The world is full of all kinds of people, many of whom are not suitable partners for us. Using the wrong methods to screen potential partners can waste a lot of time and energy and may ruin our entire lives.
Choosing a long-term partner may be the most consequential decision any of us will ever make. It’s no wonder we can get a little scared on dates. If we make the right choice, we can enjoy support, comfort, and intimacy for the rest of our lives. However, if we make the wrong choice, our confidence, health, finances, and sanity will be at risk.
Jane Austen, England’s greatest novelist, spent her career writing almost exclusively about her characters’ quests to find a suitable partner. As critics have pointed out, Britain was fighting a war of survival against Napoleonic France in the world outside her study, yet Austen never saw fit to mention the conflict even once. She was too busy telling us who blushed when seeing whom at which party. One might smirk, but her priorities may have been correct. War is indeed a serious matter, but choosing a partner is monumental.
What then are some of the most weighty mistakes we make when attempting to find a lover?
- Our Terror of Loneliness
Much of the reason for our unhappy romantic lives stems from our dread of being single. We are so terrified of our own company and the persistent humiliations of dating that we become fatefully generous toward mediocre partners who, over time, end up making us feel far lonelier and more miserable than if we were alone. The single greatest guarantor of contented love is the capacity to enjoy one’s own company.
- The Sunk Cost Fallacy
We stay because we’ve already been here so long, because it’s far too late at 21, 39, or 104. We relentlessly think of the three months, five years, or two decades we’ve spent with someone, along with all the hope implied, and thereby overlook the fact that a short, happy future is worth more than a lengthy, fractious past. We also forget that, though people may occasionally change, they never seem to do so when asked politely.
- Muddled Assumptions of Better Alternatives
Of course, they’re a bit awful. The question is whether one is dealing with an especially obtuse sort or just another member of our maddening collective species. We’re always choosing from a pool, and we need to know, as much as possible, what kinds of creatures swim in it. Our level of calm in the future will depend on our ability to build a fair and robust sense of what an acceptable degree of frustration might be through experience. Anyone can find someone annoying. The true skill lies in determining the relative inevitability of their vexatiousness and knowing how to distinguish hysterical misery from normal, unavoidable unhappiness.
- A Hatred of Love
We may spend many years pushing away anyone who tries to love us. This tendency tends to have its roots in difficult childhoods, during which we associate intimacy with pain and closeness with suffering. We suspect that anyone who is sweet must be deluded to identify a lovability in us that we don’t recognize in ourselves. Although we crave happy love, we can’t tolerate it.
- The Appeal of Madness
It can take a long time to develop immunity to the allure of people who are unpredictable, hate themselves, reject our affection, deceive us, and experience intense mood swings. It may take us until middle age to recognize the extraordinary merits and subtle exoticism of sane, reliable, “boring” people who trust others, go to therapy, garden, like themselves, and love their parents.
- The Tragedies of Defensiveness
It’s the character trait that dooms more relationships than any other. It means that when one gently raises a complaint against a partner, the partner replies that it isn’t a good time, that it’s one’s own fault, that there is no problem, that one is being mean, and that it’s all too much. One can only hope to land on a human who, thanks to the love of early caregivers, utters the magical words: “How interesting. I hear you. You might have a point. Let me think about what you’re saying.”
- Underestimating the Cumulative Impact of Character Flaws
We tell ourselves that it’s only a little thing—just a slight tendency to do X, Y, or Z. However, a pebble is also a small thing, yet if we have one in our shoe while running a marathon, our foot will be soaked in blood after a mile.
- Underestimating Physical Attraction
It’s a criterion that intelligent people (like us) tend to overlook. Shouldn’t sexual appeal be a secondary consideration when choosing a mate? Are there not more important things to consider than who might be submissive and who might be dominant? However, this overlooks how many arguments are, at their core, about resentment over absent sex, and how much one can forgive a partner after a satisfying twenty minutes together. Since sex is typically the only thing we’re not allowed to seek outside a relationship, we should ensure that it is exceptionally satisfying.
- Perfectionism
The more we recognize the impossibility of making a perfect choice, the better our chances of making a good one. Our marriages improve when we accept that we will inevitably marry someone who is slightly wrong for us because there is no such thing as someone who is fully “right” for us. Gods can marry paragons, but we are fated to cope with another demented, sweet, silly fool much like ourselves. The happiest marriages are built on a foundation of consoling, forgiving, laughter-filled pessimism.
