What Should You Not Do When Dating?

I’ve seen a lot of different articles by love coaches and relationship experts that talk about what not to do when dating. There’s a lot of pieces of information dangling around out there in the online space that I feel can’t be fitted into a one size fits all relationship. There’s context involved. There’s people involved. There’s many other factors involved.

At one point, I wanted to know what all of the right things to do in dating were. I felt stupid, anxious and awkward when things didn’t turn out as expected on a date. I got my hopes up on each date only to be let down by how things actually turned out.

I remember years ago when I went on a date in a park. I had picked up beef jerky and chocolate chip cookies. I hadn’t thought about how it might look to my date. We were just going to meet up. I am pretty sure I was wearing something casual. I was so hungry that I was eating while we were talking. At that time, I was trying to pack so many activities into the little time that I did have. I did not hear from him again after that date.

I understood that each date was going to be different. I did want to put some time and effort into it so that I showed that I cared about myself and the other person. I had to approach dating differently, but I didn’t want to obsess about the outcome.

I looked for genuine excitement about meeting the person to lead me. I looked to enjoy the time I spent with that person in the moment. I tried to be as present as I could with that person and pay attention to signs telling me if I should continue with him or not. Was he thoughtful? What was he doing right before we met up? Does he pay attention to detail? How is he responding to what I have to say?

I feel like the first date was not a good gauge of who I was actually with. I felt like he was trying hard with this initial impression most of the time and then later, it was a shock when certain personality traits came to the surface or he acted completely different.

I balanced an inner compass telling me what to do along with becoming knowledgeable about who I was with to decide if I should remain open to the possibility of a relationship. A lot of times I knew right away that it would not work. Sometimes curiosity strung me along into negative outcomes because I wanted to see what would happen.

I learned to remain aware and patient. The signs aren’t there if you don’t look for them. What you should not do when dating is to not follow your intuition. I saved much of my time when I ended things earlier rather than later.