Originally published June 2023.
I know how you feel right know. I know the knot in your stomach. “But..if I don’t date, I’ll never meet someone!” I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad you’re willing to listen to someone talk about singlehood in a way that doesn’t blame or shame you for the fact that you’re not in love. You deserve more than that. You definitely deserve a life unburdened by what dating has become, and you deserve it before you find a partner. You have more options than just swearing off dating or allowing it to consume your time, attention, sanity, and life. We just don’t talk about them very much.
There are obvious complaints about singlehood. No one to try new restaurants with. We don’t split rent. The constant “been on any good dates lately?” questions from friends. I could gripe about never having anyone around to manage the spiders, or perhaps the struggle involved in having to freeze half of my groceries because otherwise they’ll go bad before I can eat them. But no, today I’d like to bitch about something else entirely, something that’s — as far as I can tell — entirely ignored by the single and dating set, despite the fact that it causes us active harm, every day: It’s the assumption that if you’re single, you have to focus on dating.
You’re not thinking about it, you didn’t plan it this way, but a side effect of growing up in a society built for couples is that if you’re not in one, dating is a very passive, assumed chore. Have you ever questioned it, or is dating just something you do? You’re not in a relationship, something’s “unfinished,” so you date! There isn’t some big decision, “I’m going to date now!” It’s just an incredibly common activity that’s part of singlehood’s default setting. This is no more consciously done than laundry or dishes, it’s just one more little life chore. It’s never challenged, questioned, or rebelled against. Single bad, couple good, date date date until you’re in a couple, then you can stop dating. (Unless of course you’re half the men on dating apps, who just keep right on going. I digress.)
We focus on dating under the assumption that it’s simply the thing that’s done by singles. Then of course dating sucks more than a Dyson V13, so maybe even without realizing it, you’ve ended up in the hellpit of miserable dating culture coupled with the casual belief that you have to keep slogging through it. Not only that, you have to make it a focus, or else somehow you’ll feel like you’re not “doing enough” to not be single anymore. Because single is a horrible thing to be, right? I mean my goodness, think of me what you will, just don’t think I’m not…wanted by someone other than myself! Egads!
Single people center dating, this is just fact. I’m not judging us, I myself centered dating as my first priority after paying rent for well over a decade. There was madness in it, in trying something over and over again for approximately 3,650 days without one relationship to show for it and still thinking that one day the thing that had never worked, suddenly would.
If I can snap out of dating as a mandatory focus until couplehood, so can you. But I won’t just tell you to “stop dating,” because we’ve all tried the cold turkey method and re-downloaded every dating app 100x already. Does that cycle feel good to you? I didn’t feel good to me, either. Let’s give something else a try.
For real, lasting change in the way you think about dating, for the ability to participate in it when it feels good, and stand aside when it doesn’t, I believe patience and perspective are in order, along with a strong dose of supporting arguments. So here, I’ll take you through five wonderful things that happen once dating is no longer the central focus of your actual fucking life.
Free Time
Have you ever really clocked the amount of time you’ve spent swiping to find, messaging to book, getting ready for, and attending dates? Maybe don’t, because there’s no need to upset yourself, but I can confirm: it’s a lot. The amount of physical time you get back when dating is no longer an assumed chore in your life is fairly gargantuan. I don’t think we acknowledge the amount of time dating is taking from us, and how we could be filling that time to more enjoyable, productive ends instead.
I myself filled that time by writing a book and starting a podcast that has become the completely independent living I now earn for myself instead of working for other people who make me sit in so many meetings all day that I can’t actually get any work done and talk down to me like I should be grateful that they’re paying me to do work for them at all but you know what? Who knows how you’ll fill all that time. It’s up to you.
Mental Lift
Another thing we ignore about dating, apart from how much of our time it’s consuming: How it affects our mood. Personally, I found that I’d centered dating so much that dating was responsible for how I felt every day. And because dating was stuffed full of disappointment, frustration, and fruitlessness (and that’s on a good day — on a bad day I was absorbing abusive and/or degrading messages from strangers on the internet that were supposedly my “matches”), I felt disappointed, frustrated, and deeply unwanted. Because if the trash humans on dating apps don’t want me, I’m unwantable, right?
