It’s Complicated: Why Relationships and Dating Can Be So Hard

written by MARK MANSON – filed under DATING ADVICE | RELATIONSHIPS

struggle with in dating sound pretty trivial.

For instance, we have been walking and talking our entire lives, yet walking up to an attractive person
and opening our mouths to say “hi” can feel impossibly complex to us. People have been using a phone
since they were children, yet given the agony some go through just to dial a person’s phone number,
you’d think they were being waterboarded. Most of us have kissed someone before and we’ve seen
hundreds of movies and instances in real life of other people kissing, yet we still stare dreamily into the
object of our affection’s eyes hour after hour, telling ourselves we can never find the “right moment” to
do it.

Why? It sounds simple, but why is it so hard?

We build businesses, write novels, scale mountains, help strangers and friends alike through difficult
times, tackle the thorniest of the world’s social ills — and yet, when we come face-to-face with someone
we find attractive, our hearts race and our minds are sent reeling. And we stall.

Dating advice often compares improving one’s dating life to improving at some practical skill, such as
playing piano or learning a foreign language. Sure, there are some overlapping principles, but it’s hard to
imagine most people trembling with anxiety every time they sit in front of the keyboard. And I’ve never
met someone who became depressed for a week after failing to conjugate a verb correctly. They’re not
the same.

Generally speaking, if someone practices piano daily for two years, they will eventually become quite
competent at it. Yet many people spend most of their lives with one romantic failure after another.

Why?
What is it about this one area of life that the most basic actions can feel impossible, that repetitive
behavior often leads to little or no change, and that our psychological defense mechanisms run rampant
trying to convince us to not pursue what we want?

Why dating and not, say, skiing? Or even our careers? Why is it that a person can conquer the corporate
ladder, become a militant CEO, demanding and receiving the respect and admiration of hundreds of
brilliant minds, and then flounder through a simple dinner date with a beautiful stranger?