All Request Day: Undateableness Part III

While we're on the topic of undateableness, I thought I'd talk about the obvious things that make someone undateable:

• You're undateable if you're still in love with someone.
• You're undateable if you're still working on a relationship with someone, whether or not you're still in love.
• You're undateable if you're about to move to another city.
• You're undateable to anyone whose close friend or relatives you have dated. 
• You're undateable if the unresolved stuff you're working out about your job or your family or your depression or your patterns of bad relationships or your eating disorder is so consuming as to be a crisis that brings you to unexpected tears more than once in two months. 
• You might be undateable if you're under twenty-six, except to other people under twenty-six.  I'm open to other interpretations, but that's my working hypothesis.
• You're undateable if you have a serious addiction.
• You're undateable if you have more than one restraining order against you.  Probably undateable even if you only have one. 

What am I forgetting? 

Comments

[will]

There is another whole list if you have kids:

You are not dateable if:

You cannot handle my kids

You cannot handle my ex

You cannot handle the time I spend with my kids

etc...

[Kelly]

Ah. Yes, at the moment I am undateable, per item number 5. Thanks for the reinforcement.

(No, seriously, it is good for me to remember that I need to be alone right now so I can take care of this.)

[a]

I may have to disagree on a point - the same Kelly reiterates.

The trick may be finding someone with whom you can continue to work on these things, and not have the relationship be an excuse to avoid them or that help dealing with said issues from significant other doesn't form a crutch or a source of contempt. Depending on the issue and its severity, I think this is very possible.

[Dan]

I'd disagree with the third item. When I first met Gee, she was planning on moving to Seattle, from DC. A week after our first date, she flew to Seattle for more than a week to check out apartments.

Exactly two months after I met Gee, I helped her move to Seattle, and nine days later, we got engaged... Her moving and being 3000 miles away didn't stop that from happening...

[Hannah]

I'm with the last comment on item number 5 - as long as you don't look to your partner to be the solution to your unresolved issues . . .

What does the list for "dateableness" look like?

[PG]

Presumably #5 applies only when one is being contemplated as dateable, and not in the midst of the dating? Otherwise, yikes.

[Scheherazade]

Hmmmm, I sound mean, don't I? I guess I just mean it from a self-awareness perspective. If you're in that kind of crisis, you aren't in any position to be beginning, investing in, or evaluating a relationship. The crisis is going to mess with your energy and your judgment. And resolving it may mean some work and some life changes. It may shift your priorities a lot. Dating is likely to take a backseat to this kind of deep work. And I think it ought to. I think you'll come out with a stronger sense of self.

If you're in a relationship already, no, for heaven's sakes don't leave. But I wouldn't go out and try to date seriously when I'm in such a mode, and I wouldn't set up a friend with someone who I knew was in such a mode. I don't think it's conducive to building relationships. Sometimes it happens, and that's pretty cool. But more often it blows up. It probably means starting a relationship off with a fairly serious psychic energy imbalance, which isn't likely to lead to a good pattern.

I don't know anyone who hasn't been in #5 at some point. All I mean is that if you go looking for a soulmate during such a time, you're probably not going to find him/her and you're probably very likely to inflict some psychic pain on someone in the process. Which is bad karma, I think.

[l.]

You're undateable if you've described more than one or two of your exes as "crazy." (And even those everyone-dates-an-idiot-now-and-then gimmes better have lasted less than a year) Birds of a feather, babe...

[wab]

This process of dating sure sounds painful and anxiety provoking. It's a good thing I was a child bride.

[Michael J.]

I think you're undatable if you have too many criteria, feature requests, or fixed ideas about your potential partner. I see this a lot; people with so long a list that everyone somehow doesn't fit. The "not my type" syndrome. This represents an idealised vision of your partner, that no one can meet. Relationship is nearly guaranteed to end in failure given this starting point.

I'm not sure I agree about number 4 (previously dated close friend/relative). I think this has to do more with how the relationship resloved than the fact that there was a relationship. It seems to presuppose that relationships that end end badly, but that's not always the case. Learning ot move on without acrimony is an important self-development opportunity. (I could be minimizing the reasons here, so elaboration might be helpful.)

Among my close friends, there are two men, and four women, where each of the two men has been connected with two of the women, in some case for very long term relationships. Hmm, that might not be clear. Specific example: My wife is very good friends with one of my ex's. And this particular ex and I had a very bitter breakup and didn't speak for years. Now, we're quite close – having seen the absolute worst side of each other it's pretty easy to accept each other as we are, and love the good parts and ignore the "work to do" parts. I'm not saying this is easy, just that it's possible, and IMO worth striving for. It's a small planet; love everyone, even those in your past.

