The complete guide to achieving success in modern dating

I know you’ve opened this wondering what qualifications I have to offer a complete guide. First of all, I’m an experienced dating failure. I know what doesn’t work. I’m a self sabotager that only goes for sabotagers too — guaranteed to fail and whenever I succeed, it sustains for atleast a couple of years. Secondly, like every other thing I do, I theorize romance, romantic relationships and the formation and sustenance of romance — don’t hate me, blame my dad for inculcating this extremely nerdy behavior into his young impressionable daughter. Thirdly, you can argue with me, or you can take my advice and succeed.

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of Medium, I wouldn’t be able to arrange this write-up in a way that makes it easy for you to go directly to the part that’s most relevant to you, you might have to read it all or glance through till you find what you want. But here’s what we’ll discuss

• The relationship escalator.
• Anti-seductive traits.
• Attachment theory.
• What are we? and other questions.
• Aim to manipulate.
• Long distance.
• Where to meet people.
• Breakups and heartbreaks.

Let’s delve in;

The relationship escalator

Basically, the relationship escalator is the stages between the first ‘hi’ and a ‘proper’ relationship, sometimes a lifetime commitment. Ideally, no one should be taught or have to think about escalators in a relationship, but some of you are bad at self-pacing, project your feelings or need things spelled out for you. In this modern world, a relationship escalator looks like this

I stopped at ‘in a relationship’ because that’s what this write-up cares for.

Person meets person and they text each other consistently with a flirty tone or just a general sense of ‘something next’, over the course of days, weeks, months or years — Talking. Many people share the sentiment that this should be an exclusive activity, I do not; and here’s why. Texting is the barest-on-the-floor-minimum. Yes, it does take excitement and effort to constantly text someone, but that is the least you can do. It’s low effort for someone you like. It is not effort enough for you to lock in. This doesn’t mean you have to go on a rampage looking for other people to talk to, it’s just that you shouldn’t be closed off from anyone else. It is also just a vibe check season. That you talk, doesn’t mean you’ll end up dating; you might absolutely abhor them.

Going on one date, isn’t dating. For the simple reason that they might never speak to you again afterwards and it will be weird to say you dated someone you only went on one date with. However, if you both stay invested after the date and plan future dates, congratulations , you’ve moved up the escalator. If they become lazily invested, but still text you; you are still talking and they might simply just not be that into you. Pro-tip, don’t call your dates “hangouts”. If they are hangouts, they aren’t dates. Clarify if this is a date, meet-up or hangout.

Dating exclusively happens in monogamy which is what most of the world practices so this applies to most people. In this stage, you probably hang out more frequently and more informally. There’s expectations from and off both parties. Your friends know of them and depending on the kind of person you are, others know you together.

One of you pops the question, the other, is ready to concede ; in a relationship. Congratulations, you have defeated all the odds and got your end goal

“We didn’t go on any dates but everyone knows us together” — friends with benefits.

“We’ve been sleeping together after the first date, we talk a lot, I like them but we don’t do much outside of that” — friends with benefits.

“I like them, everyone knows we’re together, but we haven’t defined it yet and they can be distant sometimes” — situationship.

“We like each other, we do everything together but they aren’t ready for a commitment yet” — a situation of clowns.

You get the picture. Anything that would be a relationship-except-that, isn’t one. Treating it as though it is would have you looking naive and end up hurting you. It is also possible that you are not looking to be in a relationship, so this doesn’t apply to you.

Anti-seductive traits

I can’t share them all but I can give a good odd number of them.

