I don’t like to bring up politics on my blog, but bear with me a second–I just want to make a point. There are a lot of people out there with very strong opinions. People who aren’t interested in considering another viewpoint. The tea party has formed here in the U.S. The Coffee Party movement formed against it. Talk show hosts are starting to promote violence and fear-mongering to get people to take action.
It’s a little strange and frightening.
And something else I’ve noticed is that the intolerance is not shunned, but accepted. It doesn’t matter who or what you support, as long as you don’t waiver in your decision. (Unless you’re a “maverick” of course…)
And it got me thinking about how we approach dating. Are we intolerant of anyone who doesn’t measure up to our standards, or who doesn’t fit into our ideal? Do we give people chances, or do we write them off before we’ve really gotten to know them?
I read an article last week about a study done among singles at 84 different speed dating events. The study found that the larger the event, the worse we become at making informed decisions. Basically, we just don’t want to put in the effort of assessing a potential date past how much they weigh and what they look like. However, at the smaller events, people gave consideration to other qualities, like occupation and education. They made decisions based on a more complex view of the people they met. Not just their looks.
Apparently, our brains shut off past a certain point because we just can’t take in too much information. It’s better if we choose from only a few brands of laundry detergent rather than say, 100. I understand this..it’s why I hate going to the mall. Everything looks the same and I get overwhelmed with choice.
So, is there TOO much choice out there? Because we’re able to go online and filter out the qualities that we don’t like, do we feel as though there is always somebody else who is going to be better…more perfectly in line with exactly what we dream of?
I’m not going to go into some rant about how we should follow the advice that’s floating around now about settling, because we’re just too picky. I don’t agree with that. But I do have to wonder if we are looking at people as only one-dimensional beings. We put them in boxes, much like the talk show hosts put political leaders in boxes. He’s short and uptight. She’s overweight and laughs too much. Maybe we didn’t click with them on the date, but shouldn’t we asses them as people and not caricatures?
I’m guilty of this. It makes for better stories when people can be summed up and discarded so quickly. It’s easier to move on to the next. But it doesn’t help us in our search. Instead of adding more and more qualities to our “I don’t want them because of…” list, try flipping the thought and noting what you do like about your date. Then you can attract someone with those qualities to you.
Tolerance helps us move past our differences and get to some common ground. It might be worth considering for dating, too.
About Kelly Seal
Kelly is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. She blogs about dating, relationships, personal growth and what "healthy living" means to her. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter @kellyseal or through her website www.kellyseal.com.
The state of politics is scary. And it’s bleeding into the general populace. The country is more divided than ever. So I’ll move on to dating.
I think you’re right. I do believe that some sort of initial physical attraction should be there, but does it really need to be a full blown fireworks show? I’m not so sure.
I like how you said, “It makes for better stories when people can be summed up and discarded so quickly.” Very insightful. And so true. We’re all guilty of this, even the people we discard are guilty of it in their own way.
I do think there’s some other place between, “being too picky” and “settling.”
Most of the happy couples I know are with people that probably wouldn’t meet their idea of their “ideal” match. They have found that their really great qualities more than make up for those physical imperfections and in some cases annoying habits. If they had filtered out those features that they weren’t looking for, that are minor when you look at the big picture, then would they ever have met? I don’t know, but it is weird to consider.
I’m with you on this. I, too, get overwhelmed when there are too many choices. Your post has gotten me thinking, and it’s possible that my intolerance is some sort of defense mechanism. I probably do write off these guys too easily right now. But I wish that I had some sort of explanation for the real fuckwits that I manage to go on dates with 🙂
too much choice causes whimsical and arbitrary decision making because we lack known strategy or sufficient criteria for dealing with it. However it’s not like we’ve never bought laundry detergent before. we have the choice to stick to what we know.
Dating site sites are a special kind of bad because not only do they present a large choice they present information of type we’re unfamiliar with in similar real life situations. I.e we don’t know how to interpret that sort of information in when making interest related decisions. it’s doubly bad! Actually it’s triply bad as we have to interpret information given by people who are either unfamiliar with talking about themselves in that way or are clever enough to favorably manipulate their image or are naturals at presenting enough mystery to have you hoping they’re suitable and reliant on what they later tell you verbally.
I posit man-shoppers fuckwit dilemma is a result of shallow decisions over unreliable and unfamiliar information and then a reliance on verbal information. The optimal strategy is to figure out how to at least be talking to more-right guys.