Dating tip: stop pretending to be a good person.

Noah Scott Goldman
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read
Bad dating advice summarized by a bad cartoon.

One reason it’s hard to find a good relationship is the abundance of bad dating advice. Ask your friends (or a search engine) for dating tips, and there’s a 50% chance you’ll get one of those ubiquitous societal prescriptions which seem fine to the unaided eye but break down under the magnifying glass. Smile. Feign interest in what the other person is saying. Hold the door and pull out the chair. Wear nice clothes, makeup, deodorant, and/or perfume. Get thin. Muscular. Sexy.

All of that is nonsense. First, while following those prescriptions is not necessarily bad, they are no guarantees. Love is messier than a truck carrying paint-filled balloons crashing into another truck carrying paint-filled balloons. Someone might reject you when you’re all dressed up, or fall in love with you when you’re in sweatpants and a hoodie.

But the second and more important problem is that these are all superficial prescriptions. When dating, we hope that we’ll find someone we can love, and that they’ll be capable of loving us too. As such, we face a real temptation to pretend to be likeable. But people aren’t stupid. They can tell when you’re going out of your way to make yourself a walking Viagra commercial. While you may be able to play it cool for a while by smiling and dressing nice, give it enough time and they’ll figure out who you really are. And it’s upon you that they’ll lay their final judgement, not your pretenses.

Personally, I prefer it that way. I don’t want to meet someone who loves my pretenses instead of me. And, conversely, I would rather focus on cultivating myself than my pretenses.

So here’s my advice. Stop trying to micromanage all the stuff the other person sees, and start genuinely trying to improve yourself. Instead of going out of your way to smile on your date, strive to find joy wherever you go. Work on becoming a better listener so you don’t have to feign interest. Hold the door and pull out the chair if you like, but do it out of genuine respect for your fellow human beings. Don’t worry too much about looking or smelling or dressing “nice”; find an appearance that you like. And finally, maintain your health, not just your weight or physique, knowing that the evolutionary reason people are attracted to certain bodies has everything to do with physical health.

In short, stop pretending to be a good person, and start becoming a good person. At that point, you won’t have to fake all the indicators, because they’ll be indicating correctly. And when you do fall in love it will be more genuine and robust than ever before. It’s still the case that love is messy, and I can’t guarantee this method will find you a partner. But think of it this way: even if you fail, instead of being disappointed about all the effort you wasted on smoke and mirrors, you’ll be left with a better and stronger you. I’m confident that will make every part of your life, including your romantic situation, a whole lot easier.

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade