Why You Should Kiss Dating (Apps) Goodbye
Whenever a book, concept or idea "takes the world by storm," it's usually because it contains at least a kernel of truth. Here's one possibly overlooked nugget of gold from a hugely popular book.
Someday, I will do an entire series on the book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” by Joshua Harrison, but for now, I want to just focus on one largely overlooked aspect. While there were certainly a huge number of flaws in many of the underlying premises of the book, the truth is, no book is ever going to be perfect. Particularly not one written by an 18-year old.
I believe there is a reason this book took the world by storm, however, and it has little to do with the “purity movement.” The reason I say that is because it mostly wasn’t parents reading this book and pushing the ideas on their kids, it was actually young people themselves who were reading it and buying into it. And while, yes, there are absolutely a number of things people took to extremes (like not even kissing until you are married??? WTF???), there were also plenty of golden nuggets for those who cared to sift through the chaff.
In America, we have been fed this idiotic notion that more options are always better. I have had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time with people from other countries. One thing I notice again and again is how quickly they become overwhelmed with all of the options available in America. In other countries, full-sized grocery stores are often the size of a large American mini-market and the majority of restaurants may only offer between 5-8 menu items. Not to mention there are far fewer restaurants to begin with.
By now, many people are familiar with the idea of decision fatigue, and while it may be a hotly contested topic in a clinical setting, the truth is, we all know how time consuming it can be to make a choice when faced with too many options. Steve Jobs infamously wore a uniform of a black turtleneck and jeans every day for years simply because it cut down on the number of decisions he had to make every day.
We seem to have carried this same idea into dating, that somehow having more options is better. In reality, however, having more options doesn't actually do anything to increase the quality of those options. What happens instead is that we just spend more and more time flipping through available options. What I would argue is that all the time we spending looking is actually cutting into the time we could be spending making sure that when we find someone we are truly compatible with, we are actually ready to be in a relationship.
Disney has sold us on this idea that all we have to do is wait for our prince to come and as soon as that happens, we will live “happily ever after.” I think (I hope) we all know by now, that is a load of b.s. The truth is, that like everything in life, we need to be ready for a relationship. There’s a lot that goes into that and it’s going to be different for everyone but perhaps the most important thing, like the Greeks said, is to “know thyself.”
There is this great thread running through the movie The Runaway Bride, where Ike asks all of Maggie’s former fiancés how she likes her eggs. They all respond “oh, that’s easy” - and they tell him exactly how they like their eggs and say she likes them the same way. Ike eventually asks Maggie herself how she likes her eggs and she answers with the way her current fiancé likes them. At the very end of the movie, Ike walks in on Maggie surrounded by dozens of plates of eggs. She has finally figured out how she likes her eggs. This, to me, is part of what it means to “know thyself” and I think most people (and perhaps women in particular) have to not be in a relationship to figure it out.
I think it’s very telling that the screenplay for The Runaway Bride was written by a woman because that little thematic thread is something I think only women really understand. I also think it’s fairly telling that two movies (and books) that really connected hugely with women in the last two decades were Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Both of which were about women who went off on their own to “find themselves.” Men going off to “find themselves” has been a common theme for centuries, but we seem to have this idea that women simply find their identity in their husbands and children and have no need to find their own identity.
To me, the golden nugget from “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” is that the time we spend not dating is precious and valuable and I think we should cherish it and use it wisely. Although there are probably no statistics to support this, I strongly suspect that IKDG also resonated strongly with women for this very reason. While men have always been encouraged to go off and find themselves ( or “sow their wild oats”) before “settling down,” women have largely had no such encouragement. I also believe an argument could be made that women date more because they feel societally pressured to do so, while men date more because (and only when) they want to.
While there is nothing wrong with dating and I think dating is a good and healthy thing, I think the enormous amount of time people spend pursuing a relationship now is time that could be better spent growing as a person and getting to know yourself better. Call me old-fashioned but I am a big believer in “if you build it, they will come.”
In dating, that means I think that when you invest your time in bettering yourself instead of chasing a relationship, a suitable mate will, in fact, “magically” appear when the time is right. While I don’t completely buy into the Law of Attraction, much like the book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” I think there is certainly an element of truth to it, particularly when it comes to “attracting” a mate. I think we waste a lot of time looking instead of spending it getting ready, so when someone highly compatible actually comes along, we often are not ready for a relationship.
MATING IS MORE LIKE BUYING A HOME
I don’t believe in this idea of The One. I think mating is a lot more like buying a house. The longer you save, the more research you do and the more patient you are, the more likely you will be to end up with a home you will be very happy with for a long time to come. That being said, while you may have some idea of where you want to live and what you’re looking for in a house, there will always be at least a few compromises that will have to be made.
Dating is kind of like renting.
You want to date enough that you have some idea of what you’re looking for long term, but you don’t necessarily want to be moving every 2-3 months. Always remember, dating is an investment - it takes time, money and energy. If a long-term or lifelong relationship is like buying a house, then the more resources you invest in dating, the less you will have to save up for buying a house. Again, however, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t date, it simply means you always need to be balancing your short-term expenditures versus your long-term goals.
Sometimes, the person that comes along will simply help you grow more as a person but they aren’t necessarily “life partner” material or you might simply not be ready for that kind of commitment. Those relationships still have value, however, so I don’t agree with the idea of kissing dating goodbye entirely. Rather, I think we need to take advantage of the opportunities life sends our way; people that come into our life that we genuinely connect with.
Then, if the time comes when they move on or that relationship ends, I think we need to take time to process what we’ve learned about ourselves and what our needs are. Then we need time to grow so that when the next person comes along, we’re ready for the next level of growth. I think eventually when we go through that process enough times, we reach a point where we are ready to make a longer term - or even lifelong - commitment.