Dating Advice Will Ruin Your Life

NO. Giggles and eye contact does not mean you found your true love

“I went through the listicle bro. She mirrored my actions the other day. That surely counts as a sign she is into me. She loves me. Ok, at least she has a crush on me. ”

Crush? Love?Her? You?

“Yes. I even know that she is comfortable around me, she tells me her secrets. Bro. She looks at me for a long time. I’m for real. Did I tell you she feels bad when she sees me around other ladies? I can even see it in her eyes. She even called me bae!!!!!!! B.A.E bro, BAE. I fkn swear bro. see, she loves me. ”

Alright, bro. Enough talk. Get it done. Ask her out.

[Deluded dude asks said crush out]

[Gets rejected with barely a one-liner. No explanation. No closure. Probably expected, non deserved.]

A few weeks later… [Joins medium as a new writer determined to make it big as a successful writer] [First blog…]

How to move on from your ex

Bruv. You had no ex!!!

Seriously though, do you believe that there is any man out there that all women cannot resist? All women? really?

I can hear you shout Hemsworth brothers. I am leaving this question to the women though. Do y’all find them irresistible? All of you?

I can slightly consider the delusion of a man that most women cannot resist. But that too is probably a stretch.

A more realistic consideration would be a man that many women cannot resist.

Ok, let's consider for a moment that a listicle teaches you how to and you turn yourself into a man that no woman can resist. Can you manage that attention?

I can’t speak for women here so excuse me if I keep this part very biased.

Many men if not most men writing advice about relationships are hurting you.

It is one thing to look up a tutorial on how to double your CPU cores in the software settings and it is another to look up how to tell if that girl likes you.

Both are ridiculous. One will only waste your time for a few minutes. Another will stock your experience library with regrets.

But if you manage to find a tutorial for both, and approach them with a logical mind, you will soon find that the tutorial will not help you.

But when people search for something, we badly want it to be true so we expel logic for the time being.

“I badly want to be in love with that girl. Therefore I am going to approach the tutorial subject matter with as much openness as possible. ”

And you’ll be amazed at how the brain can shift things around to attach meaning to otherwise innocent events.

It's only after the rejection that you allow logic to return. Then you can come back many months later and tell people how you hate turning to internet advice concerning love and interpreting love signals.

I hate turning to the internet for advice that I can directly use in my life concerning love and interpreting love signals.

If anything, I love borrowing from people’s experiences instead not advice.

“He did this and that happened. So if I can improve his approach this way, maybe that would work. ”

It's those stories that people tell about their experiences, hopes, dreams, and failures that offer useful insights.

Blunt advice tries to generalize experiences by equating A to B without considering a lot of other variables that are at play. Generalization is almost always a fallacy.

We so badly want to love and be loved that we ignore the things that would guide us into making better decisions.

Truth: You know you are neck-deep into some rejection trauma when you cannot stop peddling love theories probably because you think they are working for you.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the article.

Theories on love that should keep you rational in its explorations

Diving into love can really be scary. A friend of mine told me a while back that she leaves love alone. I think that statement speaks to the truth of how hurtful the experience can be.

But for many people, we ignore that fact and treat love as though we are looking for movie recommendations.

Some philosophers and academics deem the whole idea ineffable, preferring not to even explore the subject. Yet somehow, we can just slap a listicle onto the internet and revel in a good day’s work?

People who know how dangerous it can get don’t fool around with it. Not with regards to themselves and not in advice meant to be considered for other people’s wellbeing.

Wounds of love do not heal. What we call healing requires a change of identity that bakes in the new normal of the subjected trauma. We learn to live with it. It never heals. Maybe, only forgotten. This is not a wound that you can get medicine for.

But how recklessly we push each other into it, constantly hurting people and thinking that we are making a difference helping others “get some”.

What people think of when they talk about love, especially that crush love, is merely the love of the platonic form of beauty. You are not loving the individual but some element they possess that you consider true beauty.

No wonder crushing is a thing.

This eros type of love is what most hurts people because we rush into it and attach feelings to where they are not supposed to be.

Many people getting into this do not consider reciprocity. It's a desire for something, (the object), rather than for, say, the company of another and shared values as well as pursuits.

Many men even go so far as to build entire relationships with women on this alone. You have seen the memes where the guy comes to help a female and once the latter says they have a boyfriend, he walks away leaving the female to deal with her struggles on her own.

I know it is a joke and I don’t want to be the buzzkill.

But, even with the jokes aside, this is how we normally build relationships with people we “love” albeit at varying degrees of this conditionality.

There is an attempt to for instance separate romantic relationships from nonromantic ones.

For the men, for instance, many men would want a date on their first interaction as strangers with the woman. This is an example of a relationship that is highly conditional and supported on stilts of desire.

It has no consideration or appreciation for the individual beyond that which she may possess as part of her anatomy. If she were stripped of it, then that relationship wouldn’t even exist.

Some women also accept this so there is a clear debate on drawing boundaries in never dating your friends for instance.

On the women's side, this approach to building relationships also exists. I was reading an article yesterday where the writer said that broke men should not call themselves men or something along those lines.

Her opinion like the rest also sits on the idea that there are desires that must attract her into a relationship. In her case, money.

This, therefore, makes you realize that this love we try to peddle is empty. Its a function of physical desire that holds no special place for the individual.

Physical desire is common of course to the animal kingdom which actually makes it of a lower order and stimulus than a rationally induced type of love for instance.

Our failure to realize its emptiness sends us attaching the most sensitive parts of our identity to it and getting terribly hurt when it all goes away.

Maybe her looks are signals that she likes you. That's alright. And should you get into a relationship with her, that's even better.

But several other things must be considered. 20 months or whatever are rarely enough to know whether what you have is true love or not especially if those months are spent cuddling and enjoying the sweetness of “love”.

True love does exist after your fleeting eros is tested by the storms of experience. How y’all tolerate each other when you can’t stand to look at each other, and all that stuff.

Our ability to connect to that level from the start is weakened by the objects of our desire. These blind us to other things we must consider.

I’d argue that having fondness and appreciation for the other person makes for a true love experience. — That to which you can attach your feelings.

But how do you even know that you are fond of someone when your judgment is clouded by desires and fetishes that can be got from just about anyone?

You hear and read it as gospel these days. The other day someone wrote that hot men don’t date average women. It's a stupid and unhealthy way to navigate love.

Maybe these gospels should come with equally strong recommendations on how to get into a relationship without going with your feelings.

But people keep getting hurt because they attach their feelings to someone who is not interested in them per se but rather interested in something that can satisfy his or her desires.

A better way to develop a fondness and appreciation for someone, a bit free of all these empty desires comes from Aristotle’s Nichomachean ethics.

In this, you are falling in love based on those who share your dispositions, who bear no grudges, who seek what you do, who are temperate and just, and who admire you just as much as you admire them.

And I am sure some people have it otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it. It exists but to a lesser extent.

Building fondness and appreciation for someone is one thing. And if you continue to approach the romantic relationship that way, your relationship and attachment will be placed in the individual not what you want to do to them or what you want them to do to you.

That can help you as your admiration for them will match their admiration for you. I think this can whether stronger storms.

I can also argue that the breakups here are not as bad since the relationship is a shared experience of mutual affection. You will gravitate towards and away from each other at the same rate. Ok, now that is not a fact.

But I would rather take this relationship over the desirous one. There is a difference by the way.

Like I said, your appreciation for one another matches. You will feel it. When you talk to each other, you can know.

Maybe your crush loves you too but can you identify why you are crushing on them? If you can and you take that away, do you still love them as much?