• Composure. If you aren’t desperate, I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t find love. There are people that suffer from anxiety or are afraid of rejection. They will not do or make any move if you aren’t desperately yearning for them. Be desperate, as though you lack love in your life.
• Desperation. When you show desperation, they will get the ick because surely you must be a loser to yearn this much for them. How could you possibly want a loser like them so badly? You must lack self respect or you are beneath them and trying to punch above your weight. No!
• Dealing with someone in a group chat. This might or might not be my personal agenda as I have paranoia about being the subject of a group chat. The deal with this is that instead of forming a relationship and communicating with one person, you are dealing with an army. An army with their different personalities, pursuits, trauma and communication styles. These people will know things about you that you aren’t aware they know. They will know your quirks, the volume of your laughter and the size of your bum. What’s worse? You could be dealing with a puppet. Also it will be awkward to date any of them afterwards. Avoid group chat members like a plague.
• Texting back and regularly. What’s there to yearn for if you are always around? Are you jobless? Why are you so excited to talk to them? You are too available and moving too fast, they need to avoid you.
• Having a life. Imagine having friends, a job to do, cultivating hobbies, a favorite sitcom, events to attend, eating food and breathing oxygen. Imagine just not being 24/7 available for the potential love of your life? Why did you fall asleep while texting them after a long day? Why did you have a girl in the group when you hung out with your friends? Why did you like the picture of a random IG model? Why did you hang out with your friends on Saturday instead of hanging out with them? Traitor! You trigger their anxiety. Bye.
• Vulnerability. Ick alert! No one wants that. Why would you have a perfectly emotional response to an emotional event to someone you are developing and emotional bond with? That’s razz and bad. Why would you ask questions to clear up your confusion? Why should you make statements that profess your emotional position? This is all disgusting. You should stay confused, never react and sulk internally. This is not that safe a space.
• Be funny. Now you have been clown zoned.
• Make unnecessary sexual jokes or sending unsolicited unclad images. It’s right there in the description — “unnecessary”.
• Making unnecessary statements that does nothing good for the other party and following it up with a long worded essay instead of a sincere apology. For instance, telling the other person that they aren’t the most beautiful/attractive in the world but you choose them anyway, especially in a moment of appreciation or emotional vulnerability. Except, of course you are dealing with A*lla and S*lomon Buchi’s wife.
• Unintelligent lies. It goes without saying that you will only look like a fool. If you must lie, lie intelligently.
• Unhealthy habits. Except it is a mutually shared unhealthy habit, the other party will likely find it obnoxious. On the other end, this will be quite seductive if they have a savior complex or desperate to be in any relationship.
• Having sex on the first date. Although it is a mutually consensual activity that you both will enjoy; or not, it is unbelievable that you are this easy to lay. This is anti-seductive and they now lack all attraction to you.
• Not having sex on any number of dates. You must be a prude or a pretender. It’s just sex, why do you have to have personal needs, or boundaries or conversations? Meh. You do not fit.
• Having standards and boundaries. If you have standards or values you don’t want to compromise on, it means you are thinning your dating pool. Less choices, less probability of success. Dating is a numbers game. The more you are willing to accept and go with, the happier you’ll be and easier to latch on to people.
• Not being medium ugly. There are people who aren’t insecure, they just have ‘healthy jealousy’ and they can’t stand that others might be attracted to you. Another set do not need two princesses in the kingdom, that’s too much competition. What is life without a favorite baboon?

Attachment Theory

It is common for people to classify themselves, rather than shape and re-shape themselves. While, I’m personally not a fan of attachment styles as belonging to a person, it does offer good explanation to people’s behavior within an emotional relationship.

Secure — comfortable with and without emotional exposure.

Avoidant — only wants you when you don’t want them.

Anxious — wants you to want them no matter what and irrationally skeptical that you don’t.

Fearful/Anxious Avoidant — a chameleon. You never know what you are getting for the day.

In a defined, committed relationship with a sensible person, you’ll both be secure except you are suffering from PTSD or suffer from anxiety. In this case, maybe see a therapist? Or stop punishing other people’s children.

In an undefined, uncommitted relationship or with an insensible person, you will most likely not be secure. For reasons being that you haven’t established the required emotional trust or you are dealing with someone who has low emotional intelligence or a personality disorder or simply isn’t that into you and does things that makes you naturally want to withdraw or get anxious about how they feel about you.

Sometimes, you are the problem. You project your feelings, avoid serious conversations, shy away from emotional moments, ‘non-confrontational’, jump to conclusions, go non-verbal, don’t ask questions, never address anything maturely, can’t match expectations to commitment, don’t respect the escalator, become mean when upset, bratty when your desires aren’t met and try to play a hot-cold game. You will be categorized as avoidant, anxious or fearful avoidant, depending on the other person’s interpretation of your behavior during your time together.

If you’d like to ‘form’ secure attachments that make your nervous system calm, you’d have to not associate chaos with passion, not turn to romantic relationships as a source of dopamine, aim to get over yourself and have honest hard conversations, reject faux peace, encourage calm conversations and accept people’s behavior as what it is, rather than a meaning you’re more comfortable with.

