It’s understandable if you feel discouraged, stuck, or even hopeless at times as you experience the reality that dating is so hard.
And yet, there are strategies for you to make dating a little less painful to allow you to find the loving partner you are wanting.
Dating is So Hard
If you are dating it’s understandable if you feel it’s so hard. And it’s natural if you feel it’s getting harder.
Maybe you even find yourself thinking that dating is especially hard for your group of people such as thinking:
- Dating is harder for men,
- It’s even harder for women to date than men,
- You can’t find anyone “good” on a dating app,
- People had it easier dating before the apps or the pandemic,
- It’s too hard dating after a divorce, or
- Dating is harder after age 45 or 55 (or insert any age you think)
If you relate to such thoughts, please know it’s understandable to feel this way when you’re discouraged or feeling hopeless.
And You Can Do Hard Things
Fortunately, even as dating is hard, you are capable of implementing strategies that help dating feel more tolerable.
There are a variety of approaches and mindsets that make dating feel extra hard. In the same vein, there are many strategies that can help you find your one right person. And remember, you’re just looking for one person (most likely) even if that feels like it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.
Tip #1 to Make Dating Easier: Address Your Attachment Style
Attachment theory explains how we form, and maintain, close relationships. There are 4 basic styles for the way we connect with others that is typically formed from our earliest relationships with our caregivers. These 4 styles are:
- Anxious,
- Avoidant,
- Secure, or
- Fearful Avoidant (Anxious-Avoidant or Disorganized)
The ideal attachment style is secure. From this place, we believe we deserve close relationships and love. We trust that others will like and want us. And we cope well with dating disappointment because we have self-love, healthy boundaries, and balanced hope.
How Non-Secure Attachment Shows Up
When we are anxiously attached though, we tend to cling to people out of a fear that each person who dates us will be the “last.” And here there’s a huge fear of being “forever alone.” Anxiously attached people often act like “people pleasers” or codependent because they are so afraid of abandonment.
On the other side, avoidantly attached people while afraid of rejection and abandonment like anxiously attached people are more afraid of letting down their walls and trusting others. These people are more likely to ghost others and be emotionally unavailable.
If you’re fearful avoidant, you may cling to people who are unavailable feeling a deep ache for a partnership. Yet, when someone is available it may gross you out and repulse you.
Non-Secure Attachment Makes Dating Harder
If you are anxiously or avoidantly attached (or a combination of this), it’s not your fault. You developed this way of attaching to others based on wounds that happened in your relationships (abandonment, neglect, abuse, a pattern of being invalidated, etc.). And fortunately, you can heal.
To make dating easier, it’s important to address the ways your non-secure attachment shows up and gets in your way.
Trust Yourself More if You’re Anxious
If you are anxious, for example, maybe you tend to date people if they like you but ignore if you like them or not. You may feel “grateful” someone likes you at all due to an underlying feeling there’s something less-than about you.
To make dating more comfortable for you, it’s important to interrupt this pattern such as by trusting yourself when you don’t like someone rather than justifying why you should keep dating someone.
Be More Open-Minded and Courageous if You’re Avoidant
Or if you’re avoidant, it is important to interrupt urges to be highly critical of other people. You genuinely want to honor if someone is attractive to you or shares your vision and values. But there are other things as an avoidantly attached person that may give you the “Ick” that deep down don’t really matter to you. For instance, if you really like someone but feel grossed out because they were socks with sandals, it’s important to relax how picky you are because of your avoidant attachment.
And rather than putting up walls with people or ghosting them, try being more communicative and open.
Tip #2 to Make Dating Easier: Address Beliefs Rooted in Trauma
Related to a non-secure attachment style, many people carry beliefs rooted in trauma that make dating harder for them.
These beliefs that make dating harder rooted in wounding include:
- The idea you can’t trust anyone you’d be attracted to i.e., “all men cheat” or “all women are users,”
- The belief that “all the good ones are taken,”
- That safe relationships or people are “boring,”
- The idea that others will always take advantage of you,
- That you’re destined to be alone, or very commonly,
- The belief that you are less deserving, broken, or unlovable
You Can Change Your Mind
The beliefs you may carry that make dating harder rooted in trauma are not your fault. You may have picked these up from painful experiences growing up including having to move a lot. Or you may have picked these up from wounding experiences dating i.e., being scammed by a person you were dating.