I miss a lot of things. International travel, summer camp, real dairy ice cream , my natural hair color — I don’t fucking miss dating.
In the absence of the negativity involved in dating, you receive a mental lift in return. It’s an unburdening, a release of the sour incoming that we casually absorb through dating because we think we have to — because we assume it’ll all eventually be worth it when we’re “rewarded” with a partner. We still think that dating is the thing that will lead us to love — the only thing. I’d ask you to take a mental accounting of every couple you know, and ask yourself if they met through the means you’re currently wading through. Or did they just like…meet through friends? At work? Out one night? Let go of everything that dating asks you to process or “deal with.” Dating should have never become something we had to deal with, but it has. And it’s not something to deal with that is required of you — not even if you genuinely want a partner. You’re allowed to let go of dating, and meet someone anyway.
New Toys
Dating apps are toys. They just are. Whoever told you they were viable routes to committed relationships was lying through their teeth while accepting your credit card information. They’re toys! They’re something to flip through while you’re waiting for public transit, standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting on the toilet. They’re time-occupiers the same way any other fidget gadget is and I don’t care how many coworkers cousin’s best friends have met their husband on an app. Are you meeting yours? Does this feel good to you? Stop hanging hopes on a few anomalies and recognize how many millions of human beings aren’t achieving the desired results. It’s what allows dating apps to make literal billions of dollars — they’re designed to keep you single, because that way they make more money for a longer period of time. Wake the fuck up and clear some room on your phone.
Once dating apps are no longer your go-tos, you start to explore new ways to pass the time. You can learn whole-ass languages on your phone, did you know that? You can invest money, take up photography, become an amateur astronomer, anything really! There are countless ways to pass your time that have nothing to do with swiping through faces and fielding degrading profiles and messages. Give them a try and see how much better the average day can feel when the chore of dating is no longer the center of it.
Enjoying Alone Time
I don’t know why, but we’re programmed to see being alone as something that’s lonely. It doesn’t have to be. Dining alone doesn’t have to feel pathetic, it’s allowed to feel like an amazing opportunity to not have to share. A Friday night with no plans doesn’t have to feel like a failure, it’s allowed to feel like a gift where you do exactly what you want without factoring in anyone else’s desires or preferences. There’s another side of being alone that’s lovely, and it hasn’t had nearly enough time in the limelight.
The more time you spend alone in acknowledgement that alone is not by default a bad thing, the more you learn to love your time by yourself, cherish it, and start to see it as something you won’t give up for anyone unworthy. Particularly some dickhead who can’t be bothered to suggest a day, time, or place to meet up and makes you handle absolutely everything and then ghosts you.
A Centering Of Yourself
You likely don’t realize it, but centering dating also de-centers yourself. Dating as a mandatory chore puts your focus on finding someone else, often at the cost of ignoring everything you already have, and everything you already are. Dating has a nasty habit of consuming us, of hiding all the good we already have behind the one thing we don’t. You don’t have to let it get away with this shit anymore. You don’t have to make dating your primary focus. You are allowed to be your primary focus, and that doesn’t mean you’re not “doing enough” to not be single anymore. It just means you’re acknowledging that not being single anymore isn’t something that requires punishing yourself with dating first.
You don’t have to do this, that’s all I’m saying. When dating doesn’t feel good, you do not have to participating in dating. I wrote this post because someone sent me a TikTok of a woman who attended a date in a hurricane, because “he still wanted to go.” The date was an hour long, he showed no interest in her, and in the end he agreed “we should have canceled.” But only after he made her travel 80 blocks versus the ten blocks he had to travel in torrential rain and wind. She should have cancelled. She should have acknowledged how ridiculous the situation was. But she didn’t, because we don’t know that we can.
We don’t know that de-centering dating is allowed, but it is. We don’t have to date no matter what, and saying no to dating when it doesn’t feel right or make sense isn’t “lowering our chances.” It’s asking ourselves what’s really driving us, what’s really at the center of us, and then asking ourselves if that’s really the best use of our time.