If you don’t care for this, then as an anxious person, find an avoidant person to provide the much desired constant longing and need for security. If you are an avoidant, find someone who is anxious, so you can justify your need to run away and not be vulnerable. If you are an anxious-avoidant, you can do any of the above but will get most triggered by a secure person; you will never be able to get over them.

“What are we?” and other questions

The reason why most people find themselves in situationships is that they suffer from the “cool gal” syndrome and this is gender neutral. In a bid to be unproblematic and happy-go-lucky, they bear all the problems in secret and are both unhappy and unlucky. The people who want to get you or keep you in situationships will also try to shame you for asking the right questions or kicking back against uncomfortable situations. It serves them. If someone really wanted to be with you, “what are we?”, “where’s your head at?”, “what’s this for you?” and other variations of this will never be a problem for them. They are only happy you created an opening for both of you to get on the same page. The opposite is true for someone who wants to drag your confusion for as long as possible while they continue to benefit from it.

If you are confused, ask questions. No question is embarrassing, you are an adult.

Aim to manipulate

Those who don’t want you to successfully find a partner will hate this but this is a tried and tested method. Emotional roller-coasters and codependency is a great way to get people emotionally addicted to you and that’s a great signal for a love that will last and stand the test of time. Play games.

Some of what you might find in your arsenal are;

Gaslighting: mismatching your words and actions so that they constantly question their feelings, your feelings and what type of connection you have.

Love-bombing: this works very well. The more protective they are, the harder they will fall. And this is so versatile. You just have to figure out what they like and flourish them with it, while offering assurance, false promises and a tinge of nostalgia.

Bread-crumbing: make them feel so good and then ignore them deliberately, only to show up to offer them a new high. Your absence shouldn’t be because you are unavailable, it should be obvious that your absence is deliberate.

Dependency: encouraging them to cut off their income, their friends or question their sense of judgement, will definitely make them dependent on you for survival, friendship or approval. If they are dependent on you, they’ll have nowhere else to go. A perfectly healthy relationship.

Begging: you might try begging. Beg for their love and attention even if they tell you they aren’t interested in a romantic relationship with you, do not listen. Beg with your money, your time, your energy and all your resources. Eventually, they’ll get an epiphany of the great and consistent person you are and reward you with commitment.

Shape-shifting: I will be quoting the direct words of the great and prolific bard, Taylor Swift in her great piece of work Blank Space; “find out what you want. Be that girl for a month”. It’s so simple, discover what they like and disfigure your whole personality to form that shape. By the time they realize what has happened, they are already in love with you.

Battery: nothing will make a person in love with you like little slaps here and there for the purpose of causing harm. A little torture here and there; an enviable love.

The more the person realizes that you are being manipulative, the more they’ll appreciate just how deep your love for them runs and how far you are willing to go. You are sure to get into a relationship with them.

I must warn you though, while you might get into a relationship with this, I can’t guarantee its health. I also can’t guarantee that you will feel secure; the gnawing feeling that they might not have gotten genuinely interested in you might set in at some point. For others, you’ve played a game and you’ve won the price, what next? I can’t guarantee you will not need to chase a new player and start new games.

Long distance

Before global communication and networking became as seamless as an internet phone call or text away, people just tried to date within their vicinity. Now, it is more common to meet people in other countries, cities or even continents and develop an interest that could become romantic, in them. What do you need to know?

• Texting can create a false sense of connection. The text you’ll exchange over the course of 24 hours can be done in a 5 or less minutes call. Texts are often light hearted conversations, harder to attach a tone to and typically in short blocks. Texts are good for familiarity and presence but nothing more.
• Calls are better. Voice calls are better for building connections. Since you can’t see them physically, you can spend more quality time with them and build more depth over conversations on calls. Thankfully, there’s a ton of options. The problem with calls is that they are very attention demanding so you probably can’t do it all the time. If you care enough, you should try. If possible, set a time of the week to have calls.
• Meet-ups. If you never meet up, you are a pen pal, a phone friend, a gossip girl; you are not on any escalator. Intentionally initiate and plan physical meetups. Yes, it’s expensive but it’s either that or a pen pal situation. It’s also good to aim to spend a significant amount of time together depending on how frequently you can see each other. Spending time around people physically shows you sides of them that you wouldn’t get to see otherwise.
• Moving. If none of you will ever be willing to move partially or fully to each other’s cities and create a timeline for that, you will date successfully. I however, can’t say how far you’ll go on the full escalator, but, you might not want to ride the escalator fully anyway.

