Dating Is A Tough Game To Play

Like everything in life, some games we play have winners and losers. I wish dating wasn't a game but it is governed by a complex chemical mixture of body chemistry and environmental conditioning. This means that there are subtle rules and undertones to everything we do and perceive when we meet someone for the first time. Because of this we will not succeed with everyone we meet. If identical twins both have a girlfriend and you swap the twins, research indicates that the girlfriends will know instantly that they are not with the right partner. So something is going on that limits our success with prospective partners.

This should give us some comfort but it doesn't. The fact is, dating is a hard business and it can wear us down. I am 37 years old, never married, and there are days when I am tired of dating to be honest. Like many single people I try all the techniques and lessons and follow all the rules and for some reason I just don't seem to meet the right person for me. Maybe I am guilty like many  in becoming increasingly choosey and increasingly intolerant but I don't think that is it actually. I think that what is happening is that we all go through peaks and troughs in our dating lives and this is what I want to talk about now.

We must be prepared to take things on the chin occasionally and be prepared for runs of bad luck when we kind of despair that will will meet our Mr. Right. This is when our confidence, ambition, the regular nature of our lives and our eternal optimism will shine through. This is also why we often meet people when we are slightly off our guard. But this is also why we have standards and criteria. If dating and matching was so easy we would meet our perfect person within days of looking and oddly this would lead us to feel discontent later because of the wondering about who else who could have met. No, dating is a long slow process which may wear us down but which at the end of the day makes us especially sure when we DO meet the right person.

I find that I meet lots of nice people who appeal to be willing partners but there is some form of spark missing, something indefinable that I can't put my finger on. The result of this is to make me start questioning myself. I think well I have just met some great people lately and there was nothing wrong with any of them but yet I don't want to date them, maybe there is something wrong with me? And then I take a break from the dating scene for a bit, convincing myself all the while that I am better off being single.

The truth is that most of us do end up in long term relationships but we are starting to loose patience. Like everything else in our consumer lives, we want to go and buy our lifestyle from a store. We don't like waiting for things and the idea of waiting indefinitely to meet someone we can picture so clearly in our heads can drive us crazy. I find myself feeling resentful occasionally. Like for example a trip out on a sunny Sunday afternoon will mean that I encounter lots of couples. They are there, living proof that the vast majority of people can meet people. In fact a lot of couples I see appear to have my perfect dates amongst them so why me? Why is it that I am single and so many people are not.

Well for a start it is an illusion. We don't know how these people are feeling, we don't know about their problems and most often we are witnessing a concentration of couples in a place where coupes go, like parks and on walks. Its exactly where we would be too with our partners. So we need to keep things in perspective. Yes there are lots of couples, but there are a hell of a lot of single people who don't happen to be strolling in the park.

Dating is hard because we are reminded about our singledom by the media. The papers have lots of lifestyle pages these days showing loving couples. Home and interior magazines are full of happy couples selecting furnishings for their new family home. There appear to be more happy parents with buggies then ever before, so much so that venturing out is like venturing into the middle of a mini chariot race. So why not us?

We go on successive dates and we feel almost always let down. Out heart is raised and then it sinks half way through dinner, if not within minutes, because yet again we know instinctively that this date is going nowhere fast. We don't know why, we just know okay. Then the worst of all is when we see the person we can only dream of, maybe we even meet them, but they are happily attached. Our friends shock us out of the blue by announcing they are getting engaged and another of our inner social circle drops out of sight. This is true - I had three best friends and two of them announced one innocent evening in our local bar that they both had pregnant girlfriends and both were moving away. They announced this independently of each other but within 90 seconds.

I think as single people there is a growing resentment that we are the victims of some crime, that life is being unfair to us. Even the poorest of people in the most remote of countries appear to find love so easily yet we struggle. Surely it can't be so hard to find someone who is all the simple things we ask for. Someone who will love us like we love them. And that's part of it - the amount of love we have built up inside but which we have no one to share it with. Its like being a pent up firework that may never have the chance to explode in glorious colors. This leads to a feeling of desperation. What is to be done?

What we do is we stick to our guns and we carry on. We keep dating and we keep meeting people and we concentrate on enjoying our lives. We prepare for days such as this when we don't feel optimistic and we become experts in dating and relating. Furthermore we become experts about ourselves. We take a good look at out live and we see if there is anything we need to fix. Beyond that we stop worrying so much about being single and being left on the shelf.

The great irony of feeling down when dating and appreciating that dating is hard, is the fact that being in a relationship is even harder and as many of your married friends may tell you, not every day is sunny. However I think all us single folk agree that we would trade that for the thought of being on our own for years to come. Strange really.