You’re not struggling because there are no good men.
You’re struggling because you’ve been taught to screen men out before they ever get a chance to show up.
Let’s establish a few things we can all agree upon:
- 90% of guys out there are not for you.
- Dating app profiles like Bumble and Hinge offer three prompts and six photos max.
- The world is highly polarized and many people have bad opinions.
- You’re busy and you have limited time for dating.
The net result is what we see right now:
You swipe left on 95% of men.
You don’t have enough information to make conversation via text (and neither does he).
You both say generic things to start: “How’s your day? What do you do?”
And because you don’t want to get hurt and don’t want to waste your time, you quickly move into investigative mode.
You’ll scour every line of his short bio to see if you can pick up rhetorical red flags.
You’ll look up his social media to see if he has any “bad” opinions.
You’ll ask him tough, important questions via text, on the first phone call, on the first date, to ensure that he’s compatible with you on the big issues.
I understand the impulse. NO ONE wants to get hurt. NO ONE wants to waste time.
And yet, allowing men to reveal themselves over weeks and months is still the best way to date.
The goal of dating isn’t to eliminate risk before the first date.
The goal is to gather information over time while staying emotionally safe.
We’re not talking about wasting two years of your life on someone who is immoral or incompatible. We’re talking about the normal act of discovery that you use in every single relationship—work, friend, family member.
You don’t hand your future friends a compatibility test before you grab coffee. You don’t give your boss a compatibility test before you take the job.
You spend time together and see how it feels.
Interviewing for red flags is fear-based and ineffective. It assumes that any interaction with someone who is not your soulmate is a huge mistake.
It’s not. It’s part of the process.
You go out with people. You bring your best self to the date. You see how you feel at the end of the date. If you feel good, you go on another date. If you don’t, you don’t go on another date. There is nothing scary about this.
What’s scary is that, by interrogating strangers for incompatibilities before you’ve ever met, you discount the possibility that your screening method may be flawed.
You probably know my example:
I would have passed up my own wife online because she was 3 years older than my (flawed) search criteria. She would have passed me up if I led with demands about how to raise our future kids.
Neither of us did.
Yet, here we are, 19 years later, all because our connection was so strong that I was willing to let go of my preconceived biases.
I know I lean on this example a lot but there are millions of stories like this. 4 of my 5 male cousins and 4 of my 5 best friends from college were Jewish guys who married Christian women. All are still married 20 years later. None would be if they tried interviewing their future wives for red flags right up front.
To be clear: there are some things that can be dealbreakers.
But the more dealbreakers you have, the less likely you are to find a deal.
That’s exactly what social media and other dating experts are encouraging in the social media age. We retreat further into our bubbles, convinced we can only date someone who is JUST. LIKE. US. It’s just not true.
I’m not telling you to hold your nose and marry someone whose views you find distasteful.
I am telling you that the worst way to date is to ask these questions up front in an attempt to rule men out quickly.
I promise: you wouldn’t want some guy ruling you out because you’re 61, or married twice, or don’t agree with everything your political party says.
There are good men out there.
But you won’t find them by trying to screen them out before they’ve had a chance to show you who they are.
If you’re ready to date differently and get better results, schedule a private consultation.
Love,
Evan
* This article was originally published here
