2355: 3 Simple Explanations for Why You're Still Single by Mark Manson on Personal Development & Dating

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[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_01]: This is Optimal Relationships Daily. 3 Simple Explanations for Why Youre Still Single by Mark Manson of MarkManson.net

[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody wins on Valentine's Day. The holiday puts everyone in an awkward situation.

[00:00:43] [SPEAKER_01]: If you're not seeing anybody, then it's an incessant and unnecessary reminder of your solitude.

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_01]: If you are seeing someone, but aren't serious yet, then you have this awkward should I say something, should I not situation where you're afraid that no matter what you do, it'll give the wrong impression.

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_01]: And if you are in a relationship, then there are all sorts of heightened expectations for chocolate and dinners and candles and violins and puppies and other

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_01]: all of which will at best come across as forced and at worst be entirely disingenuous.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, but romance is kind of like a f***. If you have to force it, then it's going to be f***. Just let it come out.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: With that said, amidst the seas of flowers and ponies, I do make a point to write some dating advice on Valentine's Day each year.

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_01]: It's usually pretty brutal dating advice as well. Call it my little tradition.

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_01]: In previous years, I wrote a how-to guide on breaking up properly.

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_01]: The year before that, I wrote a dry theoretical explanation of why needy behavior makes you hideously unattractive to everyone within a five-mile radius.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_01]: So, let's keep the streak alive. This year, I'm going to cut to the chase.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Why people who are perpetually single and don't want to be, are perpetually single and don't want to be.

[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_01]: A.K.A. the why nobody loves you post. Ouch. I'm just kidding. I love you. Okay, not really.

[00:02:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So, cozy up on the couch in a nice pair of sweatpants, grab a tub of ice cream and a fresh box of Kleenex, you know, like you do every weekend,

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_01]: and get ready to be truth slapped in the face. Yeah, you know you like it.

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Number one, you don't respect yourself.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_01]: The respect and admiration you receive from others is proportional to the respect you receive from yourself.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_01]: If you take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically, then others will be attracted to the prospect of taking care of you mentally, emotionally, and yes, physically.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Giggity. Don't believe me? Try it for a month. Take care of yourself. Exercise and eat well. Sleep well at night. Work hard and plan ahead.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Be social. Eliminate bad habits. Speak about your ideas without inhibition and expect nothing in return. Cure cancer.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Share things based on the simple pleasure of sharing. Pursue others out of earnestness and not out of obligation or desperation.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't accept judgments made by yourself or others. Don't take rejection personally. Save a puppy from a burning building.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Rather than see the world in terms of ranking and competition, choose to see the world in terms of compatibility and incompatibility.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Then, take it on as your job to find the compatibility. Try it for a month and see what happens.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I realize it's not easy, but that's kind of the point. Being an emotionally functional human adult is actually a difficult endeavor.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_01]: But, if you want to date an emotionally functional human adult, then you need to be an emotionally functional human adult.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a radical idea, I know.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Number two, you have absurd expectations.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_01]: There are two new dating stereotypes that have cropped up this generation.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_01]: They are, number one, the man who is fat, balding, underemployed, antisocial, unhygienic,

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_01]: who decorates his apartment with his collection of original mint-conditioned Star Wars action figures, all in fighting poses,

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_01]: who spends his weekends engrossed in manga comic books and internet,

[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_01]: and who is then perpetually frustrated that every woman he likes is somehow unable to appreciate all of his amazing qualities.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_01]: He then comes to the conclusion that, obviously, there's something horribly wrong with the women in the world.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Number two, the fashionable, beautiful, 30-something career woman who wants to settle down.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_01]: But, despite having dates lined up every night of the week, she laments that there are no good men out there.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_01]: The last man she dated was an accountant, played racquetball, and spoke French.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_01]: But she dumped him, because he had bad fingernails and didn't want to go to business school.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_01]: The man before that won the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_01]: But, she dumped him, because chemistry is such an impractical profession anyway.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, really. Get a clue.

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_01]: The man feels entitled to date anyone, despite the fact that he brings basically nothing to the table in an intimate or f***ful relationship.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_01]: The woman brings something to the table, but feels entitled to date someone who brings everything to the table in an intimate and f***ful relationship.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Both are terribly delusional in regards to their dating experiences.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_01]: These flavors of delusional expectations come down to perfection.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_01]: People who expect perfection in others, and people who expect others to acknowledge the perfection in themselves.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_01]: It's debatable which is more insufferable.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, these absurd expectations occur in each gender and take on many forms.

