serious problem: You see, when you are on a dating app, you know why you are there. You are there to meet new singles and potentially begin a relationship, and so is whoever you matched with. You may not say it out loud, but both of you know. Both of you are consciously aware that you are talking with each other in order to evaluate your romantic potential.
Tell me: Does that kind of dynamic not strike you as odd? At the very least, it creates the expectation that if the conversation is going well, it must lead to more, no? Essentially, you immediately go from being complete strangers, to being romantically involved even before you have a chance to say it directly.
It creates a mad anxiety. It is absolutely absurd. It is just a very different experience from meeting someone in real life, in a context devoid of any emotional or romantic undertone, where you simply get to know each other as acquaintances without any expectations, until you have gotten enough information to make a decision about taking the next step in the relationship. Dating apps skip all of those steps.
OK, so, now you have a romantic interest in someone you barely know. You go on a date where you will be together, alone. You might not get under the sheets with each other right on the first date, but it does not matter. If you enjoyed the company, you will continue meeting. You still have not given the relationship a label, but make no mistake, it is a relationship. And because you began the relationship while you were riding the hormonal high, you will ignore all red flags. Whenever you inevitably decide to part ways, it will hurt. If you are unlucky enough to also have had physical intimacy during that short-lived romance, then that pain will multiply by a factor of ten.
And again, this is how a lot of people these days manage their relationships. Much like we delegated to our smartphones our capacity to take notes, make simple calculations, and navigate the road, we also delegated our love lives. And dating apps are a cruel mistress, ever disappointing your expectations, ever breaking your heart, ever increasing your addiction, and in many cases, ever emptying your wallet.
But it gets worse, because dating apps really made romance disposable. You talked with someone for a while and then lost interest? Ghosted! You met a few times and did not enjoy it? Blocked! No need to give any explanations. No need to apologize. No need to worry about the feelings of the other person. You do not see his or her face of utter distraught and sadness, so it does not affect you. You just. Move. On. You continue swiping. He or she will likely do the same. It is selfish. It is disgusting. It is inhuman. Indeed, it is dehumanizing. Dating apps normalized objectification.
And let us not forget about hookups. So many people you meet on dating apps only have that one goal in mind. This is especially true about men. You cannot predict what he is going to be like. Will he be serious, or will he just get his fix and discard you? You might even end up assaulted by someone.
Dating apps, more than almost anything else, have contributed to the erosion of basic decency in courtship and romance. They have made being “single and ready to mingle” a lifestyle; a sad and empty one. Countless businesses exploit our desire for company for profit. And so, I am left to wonder: Who, in his or her right mind, thought that creating this kind of service and the culture around it would benefit our society? No. Whoever created it, did not think it would. It was only meant to line the pockets of that person with cash at the expense of our emotional and mental (and sometimes physical) well-being.
When a man and a woman who do not know each other and have never talked to each other, are knowingly brought together in a romantic context on their first meeting, their relationship is doomed before it even began. Nightlife and the Internet facilitate that kind of dynamic. Wherever you go to meet new singles, never go to meet new singles. It changes your behavior in subtle ways that will almost assuredly ruin your chances of developing a healthy relationship with someone of the opposite gender.
Be free of expectations
You could potentially meet the love of your life almost anywhere on this planet. But the vast majority of those places would simply fall in the category of “talking to a stranger on the streets”. The same rule that I mentioned before applies: Do not go around chatting up strangers with the intention of getting their number or scoring a date. If you do, you are skipping some important steps in the natural development of the relationship and setting yourself up for failure.
Pick-up artists teach you to pick up dates, not to pick up “happily ever after”.
So, ideally, you want the place where you meet new singles to be a neutral one. Someplace where people interact for reasons other than romantic interest. This will allow you to, again, get to know them without expectations. You will have time to cool your hormones off, attentively observe their character and personality, and then make an informed decision about whether it is safe to approach them romantically or not.
Let us look at a few “places” that foster that kind of environment:
College and work
College and work have a few inherent advantages to them when it comes to meeting new singles. For example, people you meet in college, generally speaking, have some sort of goal in their lives. They are pursuing a certain course of study with the intention of then entering a certain career. They are thinking about the future. They are doing their part to ensure that they will have a means of support and something meaningful to do. I know that this is not always the case, but it is a fair assumption. And if they have those traits, then that is good. They might be quality candidates.
I intentionally left out all grades you attend before college. I have talked about this before, and I will mention it again, but relationships you begin in your teens rarely ever lead to anything other than unnecessary heartache.
Work is a similar story. Again, generally speaking, you have to be a minimally mature and responsible person to hold a job. Also, the larger your responsibilities at your workplace are (and the better you fulfill them), the higher your perceived maturity will be. This, again, is by no means guaranteed, but it is another fair assumption. Your ability to calmly seek solutions to problems and communicate effectively with your colleagues—which are two very important traits for two people in an intimate relationship to have—will also be open for everyone to evaluate.
But there are also some disadvantages to beginning relationships in college or at work, or rather, some risks. For one, I suggest that you wait until you are close to being done with your education before you begin to seriously work on getting closer to another student at college. Relationships are always an emotional affair, no matter how rational you are. You do not want to let the possibility of a breakup affect your grades. This is something almost all of us experienced while we were in school. You know as well as I do that concentrating in class while recovering from a relationship or a confession gone bad (especially if that person is a classmate) is really painful and difficult.
And work can present the same challenge, but it is even worse. A lot of workplaces do not even allow colleagues to enter relationships to begin with (or it might be very frowned upon, like in most of corporate America).
