Questionable Dating Advice
I am a psychotherapist who has a lot of experience dealing with love relationships. Over the years, I’ve seen people upset because they’ve accepted dating advice from their family and friends that hasn’t served them very well. Having love-life difficulties and feeling at least a little desperate for a solution, they were perhaps too eager to have advice; any advice. Then, things went wrong. Sometimes the dating advice caused them to solve one problem and create another, or it worked fairly well but had a hidden downside that showed up later.
That is why I’ve decided to write a series of blog posts to point out:
- The thinking that goes along with the dating advice
- What tends to be the fallout of implementing the advice
By the way, I think it’s generalizing too much to say some dating advice is good and some is bad. Every person is different and every relationship is different. Only you know the path you need to take at any given time.
I’m in no way criticizing the concept of dating advice; I think it can be very useful. I’m just trying to promote understanding and awareness to go along with the advice. After all, not everyone is lucky in love; most people need to think through complex emotions and situations to create their own luck.
Dating Advice Blog Post #1
Find a man who’s more in love with you than you are with him.
The thinking here probably is:
Passion dies anyway. So what’s the difference if you have any at the beginning of your love relationship or not?
Being passion-free allows you to have a clear head and remain in control of your love-life.
With him crazy about you, you greatly reduce the chance that he will ever leave you.
He’ll never know the difference.
The potential fallout from following this advice is:
No worries if he’s just slightly more besotted with you than you are with him.
If, however, he’s over the moon about you and you could take him or leave him, be careful. Ask yourself: Do you have any chemistry with him? Are your feelings for him increasing or decreasing? If you have no chemistry, or your feelings for him are steadily decreasing, you might want to think long and hard about this.
You can’t tell your man the truth about how you’re feeling therefore you have to lead him to believe that you’re in love with him. That means you have to lie to him, his family, his friends, your mutual friends and at least some members of your family. You also have to pretend in and out of the bedroom that you’re fulfilled. This is a pretty tall order.
You might end up feeling trapped in this relationship: how can you leave a good man who loves and trusts you? What would you do if you met somebody else and felt the real thing?
Bear in mind that your lies could catch up with you; somehow or other the truth could come out. That could very well be one of the worst moments in your life or in his. How would you face him? Would he leave you over this?
While it’s true that no two people have exactly the same amount of love for each other, it’s generally best if the amounts are roughly equivalent.
It is very difficult if not impossible to pull off this deception in the long term. You can’t be on guard all the time; your guy may very well realize that you’re just not that into him.
Any time you cheat another person, you’re probably cheating yourself too.