Your last worthless evening
How to improve your chances of ending your dating career for good
When I was single, I remember feeling left out when Valentine’s Day rolled around. I didn’t feel much like celebrating on a day when it seemed like the rest of the world was ready to march onto Noah’s ark two-by-two while I stood there alone and uncoupled.
If you’re single, you may feel better once the calendar flips from Feb. 14 to Feb. 15. But if, like 80% of Gen Z, your end goal is marriage, the vague discomfort you’re feeling could be a nudge to do something about finding a significant other.
So here are a few things your mom should have told you about finding the love of your life.
You can’t control when you’re going to find Mr. or Ms. Right
This is one of those inconvenient truths that nobody likes. Many have tried to prove this one wrong without success.
In fact, some people are so determined to make this happen that they pick the most likely candidate and try to turn them into the soulmate of their dreams, even if that relationship is not meant to be. This rarely works out well. As both Phil Collins and the Supremes once sang, you can’t hurry love.
I was once guilty of this sin–I arrived at college determined to have a boyfriend. I checked that off my bucket list by the end of the first semester. But I didn’t feel much of a connection with the guy, and having a boyfriend didn’t make me as happy as I had imagined it would. So I ended the relationship.
But once I learned that dating someone simply for the sake of having a boyfriend wasn’t worth it, I relaxed a little. I was still open to meeting someone, but I understood that I couldn’t force the timeline.
Discovering the love of a lifetime is a gift, and you can’t control when you receive it. So although you may intend to find someone, you need to make the best of things in the meantime and trust that what is meant to be will come along in time. But you can’t ignore the next truth, which is…
You have to put yourself in situations where you’re meeting people
It’s obvious, though tempting to ignore that you are less likely to meet someone if you sit at home alone in your apartment weekend after weekend.
I don’t want to frame this as strictly a dating thing. From what I have read lately, many are fed up with dating. Curating your profile and endlessly screening candidates has made online dating feel like a part-time job. Bustle has proclaimed that dating apps are in their flop era. A recent Harris poll found that 44 percent of Generation Z would rather clean a toilet than go on another online date.
If it makes you feel any better, dating has never been an extracurricular activity that people could count on to be consistently enjoyable. While the almighty algorithm might make it easier to turn up promising candidates, it’s still kind of like you’re in charge of a job search–“interviewing” people for the role of your significant other.
If you start to think it’s hopeless that you will ever find someone to fill the role, try to take heart from the words of a classic Don Henley song, “This is the last worthless evening that you’ll have to spend.” Remember that, by definition, everybody’s dating career is unsuccessful until they meet The One. Every date has the potential to end your dating career for good.
And, in any case, remember that dating isn’t the only way to meet new people. There are so many other ways to encounter people–a friend introduces you to another friend; you meet someone interesting at an event; you discover a fellow volunteer who’s fun to work alongside; hell, maybe even your mom introduces you to someone she thinks you might have something in common with.
If you want to meet someone, stepping up your dating game isn’t the only method. But you do have to put yourself in situations to encounter other people.
It’s worth considering whether you may have already met the person you’re looking for
Though Joey famously warned Ross about the dangers of the Friend Zone, it’s not fair that it gets a bad rap. The Friend Zone actually has potential.
The Survey Center on American Life recently found that 44% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 said they were in a relationship with someone who was first a friend. If you think about it, you can see the appeal of dating a friend or someone you already know–it certainly eases some of the uncertainty and discomfort of dating strangers.
It's also not surprising that some people discover their romantic partners among their coworkers, given the number of hours a week people spend on the job. Twenty-seven percent of respondents in an SHRM Workplace survey reported that they were in or had been in a workplace romance.
The survey found that the level of comfort with workplace romances varies. Three-quarters of U.S. workers said they’re comfortable with people involved in a romantic relationship at their workplace. And a third of younger Millennials and Gen Z said they would be open to a workplace romance.
Obviously, it’s always wise to be aware of your company’s policies regarding romantic relationships. And you have to consider the implications of dating a coworker. (Scroll to the Clippings section below for an article about how to approach an office romance.) But sharing the same employer doesn’t necessarily disqualify someone as a potential partner.