These beliefs are not your fault and understandable. At the same time, traumatic beliefs may make dating much harder. This is, in part, because these beliefs reinforce non-securely attached behaviors which are strategies you’ve developed to feel safe.
For example, if you don’t trust people, it’s understandable you throw yourself into work rather than relationships (avoidant). And yet, if you don’t learn how to challenge the belief that there’s no one trustworthy, you can’t tolerate the ups and downs of dating to find your person.
Changing Your Mindset
There are numerous ways to change your mind about dating:
- Use confirmation bias to your advantage,
- Attend EMDR (trauma therapy), and
- Using affirmations
If you don’t believe you are deserving of love fully, you can use affirmations to change your mind.
Or you can use the psychological phenomenon of how our brain tries to prove what we already believe (confirmation bias) to your advantage. For example, if you think “all men are cheaters” instead start to look for signs of men who are faithful and committed. Keep a journal of this even and look to real life examples as well as examples in the media to start proving yourself wrong, in a good way!
Or if these beliefs feel really deep rooted you may want to attend Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy to help resolve the past wounds that created the belief. If you feel stuck, for instance, on the belief that there’s no one good left because of many years of dating disappointment, EMDR can help resolve this past so you may move forward in a lighter way.
Tip #3 to Make Dating Easier: Let Go of Self-Betrayal
Rooted in anxious attachment and traumatic beliefs is a thought pattern of scarcity.
A scarcity mindset shows up when you think you have to “trick” someone into commitment. It shows up when you think you’re “lucky” for anyone to like you. Or when you think each person you date is your “last chance” for love. It’s also rooted in the view that “all the good ones” are taken.
When you think that there is not enough love to go around, you’re more likely to betray yourself. This includes ignoring your non-negotiable needs because you feel like you don’t deserve to have limits. Or having casual sex when you’d prefer commitment. Or feeling like if you set boundaries around abuse or toxic patterns, you’d have nothing so you stay silent.
It’s Just One Person
In your dating journey, you’re likely just looking for one person. It’s important to consider all the people you’ve never met before. This world is truly so vast and filled with so many people. There is genuinely a lid for every pot. You just have to keep dating – and dating wisely – to tolerate the ups and downs to find your one right person.
To date wisely, you must stop getting in your own way with self-betrayal. This includes not breaking your own boundaries or “rules.” Like if you know someone’s not healthy for you, spending more time dating them just makes your process to finding your right person, harder.
It’s also very important you honor your non-negotiable limits. We all have non-negotiable needs in a relationship (if you want to identify yours, there’s a free worksheet here).As soon as someone shows they don’t meet even just one non-negotiable, to make dating easier, you must accept this. Respecting your own limits is a tremendous act of self-love too that lays a wonderful foundation for your right, healthy relationship.
Tip #4 to Make Dating Easier: Be the Person You’d Want to Date
One of the biggest ways not rooted in trauma that people make their dating journey harder is by putting way too much pressure on the fantasy of their future relationship.
So many people think that when they find their right person they’ll finally have the motivation to eat right, go back to school, pursue that promotion or care for their body’s fitness as a few examples.
And yet, this is backwards. It’s human nature that we attract people similar to us (same level of mental, relationship or physical health). Therefore, if you’re waiting for someone else to make you whole, you will attract someone who is waiting for you to complete them too. And yet, this person who is putting their life on hold to meet you, probably isn’t that attractive to you.
To make dating easier – and your life feel much better in the meantime – it’s important to honor your vision for your future partnered life in the ways you can now. For instance, if you dream of someone to be active with but are currently sedentary, start becoming more active now.
Or if you want someone to have a dog or family with maybe you could volunteer now to bring more of this connection into your life.
Or if you want someone who is mentally healthy, maybe you want to attend therapy now for you.
It’s easier to attract your right person and tolerate the difficulties of dating when you are living with integrity now – rather than waiting for someone else to make you happy.
Dating May Always Be Challenging and You Have Skills
There will always be an inherent difficulty in dating because there are many factors not up to you such as the time-wasters that will message you on apps.
And yet, when you implement these four strategies wherever possible, you will be able to tolerate the challenges of dating in a much more balanced way.
For more support, check out this related video to reinforce these concepts to make dating easier
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