Furthermore, if you confess to one of your colleagues or one of them does become your girlfriend or boyfriend, then woe unto you if it does not work out. Work can be very stressful and being under stress and having to cooperate with an ex or someone who rejected you is several orders of magnitude worse.
Again, a lot of us have experienced this. But work really does make it more complicated, because if a relationship with a colleague sours, then, depending on the severity of the conflict, you could end up doing something that will get you fired. The stakes are much higher because your very income might be on the line.
My wife and I met in a context that was a mix of both school and work. And guess what? It caused us a lot of anxiety. Probably more for me than for my wife because she is wiser and more mature than I. Things worked out for us in the end, but it is because we had this experience that I urge you to be cautious about people you get romantically involved with in college and at work.
Meaningful activities
Nothing develops closeness between two people better than doing something meaningful together. In this category, you have endless options. You could join a cooking course, a hiking group, or a book club. You could do community outreach, serve food at your local homeless shelter, or join a church. Whatever it is that you choose to do, if it serves a purpose greater than your personal entertainment, and if it can be done with a group of people, then that is a good place to meet new singles at.
In such an environment, it is unlikely that you will be faced with a strict no-relationships rule, and you generally will not have to worry about the consequences of entering a relationship with someone from the group either. And what that means is that you can always leave the group if things get awkward. And while that might be sad, it does not have consequences that are nearly as bad as failing your subjects in college or being fired from your job.
If the activity you are engaged in is one that is either beneficial to society (like for example, community work) or beneficial to your personal development (like a gardening club), then that will signal to the people you meet that you are not only someone who seeks meaning in life but is also proactive about it. It will tell them that you are a man or a woman who is preoccupied with the needs of others and the development of a balanced, virtuous character (more on that later). You should not pursue these activities just to appear like you are a good person, but it is a neat perk that will instantly make you look more attractive to potential mates. It kills two birds with one stone.
As an added bonus, since both you and your love interest (hopefully) joined that group because you have a genuine love for the activity it engages you in, then you immediately have a common interest. There is also a not insignificant chance that the two of you share other interests, since similar people will gravitate to similar activities. And as I have said before, you are also in an expectation-free environment, and will therefore remain cautious because you know you are being observed by other people. So, you can take things slow.
I am sure a lot of you reading this have heard it being said that you need to “be an interesting person” to attract someone of the opposite gender. That helps. No doubt. A person who has a life outside of school/work and sitting at home to consume entertainment, is just immediately a more interesting person to get to know. In general, people who “create more than they consume” are always more interesting to be around. They will have more stories to tell, more experiences to share, more wisdom to impart. They will appear more selfless, more motivated, more ambitious, more responsible, more persevering. I could go on and on. So, if you fill your life with meaningful (especially creative and helpful) activities, which you partake in together with in-person groups, then you will exponentially increase your chances of meeting the love of your life.
Meeting new people through friends and family
Friends and family are the most common vehicle for meeting new people, often even within the context of the two previous environments I described. No one consciously thinks about it because it is just a fact of life, that humans tend to feel more comfortable getting acquainted with someone they do not know yet if they have a mutual friend or share a relative. And in days long past, this used to be the primary tool for introducing single men to single women.
It is still one of, if not the most effective way to meet new people, though woefully overlooked by the younger generation. Now, sure, sometimes it is awkward when an overly enthusiastic friend or family member introduces you to another single person and makes it very obvious why he or she is doing it. That would bring us back to the problem of expectations. The good news, however, is that you likely also have some friends and family members who are more self-aware, who go about it more subtly. Stay close to those.
I mentioned before (and it is probably something I will also mention again), that when you are in your teens and early 20s, that is when you need to develop as many quality friendships as you can, preferably same-sex ones. I tell this to young people all the time. It is not only important because those friendships are what will form your social support network later in life. It is not only important because it becomes much, much harder to develop new friendships with strangers after you have entered adulthood (and especially when you form your own family). There is another reason:
It is also a wise thing to do when you are young, because the more quality friendships you have, the higher your chances will be that those friends will introduce you to the one who you will grow old with. And even if they do not, they will likely expose you to opportunities that will widen your horizons in terms of what you do with your life. And that in turn will expose you also to more opportunities to meet new singles.
Now, I understand that, to an introverted person, this sounds like a nightmare. You probably feel anxious just imagining what it is like to maintain so many friendships, let alone the fact that you would much rather prefer to have fewer friends but have a deeper connection with them, am I right? I know. My wife is just like you.
You do not have to become a social butterfly to do this. What you have to do, is to become a good and interesting person. You should pursue that goal anyway. It will only benefit you. But an added benefit is that when you are friendly to people, when you leave a good impression (and when you later add them on social networks, hint hint), even if you only talk to them once a year, or once a decade, they will remember you. They will be nodes in a network of opportunity. An array of possibilities. You will never know which one of them will suddenly be the person who somehow puts you on the ramp that launches you into an exciting adventure, one through which you meet the love of your life.
Many of the most cherished memories my wife and I have, begun because someone we know from somewhere, who we barely talked with anymore, reached out to us about something that he or she thought we would enjoy doing. True story. And in fact, I only met my wife because one day, I accepted to do the dull and mundane task of helping a friend fill out an application for a school that I would end up going to myself, which is where my wife and I met. Imagine I had given him some excuse not to do it.
So, give it a try. Stop going out at night. Get rid of the dating apps. Engage in meaningful activities. And make more friends. You will not regret it.
Image credit: Rushay Booysen on Pexels.