With a yearlong relationship having met its recent demise, I am looking out into the dating world with apprehension, anxiety, and a bit of a queasy stomach. The end of a relationship marks the end of a routine. This routine should not be seen simply as how you would pick up sushi every Tuesday for you and your significant other, but instead a disruption of your day to day life through a shift in your mundane thoughts. With this shift is an opportunity to think of yourself. In giving yourself a chance to refocus your centre towards yourself rather than your (former) significant other, the prospect of pursuing other relationships can re-enter the mind.
I use the term “game” with purposefulness. Attempting to step out into the world of dating can easily toy with one’s emotions and enact every mind game one can think of. That is not to say that dating is not for the meek of heart. Dating is for the meek of heart, the courageous of heart, the easily inspired, and the everyday skeptic. If you are cynical toward dating, you are not the only one, but keeping yourself from meeting new people is the most effective way of maintaining your skepticism, keeping you from finding someone who can change your mind away from its skepticism. Or, at least, you will not get a chance to meet someone who shares your similar bitter views.
Probably the most overwhelming notion that should be upheld when joining the dating world is the idea of maintaining balance. A perpetual over-thinker, I tend to constantly flip between investing my heart into an individual wholly and probably a bit too quickly, only to inevitably pull back my feelings and put up walls. This disposition toward an individual whom I am interested in works cyclically and the behaviour comes so automatically that I convince myself that this attitude is my embodiment of “balance”. True balance is actually the ability to be both invested and held back simultaneously. On top of that already paradoxical concept is the need to slowly allow oneself to become less closed off and more invested with time.
One may think that their guarded attitude toward dating is indecipherable to their dating prospects, but being guarded prompts guardedness and squashes all hope of getting to know other individuals on a deeper level other than knowing another person’s favourite colour. In going from a relationship into the dating world, I find myself thinking in the terms of “we” still. Ensuring that you have in fact brought yourself to the forefront of your mind is the first step in approaching a new relationship with balance. Being single, but still feeling like your natural state of being is the person you are when you are in a relationship can taint your view to see all people as being generally the same. Dating becomes a waiting game until you find someone new to fit into a mould, rather than an active attempt at finding companionship.
Conversely, the post-breakup mind may have forgotten how to critically look for the basic traits that you would want to have in a companion. Coming from a relationship that was bonded by similar basic ideological views of the world, I find myself assuming that other people must too share these views and thus I am easily swept away by the minute qualities an individual may have. The idea of balance comes into play again in this experience. Another factor dismantling the potential for balance is the attention a single person receives, which can juxtapose the consistent, but sometimes subtle attention this person received while in a relationship. In the world of app-dating and singledom, attention comes in excessive waves, only to disappear a moment later. These excessive waves are enticing and can be romantic, while their disappearance can act as a lonely weight on an individual who may not be used to being single.
The time required to refocus one’s attention back to one’s own self can seem drawn out for an individual who is used to having a guaranteed date for social functions and a cuddle buddy for lazy Sundays, but this time is necessary in re-entering the dating game. Knowing whether you are “ready” or not can be tricky and frankly not everyone will be so inclined to “self-reflect” as an over-thinker like myself feels compelled to do constantly. Whether you are a person of thought or a person of action, the draw to re-enter the dating game is enough signification to tell you that it is time to meet new people.
In exiting my past relationship, I reassured myself of the comforting idea that the relationship was a learning experience resulting in invaluable lessons on my own self and how I relate to, communicate with, and love other people. Forgetting this while approaching new relationships would be more heartbreaking than any breakup ever could be because the next relationship does not have to be superficial redemption from a past relationship, but can continue to be a learning process. So, while the dating game can feel very much like a “game,” above all, dating is simply an action in relating to another person, which is a shifting and dynamic experience from one individual to another. This human relation is situationally unique and therefore beyond a list of “how-to’s”. In refocusing on yourself, you are given the reminder that this world is a learning experience and that learning experience is not limited by the dating world.