Dating Theory For The 21st Century

It’s 2018; many things are changing fast. One thing that hasn’t changed much is some people’s desire to find true love. To do so, they have to play the dating game, in which you meet a bunch of strangers, eliminate the ones you don’t like, stick to the one you like best, invest more time and energy with that person, and then hope for the best. It sounds simple, but as you can see, there is one main problem with the game:

· You have a finite amount of time and energy.

You simply can’t play this game mindlessly because your time is limited. If you live in North America, your lifespan is around 80 years. You have 80 years to live; when you subtract your youth, you might be stuck with about 65 years. Just like an athlete, you’ll have your prime years and decline years. Let’s assume that you hit your prime at 20 years old and it lasts for 30 years, for argument’s sake. Once your prime is over, your chances of finding true love diminish drastically, the same way the chances of an aging athlete winning a championship diminish.

To play the game properly, you need a strategy. The one I’ll propose is optimized for energy and time conservation, our most precious resources. When Sun Tzu said that supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting, he was talking about war. In the dating game, supreme excellence is about filtering out the wrong people without spending too much time and energy. To do so, there are five main concepts one must understand:

· Dating Age Margin: Your dating age tolerance interval

· Dateability Score: Your ability to be dateable

· Attractive Score: Your ability to be physically attractive

· Cost of a Bad Relationship: The cost of a toxic relationship to your life

· Baggage Score: The positive and negative habits you carry from one experience to the next

Dating Age Margin, also known as DAM:

Your DAM is your dating age tolerance interval. It’s a personal interval based on what you are currently looking for and what you can afford. It shouldn’t be affected by other people’s expectations, although laws limit you. My DAM is [5,5], meaning I am comfortable dating people who are five years younger than me to people who are five years older than me. Yours might be [2,10], meaning you can date people who are two years younger than you to people who are ten years older than you. It’s your personal preference.

Dateability Score, also known as DS:

Your DS is your ability to be dateable. It’s a score affected by what you are currently looking for, regardless of how gorgeous the prospect is. Unlike your DAM, your DS is relative to the person you’re talking to. He or she will know if you have a high or low score based on what he or she is looking for. For instance, a 30-year-old woman called Jenna is looking to get married. She meets a 32-year-old man who has everything going for him, except he doesn’t see himself getting married or starting a family. This might give him a low DS because she wants to start a family, not to date just for the sake of dating. Interestingly enough, we all give people a DS unconsciously; we just use words like “I wasn’t feeling it” to justify why we wouldn’t date someone, despite their beauty or credentials.

Attractive Score, also known as AS:

Your attractive score is directly linked to your appearances. Like the DS, it is subjective to the prospect. You might look average to one person and look terrific to another. It’s not something you can fully control.

Cost of a Bad Relationship, also known as CBR:

The cost of a bad relationship is extremely important to understand. You have a life; you work, study, have dreams and ambitions. The cost of a bad relationship can be extremely high if your partner derails you from your path. Assume you are in high school, dealing with a toxic girlfriend. Although you can’t sleep at night or focus on your studies, you can still manage to pass your classes with C’s and B’s. You’re passing your classes, so you don’t fully realize how much of an impact that relationship has on you. Then in 12th grade, when it’s time to apply for university, you are told that your grades don’t meet the minimum criteria for engineering school. You can always take a year or two to improve your grade point average and reapply, but you could have been in your second year of engineering if you hadn’t had to deal with so much drama and could have focused on your studies. Similarly, a bad partner who stresses you out and makes you depressed can deeply affect your work performance. Depending on what you do for a living, it might be fatal.

Baggage Score, also known as BS:

Like it or not, we all carry baggage, some heavier than others. Every single experience you’ve had has affected you. The person you are today is the result of all those experiences. While you cannot change the past, it is important to recognize its effects on you, and reduce its weight when you assess new situations. For instance, a person whose former partner cheated might have a hard time trusting someone new. By acknowledging it, the new couple might be able to better face that challenge and build trust.

So What?

In order to fully understand how these five concepts affect your chances of finding the right person, you need to understand the dating market. The dating market is like the stock market: every single person is like a stock, whose value goes up and down with time. Unlike the stock market, where buyers and sellers are usually different entities, single men and women in the dating market are both buyers and sellers, which creates competition. Essentially, just like animals, one must out-compete the competition to win his or her mate.

The DAM in Action:

Thankfully, for all kinds of reasons, you don’t have to compete with everybody in the world, but it is fair to say that you are competing with every other single in your city (i.e., your market). So, understanding the DAM helps you understand your position in the market. For instance, a 30-year-old man with a DAM of [5,5] doesn’t look the same in the eyes of a 25-year-old and a 35-year-old woman. To the 25-year-old woman, he might look like the ideal future husband: a good-looking man who wants to settle down: he works, would like to start a family and is reliable and mature. All these attributes are a mix of his DS and AS in the mind of the 25-year-old within her DAM. She might think that 25-year-old men are still too immature for her, while 30-year-olds looks like they’re past their “crazy” phase.

