The Dating Game: Why It Sets You Up for Failure and Divorce
You know when you’re single, and all you wish is that there were someone out there that checked off all your boxes? You think about that perfect person; what they would look like, sound like, the kind of job they would have? Well, it’s one thing to fantasize, and completely another to actually expect to find that someone. You know why? No one is perfect!
We tend to build up these expectations in our heads of what we would want in our “perfect partner” and then are completely caught off guard when someone we date says or does something that doesn't fit with that mold.
Maybe you don’t care about some of those boxes. Let’s say that you only care about the most important things - they treat you with respect, they have a job and can support themselves, and they have a loving, supportive group of friends and family. Then one day, you have a fight and realize that they can’t communicate with you - they storm out and apologize later. Well, you chalk it up to it being your first fight. Only it happens again and again and you keep accepting it, until finally - you realize it’s no longer working and then you’re back to square one.
After awhile, you become jaded. You don’t know how to find a decent person. There’s always going to be something about a person that you may not like. It could be how they leave their dishes in the sink (which is a habit maybe they could change if they were so inclined), or it could be something they can’t change.
Either way, you always start dating with the best of intentions and are always ever so hopeful, thinking - maybe this is the one! First, people change all the time. They can change for good, but also for the bad. People can start good habits and bad. The most important thing is that the only person you will ever truly know is yourself! (And even that is sometimes not always true!) You can’t judge someone on the basis of their actions at the beginning of a relationship especially, because people are always out to impress. They always put their best foot forward when they meet someone for the first time. This is not always who they are. I mean, it could be, but that’s why many people enter into narcissistic relationships because they don’t find out until later that there is a serious problem. Also, if people have baggage (i.e previous bad separation or divorce, history of being abused or abusing others, etc…) this will hardly ever show up when you are first dating. People wait until you are comfortably ensconced in the relationship and then it’s just as much work to leave as it is to stay, so you tend to stay in bad relationships.
So now you might be thinking, well then how do we find decent people? The answer is that you just don’t know. You take a chance no matter the case. But, if you stick with someone (even if they don’t check off all the boxes), and of course, if they seem to be a decent human being), you are more likely to find out who they are quicker than if you date tons of people.
That being said, it’s very important to listen to your gut. There’s a fine line between working things out because you want a relationship to succeed, and accepting abuse over and over because you’re hopeful that the person will change. People don’t change unless they want to. There is nothing you can do to make it happen.
The good news, is that if you do find a decent person, and you successfully navigated the courtship period, and they treat you well, you have a higher success rate at a happy relationship than if you were still dating around. The first few years of any relationship can be rocky. It isn’t until you grind each other’s rough spots down a bit to fit nicely against each other that you realize things are good.
Relationships are seriously hard; they take so much work. If one person cares, and the other doesn’t, the relationship is already doomed. Both people need to invest their time and energy into the relationship in order for it to succeed. Communication can be hard, but it’s necessary to form a bond. So is intimacy (and I’m not just talking about the physical aspects here). When you feel safe in your space with another person - that’s intimacy. You’re not afraid of being judged, looked at critically, or harshly condemned for things you might say or do.
In my opinion, I think this is the reason that many arranged marriages prove to be success stories. There is no opportunity to “find something better”. You accept what you have, and learn to mold yourself, learn to change for the better. Of course, I’m sure not all arranged marriages are successes, but in my sociology studies, it was proven that the divorce rate among arranged marriages was lower than that of other couples finding romance on their own.
I hope I have given you some food for thought with this piece. Thank you again for reading! See you next time!
Sandra
