What I honestly think of the dating advice on Medium
Medium is full of repetitive, formulaic advice about relationships, mostly by people who have some online type of dating service to sell. No, I don’t think most of these are helpful at all.
In fact, having read a fair amount of those articles, I concluded that the vast majority are absolute, sheer garbage.
Don’t get me wrong, it is completely legitimate to share your personal experiences and your hard-earned insight for others to interpret and to learn from. Such stories can be quite valuable. But listing completely banal, seventh grade level of relationship advices under a click-bait title as something uniquely insightful is utterly ridiculous. It is an offense to the intelligence of the readership.
So to sum up my adventures in the waters of dating advice, I’ll start with a question:
Why do people look up dating advice online?
I would venture to guess that mostly in a situation when they have no trusted person to share their doubts with (a friend, sister, co-worker, parent), and/or when they are hoping to validate their own hopes or, vice versa, confirm their own suspicions.
A guy is pulling away after three dates? I’ll do some clickity-click on Google to see if it really means what I’m thinking right now: he’s not that into me and I should not pin my hopes on him. Oh, hang on, a “relationship expert” (side note: what constitutes such “expertise”; being shit at dating to begin with?) says that a guy pulling away is not about me at all but about him! In fact, if he was into me initially, he still is and something stopping him from interacting with me appropriately simply came up! That makes total sense, I should just give him time! Oh yeah, that is a great advice!
It really isn’t.
Some harsh truths are constantly being diluted with nefarious intentions. But just because you don’t like the truth does not mean that the truth is toxic.
Let’s take a step back: what exactly is the dating process for?
A) to fix all your traumas and insecurities and make you feel whole again
B) to entertain you, allow you to meet new people and expand your social circle
C) to find out if the other person is a suitable long-term mate
You guessed it, C is the right answer, yet many people treat it as if it were A or B.
A potential dating partner is not your therapist! It is not his or her job to fix your issues. Love can move mountains, but it is on you to clean up your mess and fix your problems. I will insist that the only useful advice I have seen on Medium when it comes to dating is this: seek a therapist if you keep experiencing the same pattern in your dating life, yet you are unable to sort out what the problem is.
The problem is you, in case you were wondering.
There is absolutely nothing stigmatizing about therapy. We all have our past traumas and bad experiences we never chose that scarred us deeply; not everyone is able to sort it on their own, and neither do people have to feel like they should. Look for a good therapist before you look for a good partner. I can assure you, in fact I can promise you, unless you do that, you are bound to face the exact same issues over and over again.
When it comes to B, let me make it clear: dating is not a way to socialize or ‘have fun’; not really. Dating has the generally understood purpose of finding an exclusive romantic partner, not to expand your circle of friends or provide some light entertainment in your life. People you take on a date are not stand-up comedians (typically.)
I know that some people push back against this notion saying “well I am great friends with my ex,” which is awesome, but the consensus is that dating serves the purpose of finding a partner, not a buddy. Yet some people end up getting confused and hurt when they are treated as such in a process in which they expect to be treated as potential partners.
That’s the very reason I’m saying it: dating is for romance, not friendships or entertainment. Misguiding others under the ruse of potential romance can be easily interpreted as you taking advantage of other people (‘dating while not really looking’.) It’s akin to advertising a job position and interviewing candidates when you don’t really have an opening. You will likely meet some great people and may enjoy the process, put those people entered the process with certain expectations that you are not meeting.
If you are not really looking for an exclusive relationship, do not dive into the dating pool. Instead, pick a hobby and become a member of the respective club. Or buy tickets to a show and take a friend if you are bored. You can make plenty of friends of the opposite sex through such activities rather than through dating apps. If such friendship grows into love, that is just great, but it should not be the other way around (starting as daters and becoming friends.)
One thing I learned as someone who works in a male-dominated field and who generally enjoys the company of men, is this: men are NOT complicated. This is not to be a simple generalization to offend their intelligence or their sensitivities, not at all! There are incredibly bright and sensitive men that deserve to be respected for those qualities.