[Michael J.]

Starting the list for dateableness:

* You love yourself, or are at least aware of the idea of self-love and are working on it.

* Related: Self-aware. Knowing your soft spots. Knowing your strengths.

* Open-minded, curious, engaged in the world.

* A sense of humor is always good. Especially as regards oneself.

[b]

do you think someone is undateable if he/she has cheated on relationships in the past? does it have to be a pattern of cheating to establish undateableness?

[turboglacier]

Hmm... by "restraining order against you", do you mean ACTIVE restraining orders, or just at any time in the past? Because, you know, they expire after a certain period, and who doesn't have one or two in the closet?

[PG]

MichaelJ,

A friend wrote a good post, commenting on a Washington Post article, about what you said:

I think you're undatable if you have too many criteria, feature requests, or fixed ideas about your potential partner. I see this a lot; people with so long a list that everyone somehow doesn't fit. The "not my type" syndrome. This represents an idealised vision of your partner, that no one can meet. Relationship is nearly guaranteed to end in failure given this starting point.

[Michael J.]

PG, that's a great post, thanks for the link! I had no idea of that article, I was just riffing on the local scene as I observe it. Hey, validating! No pun intended.

[ee]

what about dating somebody who already lives in the city to which you are about to move? what if you used to live in that city and are about to return?

[Hal O'Brien]

"You're undateable if you're still in love with someone."

This point of view is very common, but not universal. The main thing that bugs me about it is, it implies there's somehow a fixed reservoir of love within each of us. That if I still love Alice, I must somehow not be able to love Betty, either at all, or as fully as I could.

I don't see love as a zero-sum game like that. I tend to look at love as more of a skill than as a quality. That the more one loves, the more one can love.

And, for me at least, it seems the only way one would find someone who genuinely doesn't still love at least a little bit one or some of their previous partners... Well, the only way to do that would be to date a teenager.

Again, only speaking for myself, and not pronouncing Great Universal Truths, or anything.

[Michael J.]

Along those lines, you may want to read Dave Pollard's thoughts expanding on that:

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2004/05/06.html#a722

and

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2004/06/15.html#a773

[PG]

Hal,

Surely you recognize the difference between being "in love" and "loving" someone. Hopefully you still love all of your exes as people, but are only "in love" with your current love interest.

[Hal O'Brien]

"Surely you recognize the difference between being "in love" and "loving" someone."

Yup.

"Hopefully you still love all of your exes as people, but are only "in love" with your current love interest."

Nope.

That was the point. Some people are wired the way you describe. Some aren't. {shrug}

[PG]

Then I can see how the new person might look at your still being in love with the old person and think "No, he's undateable." It's selfish, but I think most people want all your current romantic roads to turn toward them. Romantic nostalgia and memory of the old person is one thing, but if your mind still reaches to her in the present tense, then it takes a tremendously secure person not to be troubled by that. Particularly if the old person is still an option for you to re-engage (i.e. would be interested in getting back together).

[Michael J.]

It's selfish, but I think most people want all your current romantic roads to turn toward them.

I agree this is common, and Pollard (links above) argues that it's a root cause of societal problems.

[Hal O'Brien]

"It's selfish, but I think most people want all your current romantic roads to turn toward them."

Hm.

I'd say that this is certainly a point-of-view encouraged by our society. I'd also say that societies are either lazy or efficient (depending on which side of that normative fence you come down upon), and tend to encourage behavior they don't think happens enough, and discourage behavior they think happens too often.

I leave it as an exercise how prevalent each approach in the real world may be, given the strength and insistence of the pressures involved.

[PG]

I found Pollard unconvincing because he seems to adopt the same fallacy that I find in much of Western culture overall, i.e. that the only love that really counts and matters is romantic love. I can see how believing that one is only allowed to love deeply one other person can be stunting, but I don't believe that; I love my family, friends and boyfriend passionately, but love only one of them romantically. I can treat several people, including aunts and other older women, as maternal figures, but the way I feel about my mother is particular to her. I don't find this specificity to be constraining. However, this is only my experience, and that it maps onto the prescribed norms certainly is no reason to treat it as normative.

[F_Jones]

Women just think I'm plain old creepy, so I don't bother approaching any. Like whenever I have I get the "what the hell are you thinking?" look. Or they'll just turn and get away. Either way, it's kind of interesting, generating that level of revulsion. Whatever though, I don't feel obligated to impose myself on them, and they leave me alone. Win-win.