You can’t always control how you meet someone. If a relationship with a friend or coworker seems worth exploring, you just have to act prudently.
Being your authentic self as much as possible increases your odds of finding a good match
At the beginning of any relationship, we all try to conform to basic societal norms so we don’t strike other people as odd (and that’s not entirely bad). And we all tend to keep our guard up when we’re around people we don’t know well. But you have to be careful not to masquerade to such a degree that the real you doesn’t come through.
If you want to see an excellent example of the difference being authentic with someone can make, watch episode 3 of Netflix’s The Crown’s season 6.
This season of the fictionalized version of the story of Britain’s royal family covered the last weeks of Princess Diana’s life. As you may know, Diana spent her final summer in a romance with Dodi Fayed, the heir to the Harrods department store fortune.
Though we’ll never know for sure the state of Diana and Dodi’s relationship when they met their end, the scenario the writer of The Crown crafted had Dodi, egged on by his father, racing as fast as he could to put a ring on the hand of the most famous eligible woman in the world. On that final night in Paris, Dodi is about to propose to Diana.
When she realizes what’s about to happen, Diana–who we’d heard confiding to her therapist that no matter how sweet Dodi was, she wasn’t ready to commit to another relationship–tells Dodi that it’s time they had a chat.
Up until that point, both Diana and Dodi had been doing the kind of dance that people do when they’ve just begun a relationship–being as agreeable as possible, not saying anything to rock the boat, doing their best to live up to the carefully polished image they present to the world.
But as soon as Diana decides to be honest with Dodi, she breaks the spell. She’s seen enough of Dodi’s relationship with his father to understand that what’s motivating his proposal wouldn’t be good for him. And once she shares her observations with Dodi and is honest with him that she’s nowhere near ready for another marriage, the situation shifts dramatically in a very good way.
What a difference it makes when Diana and Dodi are willing to drop their masquerade masks and be authentic with one another. Once they’re willing to share their true thoughts and be honest about their intentions, they connect in a way they had not been able to before.
Though we’ll never know if this is how it happened in real life, The Crown dramatization nonetheless provides an excellent example of the difference authenticity makes in a relationship. If you want to see what I mean, watch the episode.
If you’re not going to be your authentic self with a potential partner, you’re wasting your time. What’s the point of having someone fall in love with you if it’s not really you they are falling in love with? Sooner or later, something’s got to give–either they will discover you’re not who you seemed to be, or you will grow weary of pretending to be someone you’re not.
So when you’re on a date or interacting with someone who might be a potential partner, I strongly encourage you to show up as yourself. You might as well take a chance and be authentic since you’re the only person qualified to play the role of totally original you. This also gives you a much better chance of finding the person uniquely tailored to match best with you.
Neither I nor anyone else can predict when you will come upon your last worthless evening. But I hope these suggestions increase the probability that you find your special Valentine.
Author Jonathan “JP” Pokluda warns that following your heart is terrible advice if your heart means your feelings. Because feelings have no wisdom or insight, don’t know what’s best for you, and are always changing, he believes you’re better off guarding your heart–introducing a healthy dose of logic to the process of dating so that you’re not driven by emotions.
Pokluda says he expects feelings to accompany decisions about marriage, but they shouldn’t be the basis for it.
According to Pokluda, a focus on physical attractiveness makes dating harder than it has to be. As he points out, physical attractiveness has very little actual value when it comes to having a successful lifelong marriage.
Stay tuned for more snippets from Outdated next week.
In the olden days, moms used to clip newspaper articles for their kids if they thought it was something they needed to know. I’m watching for things you might have missed that may be helpful to you.
This week’s clips:
A Psychology Today article suggests seven ways to celebrate being single on Valentine’s Day.
Should you date a coworker? A Harvard Business Review article outlines what you need to think through, how you should handle talking to your boss and your colleagues about it, and even walks you through some case studies (!).
Is it really possible for a friendship to turn into love? A marriage.com article catalogs the signs that it might be happening, weighs the challenges and benefits, and suggests how to navigate this scenario.