Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer - Sex For Dummies

If you’re not invested in a date, the odds of that date leading to more dates goes down exponentially. If, instead of working to try to make the relationship go forward, you’re looking forward to the next date with someone else, your attitude is going to sink that ship before it’s left the harbor.

What binds a couple together isn’t their appearance, collection of funny anecdotes, or any one personality trait but rather their overall chemistry, how their personalities mesh with one another. You can’t really tell that without spending some time together. First impressions are important, no doubt, but love at first sight is rare. And if you fall in love with someone by looking at their picture on your phone, I can predict the relationship won’t end well, if it develops at all.

All these apps and other technological inventions offer incredible convenience, but they also have their limitations. All you can tell by looking at someone’s photo is that you like how they look in that particular (most likely photoshopped) picture. But in order to judge whether or not they’d make a good romantic partner, you need a lot more physical co-mingling of your personalities.

Life isn’t a Twitter feed. No one person is going to be able to offer you a constant flow of witty conversation day in and day out. There are many subtle qualities that go into what makes someone a good partner, and which take time to be appreciated. So while I’m not saying not to use apps to find dates, I am saying not to let the app mentally ruin your chances of turning a date into a partner. No matter how fast your fingers can swipe, when the time comes to actually be standing side by side, slow down.

If you are too invested in whether or not a date will turn into a long-term romance, you actually make it more difficult for romance to bloom. If you’re overly concerned about what your date does for a living, whether or not he or she will make the perfect spouse, you risk making a date such a serious proposition that its weight will force it to sink before it ever has a chance to soar.

I understand that I’m being a little confusing, but if dating were that easy, no one would have any problems with it. To be successful at dating, you have to be open, you have to be willing to be seduced, you have to allow your personalities to mix to see if there is that magical chemical reaction — all while analyzing this other person analytically.

Europeans who come to this country can find this situation confusing. It’s not that they’re not looking for love, but they prefer the ambience of their dates to be more playful, more flirtatious in order to create an atmosphere where love might bloom. So your job is to find a way of being both romantic and level-headed at the same time. It’s not easy, but it’s a skill you can develop.

You can read article after article about scientific findings that say loneliness is at epidemic proportions, especially among young people. This really worries me. It turns out that no matter how many friends you have on Facebook or followers you have on Twitter or Instagram, they’re not a substitute for a real, live human being.

So here’s another dichotomy you face. You don’t want to be lonely and your smartphone offers you many different ways to alleviate your loneliness, but at the same time it’s causing your loneliness. Are you going to give up your smartphone? Not likely. It’s become too important as your calendar, GPS, music player, not to mention as a means of communication. So your phone is going to stay with you, but at the same time you’ve got to realize that when you’re using it as a crutch to avoid feeling lonely, you’re making matters worse. If you’re feeling lonely, go spend some time with some fellow human beings. Not on a date necessarily, though that would be good, but just hanging out would be fine too.

Of course, by hanging out with a friend I don’t mean two people together at a coffee shop, each staring at their phone. That’s the cause of the problem, not the solution. Put your phones away and talk to each other. (Someone needs to invent a condom for smartphones so that you can just wrap it up in order to promote good conversation!) If nothing else, it will give you practice so that when you’re on a date with someone you really want to make a connection with, you’ll be better able to do so without being distracted by that phone in your hand.

Research has shown that smartphone owners touch their phone 2,600 times a day. The harder you find it to put your phone aside, the more important it is to do so. If necessary, use the timer app on your phone to help you. Set it for 15 minutes, and then put your phone down. Turn off notifications that alert you to any form of contact. Then slowly add to the time your phone is out of your hands so that you can wean yourself off of it as a crutch. That way, when you’re on an actual date, you’ll have trained yourself to be able to put it away without having that constant nagging feeling that you should be staring at it.

Is the ability to be able to carry on a conversation something that makes you nervous about dating? Do you worry that you’ll have nothing to say? I worry that the art of conversation is disappearing because people spend so much time on their phones doing everything but talking on them. So not only is this phone time making them lonely, but it is causing a lack of skill in a key part of dating, conversation.

It’s called the “art” of conversation for a reason. I’m sure you’ve talked to people who bore you silly. Oh sure, they can talk, but who wants to listen? To develop any art form you have to practice, so not only do I want you to talk to your friends and family as much as possible, but do it in a constructive way. Don’t just blather about what you bought at the supermarket, but come up with interesting conversation. How do you do that? You make an effort to be informed. You know those cat videos that go viral? Stop watching them and seek out stories that would make for good conversation and then go practice.

Is there a place for humor in the dating scene? Of course, but my suggestion is to treat humor like a spice rather than a main course. If something funny comes to mind, go ahead and see if you can get your date to laugh. But if the two of you are doing nothing but trading zingers, you’re not learning anything about each other. If you’re using humor to hide your true feelings, I would guess you’re not going to be building a relationship that will stand the test of time.

The dating apps themselves come and go. Tinder and Match may be the best known, but there are many, many others such as Blue, Bumble, Christian Mingle, eHarmony, JDate, OK Cupid, Senior People Meet, Wingman, and Zoosk. The basic idea is the same: the app is going to help you find people in order to discover whether someone might bring some romance into your life. Some people use these apps only to bring some sex into their lives. If that’s what both parties are looking for, fine. But we humans need emotional relationships to feel fully satisfied, and so finding such a relationship should be your ultimate goal.