The Purpose of Dating

All right, and welcome back. On this episode, I want to talk about the purpose of dating.

So I've been working a lot with men over these last years around dating and relationships, helping men that are already in relationships deepen them and make them even more fulfilling, and helping single men attract and get into the kind of relationship they've really been looking for. And on this journey, I've gotten to really know what challenges are out there for men as they go on that journey to find a partner that they really want to commit to in some kind of significant way.

Finding that partner involves dating. And quite simply, from my point of view, the purpose of dating is to discover if someone is your life partner or someone you even just want to invest more time into. I know that might sound really obvious, like, of course that's what we're doing dating, but it's kind of crazy to me how sometimes us men can miss the ball on that.

And what I mean by discover is to, in the time and interactions you spend together, to really explore this other person, to find out, who are they, what makes them tick, how are we aligned? How are we not aligned? Where do we both want to go? What does it feel like to be together? This is such a simple but important concept because what it allows us to do in our dating journey is take some of the power back.

It can be really intimidating for some men, nice guys like myself, to go out there and date and feel like, oh, my God, I gotta live up to a certain status or stereotype or level of attraction or something to be able to win over a woman. And that right there, that mindset already kind of makes it hard for us. But the idea of dating to discover changes that a little bit. Where your job as a man when you go out on a date is to lead and discover, who is this woman?

Does she align with me? All those things we've been talking about, who is this woman and does she fit what I'm really looking for? And so it allows us to bring ourselves forward. Right. One of the crazy kind of default dating strategies that guys often do, or frankly, just human beings often do is, well, I meet someone and I kind of like them.

So I'm going to try to be X, Y or Z to really impress them until we get into some kind of relationship and commit. And then once we do, I can kind of relax and be more myself. I know it sounds like, well, who would ever do that? But this is often the system that's driving the show. So we don't want to be too authentic, we don't want to be too vulnerable. You know, we want to create an image of not being too interested. All these different bullshit games guys kind of fun fall into to try to put this best foot forward.

The problem with that strategy is what happens later on. So I've seen this a lot where men will start dating someone and they're maybe not being their fully authentic self. And then they really do get into something with a woman and it gets to the point where they do need to start being a little more authentic or real. And then it turns out there's a mismatch there, right? Turns out, oh my God, we don't see intimacy the same way, or we don't have some of the same values, or we don't want the same things when it comes to kids or family or whatever that might be.

And then boom, you've potentially just wasted two, three, six months, a year, years in some guy's case, investing into a relationship that was never really the right one from the get go. The alternative, this idea of kind of leading with vulnerability, bringing your authenticity and exploring so actually diving in to get to know a woman changes that often what it does is it ends interactions faster, right?

If I just fully be myself and I don't pretend someone's either going to be aligned to that or not aligned to that. And a lot of people won't be. It's just the nature of human beings. We're not all the right fit for each other and that is totally fine. But we want to find that out sooner than later. And that's where this leading with vulnerability and really being conscious of my job here is to discover this person.

To discover is this someone I want to keep investing time into. And so we do that by leading, by bringing our depth, by bringing our vulnerability, by taking charge in a good, organic, insensitive way. What really makes this woman tick? What are her values? What does she care about? What does she not want people to know about her? What do you not want people to know about you? What are your values?

What do you care about? These are deeper levels of conversation that we can lead as men to create that process of discovery. So you want to get out there and date and discover who's right for me, how long that takes. And how many women you have to date. There's no formula for that. But what I do believe is you have to date enough to have an embodied sense of what works for you.

And I was never raised with dogs, so I was never a dog person. And it just seemed easier to me to date someone without a dog. Well, lo and behold, right? I meet my wife, and she didn't have a dog the first year we were together because it was staying somewhere else, but she actually had a dog. And in that process, I got to know her dog when she brought it back, and turns out, I love it. I love Mae. She's so close to my heart now.

And now I can't imagine life without a dog, even with the challenges it does have. I had a conceptual idea of that non negotiable. But in dating my partner, I actually discovered that wasn't a big deal to me. That wasn't an important one to me. That's just one example. Right. So we can have these lists that we often build for partners that can be useful but can oftentimes prevent us from actually having relational experiences. Oh, she doesn't X or she doesn't Y, but that's different.

Having a map is different from actually exploring the territory. So going out on a date and being with someone and finding what's important. How do I feel in my body? How do I want to feel when I'm around this person? This is something I work a lot with our guys on in Our dating and relationships program. And it's a game changer when we reformat our belief system around what we need to do and what we're looking for. So you want to be bold.

Okay, I want to see what's it like when I X, what's she like when she's Y? What happens if I lead us on an adventure and I make mistakes? Like that's all important stuff you want to discover and there's no faking it, right? I often tell guys, even a short term relationship that doesn't end up being the one, you can learn more in that experience than you can in years of not dating.

So actually going in and giving it a try, whether that's just a couple of dates or a couple of months, it's the value of the embodied experience of trying different things and of feeling different things and getting feedback in your body that's so important. This shift can also help away from the nerves we often get going on a date, right? Because suddenly we know our purpose. My purpose is just to go be myself and discover.

Are we aligned? Is there attraction here? Are there shared values here? Are we sailing the same way in our lives? You want to know that and you want to know that stuff sooner than later. Sex is included in that, right? Doesn't mean you have to hook up with someone asap, but you want to know what's their relationship to sexuality? Like, what kind of sex life do they want to have? You might not ask that on a first date, but you could, right?

If that's something you highly value, you can talk about. That doesn't mean you have to have sex, but you can talk about what's your relationship to sex. Super important to me and my wife and our marriage and something we talked about early on. She had been married before and it was a sexless marriage and she knew she didn't want that and I knew I really valued that. So we're pretty clear up front, like, yeah, if we're going to be together, this has to be something we prioritize, right?

It's not something we can just let go to the wayside. Neither of us are okay with that. We have to put in the time and energy to make that a vital part of our relationship, even if we sometimes don't feel like it, because it's a deeper value that we share. And we shared values around family and wanting to do that. You want to know these questions sooner than later. Because anytime you keep investing in someone who's not aligned with you, that's time that's keeping you away from discovering other partners.

My good friend and mentor, Dr. Robert Glover, always loved how he says this. Yeah, you want to get to know quickly or you want to get to rejection quickly. What that really means is you want to find out you're not aligned sooner than later. And we do that sooner piece by being authentic, by being vulnerable, by being bold, by not holding back, by being the explorer who leads the way with activities, with communication, with relating, to discover.