The same guy might look like an ordinary man to a 30-year-old woman looking for something else. Yet he might look like an immature kid to a 35-year-old-woman. It has nothing to do with our 30-year-old man; it is simply the fact that people have their DAM. Within that range, they have options, and they naturally pick the best option: the one that matches what they want.

Most people’s DAM grows as they grow. Let’s stick to our example. Our 30-year-old friend dated his 25-year-old girlfriend for two years; they are now married with a two-year-old. He is now 35 years old and she’s 30 years old. If our now 35-year-old friend is not able to grow — in this case, meaning to go from the cool boyfriend to a good fiancé, to a great husband and caring dad — he will slowly start losing DS points, despite maintaining his godlike physique. Remember, he’s losing points in the eyes of his wife, not yours or mine.

Making Sense of the DS and AS:

To make sense of the DS and AS, you need to understand that there are two types of people in the world. There are the ones whom you find attractive from afar because they catch your attention, and the ones you find attractive as you get to know them. The ones you notice because they are gorgeous usually have a high AS. The ones you find attractive as you get to know them, despite the fact that they didn’t catch your attention at first, are also interesting. These people usually have a high DS; they have traits that you find attractive and, most importantly, traits you would like your partner to have.

As you go through life, you should always work hard to increase your DS and AS. If you think about it, to have a high DS, you just need to be a genuinely good person. While we are not all blessed with perfect genes, your AS can always be high if you take care of yourself. There are four main aspects of your life that affect your DS and AS.

1. Your Health: Your health is your most important asset; without it, you can’t use your time and energy to do what pleases your soul. Taking good care of yourself has a tremendous compound effect on every aspect of your life, especially your AS.

2. Your Relationships: Here, I am referring to your family and friends. You want to surround yourself with the best people because their presence affects your thoughts, energy and health. We don’t choose our family members, so maintaining good family relationships usually requires more effort, but it’s worth every single drop of sweat because, at the end of the day, they are the only people who love you unconditionally. Your friends, on the other hand, can always change, so it’s important to maintain very high standards. The right friends will help you grow in life; these are the people you want around. They help you increase your DS by merely being awesome.

3. Your Career: Career is a loaded word; it means different things to different people. By career, I’m talking about what you do for a living, be it your passion or calling. The only way not to be miserable in life is to love what you do, so choosing the right career is extremely important. Plus, it energizes you and increases your DS. Your financial life is also included here; as long as you have the energy to work for what you want, it shouldn’t be a problem, because you can work your way up to a better salary. The confidence to be able to do so also increases your DS.

4. Your Philosophy of Life: This one is fascinating. Essentially, the way you see the world today should evolve tomorrow, because you have more experience and knowledge. You are evolving as a human. Your ability to grow and adapt in new settings will forever be an asset, in relationships and in life. As Darwin said, it is not the strongest of the species that survive, but the most adaptable. In order to adapt, you must be open to change and see reality as it is: two things that are going to help you improve yourself.

So, how do you use them in real life?

The easiest thing to do is to make a list of the traits you want in your partner. Some are going to be DS traits; some are going to be AS traits. You don’t have to worry about your DAM too much, especially if you are always growing. The DAM positions you in the market; it’s out of your control. The key takeaway for you is to keep increasing your DS and AS, while minimizing your CBR and BS.

With these tools on hand, you should be able to filter people faster. The moment you give someone a low DS, you should move on to the next one. You don’t have the power to change people, and you shouldn’t try; just move to the next prospect. Someone with a high AS and low DS might end up becoming a fling or a terrible relationship. Since I’m sure you don’t want to keep having “flings,” my recommendation is not to waste too much time with people with a low DS; they will increase your CBR and BS.

The Relationship Trap

While these concepts are useful for men and women in the singles market, they are also true in relationships. Your DS and AS can decrease in the eyes of your partner if you take her or him for granted and stop taking good care of them. You must keep growing, keep your DS and AS high and maximize positive experiences to reduce the BS as much as possible. The woman you were when you were both students shouldn’t be the same one now that you are living together and planning life. The worst thing that can happen to you in the relationship is having your partner look at you and realize that he or she deserves better. Because, from that point, there is almost no way back. Keep increasing your AS and DS; remember, your DAM is increasing naturally. Do not be left behind.

If dating were just a matter of availability, every single person would find a mate. The simple fact that you unconsciously know what you want should be motivation not to waste time or money on the wrong people. Life is short; use your time and energy wisely.

I write about my experiences, entrepreneurship and stoicism on medium, and tweet at @NedNadima.