Long distance is hard. It’s hardest when you fight. There’s no showing up at their front door step. There’s no having conversations were you can read body language. There’s no hugging afterwards.

Long distance can get stressful. If you are across time zones, coordinating timelines can be a hassle. Very many times, you will want to throw in the towel from living separate non-colliding lives.

Long distance can get lonely. There are days you’ll yearn for their physical presence and can’t get it. This will annoy you more than you think. You might miss spending significant days together as well. It comes with the territory.

Long distance might build stronger emotional intimacy faster. This is what the experts say. Personally, I typically feel a certain level of nonchalance. But, I think it makes sense that because of not being physically close, you will have no choice but to invest more emotionally.

If you enjoy yearning, then you’ll enjoy long distance. You’ll also develop better communication skills and have to get creative about staying interesting and interested.

Where to meet people.

You’ll meet people anywhere there are a group of people. The apps, social media, online communities, clubs, corporate events, the bars, family events, weddings, parties, etc. Just about anywhere, except sitting in your house. I’m not a fan of the apps personally, because starting with an expectation of attraction always makes me resistant to attraction. But there are people who like this and fare well with it. Some of you — men — look better in real life and are just horrible at taking pictures and setting up profiles, you are better off going somewhere your actual looks can work for you or developing a personality — funny — that will easily attract others.

A “hi” goes a longer way than you think. Don’t say hi and leave the other person to carry the conversation though and look out for non-delusional social cues that lets you know if they enjoy talking with you. In your first conversation, tease the idea of a talking or seeing them again another time, this is a good checker. If they are resistant, leave them alone. Also, act like you’ve been here before — men.

Breakups and heartbreaks

Breakups are not that awful once you master them; they can even be necessary. But they are almost like death; sometimes people can see it impending but struggle to keep it alive. I think it’s good to try to fight to keep a relationship that’s worth it but it’s a great thing to recognize when it has been dead for a while.

Not all breakups cause heartbreaks but when they do, they are typically because we still desire a certain level of access to the other party or we were “living in the future” with them. By living in the future, I mean that we had created a a future position or events. Breakups yank these away and reconciling the reality that the future you’ve created will never happen or access you want will no longer be granted, is painful.

There is no nice way to breakup with someone who doesn’t want to break up with you and so many “nice” people will stay longer than they should. The nicest thing you can do though, is break up with them. The faster you do it, the faster they can start their journey of moving on. You can try to have a cordial conversation; there’s a high chance that it will not go cordially. Or, you can just ghost them. Most people will hate when you abruptly stop speaking to them; but it is incredibly effective and your message is unambiguous. Slow fades backed with denial and gaslighting is the really horrible way to initiate a break up.

When there’s a break up; mutual or one-side initiated, do not seek or entertain closure immediately. There is no good explanation for why love can’t continue to someone who doesn’t understand why it was discontinued in the first place. Avoid rebounds if you are heartbroken. It is sometimes an effective way to get over a person, but most people will relapse because people aren’t replaceable. Most importantly, it is not fair to the new party. Pick up new hobbies. Go no contact. The purpose of no contact shouldn’t be so they can miss you. It should be so that you can move on. Breaking habits and freeing yourself from the attachment you feel helps you evaluate your compatibility better and allows you balance into a proper friendship afterwards; if that’s what you both want. Don’t rush the process. Take as long as you need to be ready to date again. Seperate lessons from trauma. Lessons are things that have to do with you and stay within your control, trauma is the opposite. For instance; “if I find out that my partner is cheating, I will not internalize it and feel insecure. I will leave them because it has everything to do with them and I can no longer trust them” is a lesson. “I cannot trust any partner I have moving forward. I will snoop around their phones from time to time to check if they are cheating” is acting from a place of trauma. Do not text them for days on end. Before you send that text, I want you to picture this. You send them a text after your previous two messages have gotten ignored. Then they take a screenshot and send to their friends and they go “woooh, how did you get her so bad?”, “doesn’t he have self respect?”, “what kind of pathetic loser are they?”, “wow, he’s addicted to you. He can’t get game anywhere else.” Are these the kind of things you’ll like to be said about you? No? Good.