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I once met a woman who was unhealthy and overweight, and with a straight face, stated she would only consider dating a man if he had six-pack abs.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Unsurprisingly, she was still single.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I had a friend in college who once dumped a woman he had been crazy about, because her taste in movies made it impossible for him to respect her opinions.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_01]: There are people who assume that any sort of disagreement or argument signals a deathly incompatibility and a future of pure misery.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So, they end it.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Then, there are people who expect the opposite sex to fall down and beg for their attention and affection, and then get genuinely p***ed off and vicious when they don't.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_01]: There are people who think that, because you shared a chicken basket and watched a Tom Hanks movie together, you are now owed a phone call every single day, and if that phone call doesn't come, they go on a screaming tirade.

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_01]: It's really simple.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_01]: It's really simple.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_01]: We all have our own imperfections.

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone we date also has their own imperfections.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Intimacy and romance is determined by people who have comparable and complementary imperfections to one another.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Learn to appreciate some people's imperfections.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Learn to appreciate and improve upon your own.

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, you're going to be single and angry for a very, very long time.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Number three, you haven't developed the skills for intimacy.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people are great on-paper daters.

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_01]: What I mean by that is that they go on dates regularly.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_01]: They're attractive, attentive, have good jobs, interesting skills and hobbies.

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_01]: They do the dinner conversations.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_01]: They laugh in the right places.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_01]: They talk about their lives, their families, their careers, their aspirations, their dogs' strange bathroom habits.

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_01]: They nail everything.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And yet, nobody sticks around.

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, the phone stops ringing.

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_01]: The lame excuses pop up or the ubiquitous, we should just be friends, comes out.

[00:07:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Ultimately, dating and finding a partner is an emotional process.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_01]: People like this get the surface-level behaviors right.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_01]: But they never engage the depth of their emotions and connect where the real life is.

[00:07:49] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the difference between composing a concerto on piano and simply performing somebody else's concerto.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Generating intimacy in a relationship requires emotional investment and vulnerability.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_01]: That means you need to open up about yourself in ways that may not be completely comfortable.

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_01]: It means exposing yourself.

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_01]: It requires you to share opinions and values that may polarize people and generate rejections.

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It requires you to be bold and take risks in going after what you want.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_01]: To generate emotional intimacy with others, one must open up and discover the emotions within oneself.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_01]: In our culture today, people in romantic relationships are objectified.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_01]: They're treated as boxes on a checklist or entries on a resume.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_01]: They're seen as an exchange of time, information, and bodily fluids.

[00:08:40] [SPEAKER_01]: But intimacy is something that happens organically through the mutual expression of emotions and values.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a box that can't be checked.

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a resume that can't be filled in.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_01]: It's unconscious and personal and unnameable.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And one cannot generate that deep intimacy if one is not open to those deep emotions and values within oneself.

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_01]: You just listened to the post titled,

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Three Simple Explanations for Why You're Still Single by Mark Manson of markmanson.net.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_01]: A blunt and properly forthcoming write-up from Mark as usual,

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_01]: there certainly is an increasing level of entitlement when it comes to things we need to do better,

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_01]: often choosing instead to celebrate who we are and not change a thing.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, too much of this can get us in trouble with dating, even if we'll always have imperfections no matter what.

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_01]: As long as that's the case, both with ourselves and others,

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_01]: when it comes to dating and anything else really,

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_01]: it's important to pick out the imperfections that you are willing to deal with,

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_01]: especially if you're more committed to finding a partner.

[00:09:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Making a distinction between insignificant and significant imperfections in a partner is crucial.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_01]: So, if you find yourself being single after a whole lot of trying,

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_01]: try to look again at the importance of the imperfections both you and your dates possess,

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_01]: and whether or not you're acting on them properly.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Can you really not date a man because he's under six feet or doesn't have a six-pack,

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_01]: choosing to ignore his great family values and encouragement of you to follow your dreams?

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Can you really not date a woman because she has kids and is once divorced,

[00:10:24] [SPEAKER_01]: choosing to ignore her self-sufficiency and great ability to communicate?

[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Be smart, people. That's all I ask.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for staying with me today, everyone.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I had a lot of fun, and sure hope you did as well.

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_01]: We are all through, so I hope you will take today's article with you

[00:10:39] [SPEAKER_01]: and rethink how you see everyone's imperfections, even if you are happily married.

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_01]: This is definitely something that can help us improve relationships with friends and family, too.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to get out of here for now, but be sure to come back with me tomorrow

[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_01]: for another post on the Wednesday Show, where your optimal life awaits.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

[00:10:56] Let's go.

[00:10:57] Let's go.

[00:10:57] Thank you.