A Shrink’s Take on Dating: Pro Tip — It’s Supposed to Be Fun!

I’m a clinical psychologist and, over the years, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to work with people dating, either for the first time or the first time in a long time. People generally describe dating as a miserable experience and approach it with emotions ranging from anxiety to terror. In fact, I’ve had many people tell me that they’ve stayed in bad marriages for years because they dreaded dating so much.

Problems With Dating Advice

It seems that much dating advice seems to be taken from the “How to Be Popular in High School” manual. There are usually a lot of overcomplicated tips for how to present a façade that will get people to like you. Following this advice, people obsess over writing the perfect profile for a dating Web site or picking something to do for the first date that they think will really impress their date. In contrast, the most important thing I’ve learned about dating, which people often overlook, is simple: Just be yourself.

Dating is not a popularity contest; the objective is not to go out with as many people as possible or get as many people to like you. The purpose of dating is not to impress someone; it’s not a job interview. The objective of dating is to find one person you like, preferably someone who also likes you, and then spend some time together to see how things go. Dating is about discernment, not popularity. The idea is not to get someone to like you but to figure out if you like each other. If you go…