But in my experience, even those men will happily agree that when it comes to partnerships and dating life, they really are not looking for complications or drama. The translation is: If a guy likes a girl, he will make it pretty clear he does, and she does not need to google any relationship/dating advice whatsoever to understand that. It’s really that simple. There really are no guys ‘afraid of their own feelings’, ‘scared to trust again’, or guys ‘not ready for a relationship’.
If they are not committing to a woman, it’s not about their feelings, it’s about the woman. They have doubts about her and are not convinced she’s the right person for them.
And that is a perfectly and completely legitimate feeling!
I want to make it absolutely clear that just because someone concludes you may not be the right partner after all, that does not mean that you should be traumatized and devastated.
Dating is not a process to ascertain your own value!
Those people are not the mirrors of your own worth. Their willingness to form a relationship with you (or not) is a reflection of their core values and expectations and how these overlap with yours! In this sense, it really isn’t about you.
I absolutely don’t understand people who believe that if they were more ‘valuable’, they would be more coveted partners. That’s not how it works in the real life, that’s how it works in Hollywood and their movies perhaps (and see how happy the Hollywood couples generally are.)
But Hollywood is not exactly known for its faithfulness in depicting reality.
If I decide not to date someone, it is not because I don’t think the person is not ‘valuable enough’, it is because the person is not the right person for me. It says absolutely nothing about their intrinsic worth.
So many people confuse this that is mind-boggling.
So I repeat, do not treat dating as a way to assess your worth. The only person that can assess your worth is you. Nobody else.
And once you are aware of your own worth, you will quickly realize that how potential dates treat you and how you allow them to treat you is really everything you need to know about their potential interest in you as a future partner. It really becomes pretty obvious; you do not need to google to find excuses for people treating you poorly or making you miserable. If it doesn’t feel right, then it isn’t right.
You will not need an advice of waiting for three months to understand whether a guy wants a relationship with you or not. That’s just a horse manure advice. You will not need an advice telling you that if a guy pulls away after sex repeatedly that he is really not interested in having a relationship with you (moreover, you will not allow him to do that; at least not repeatedly.) You will also not need any advice about playing hard to get and similar nonsense.
Because the key to a successful relationship is being truly honest and truly authentic to who you are. While the culture teaches us to approach dating as if it were a game with winners and losers, the only losers are the people who ascribe attributes to dating that were never there in the first place.
The one terrible relationship I have experienced was when I tried to morph into someone else’s fantasy and pretended to be everything I thought he wanted me to be. Having grown since, I would never, ever do such thing again. I would always tell everybody to be absolutely truthful and honest, not play any games, not pretend and just be genuine. The authentic you always transpires eventually so why bother pretending in the beginning. You’re just wasting both of yours time.
If you are into a guy and he’s pulling away, yet you want him to be close, tell him! Is he pulling even further away? GOOD! Because that tells you he really isn’t the right person for you. Which, if you recall, is exactly what you want to find out during this process.
Your job in dating is not making every single potential connection last and turn into a relationship; your job is to tell the dross from gold!
The same goes for the gold question of “when should you sleep with someone” in the process: whenever that feel right for both! There is no right number of dates or time to pass before you become intimate; I know successful couples who ended in bed on the first date, and couples who knew each other in some capacity for months or years before starting to date and eventually becoming intimate. There is no correct formula for this.
This whole notion I see often repeated by prudes and chauvinists that if a woman ends up in bed with a guy “too soon”, he will leave her/be less interested in her, is a toxic, misogynistic nonsense. Because a guy who would leave you for sleeping with him is a piece of shit. It doesn’t matter when you end up in bed with someone with respect to the ultimate outcome of the relationship: he would have left you anyway even if you ended up in bed two years later. If he likes you, he will continue liking you whether you end up in bed on the second or the twentieth date. To an honest, mature guy this makes absolutely no difference.
So my advice really is do not listen to any advice including mine. Focus primarily on yourself, work on yourself and make sure to trust your instinct. It is a very underrated tool, yet probably the most useful one you have.
Certainly far more useful than anything I ever read on medium.
