Advice can be a welcome and helpful thing when trying to navigate the dating scene, but there will never be a shortage of horrendous BS out there that you’re better off ignoring. Because much of it gets regurgitated all over the place, it sounds normal and acceptable to the inexperienced people reading it, who then go put it into practice and make things so much worse. Wondering which advice to forget you’ve ever heard? Here are just a few:
- “Be yourself.” This should read, “Be your best self.” If being yourself hasn’t gotten you anywhere in the dating world, there are probably things you can improve. When your current self is a nasty, bitter, conceited pain in the ass, being yourself is a terrible idea. Strive to be the best possible version of yourself, not a pretend version that you have to wear like a mask in order to win people over.
- “Make him jealous.” Jealousy is a very unpleasant feeling. It’s like having diarrhea in your heart. Why would you want to make your love interest feel like that? Deliberately making someone jealous doesn’t make you crafty, coquettish or desirable — it makes you a gigantic, clueless douchebag. If jealousy is the emotion that triggers someone’s interest in you, everything is going to be dysfunctional from the start.
- “Look approachable.” It’s understandable that certain body language is off-putting, but how are you supposed to go about looking “approachable” exactly? A giant sign with flashing arrows accompanied by a facial expression that says ,“Someone please tell me I’m pretty or I’ll die”? Instead of painstakingly modifying your appearance and hoping that someone will throw pick-up lines at your face, you could do the approaching yourself.
- “Don’t text back right away.” It will probably look a little strange if you respond to every single text he sends in under ten seconds, but responding to a text in a timely manner isn’t needy or desperate — it’s polite. Your phone is always less than five feet away from you at all times anyway. You might as well respond to your messages.
- “Let him make the first move.” If he wants to come to you, he can do that in the privacy of his own home while he scrolls through your exuberant social media feeds. Otherwise, men you are interested in are under no obligation to approach you first and there are no rules against a woman striking up a conversation with a man. Instead of asking yourself, “Why didn’t he come talk to me?” at the end of the night, ask, “Why didn’t I go talk to him?”
- “Stop looking.” This implies that you should give up your search for a mate and just wait for crap to happen to you. It’s OK to take an active role in your love life, but claiming that you’re “giving up” while you still glance at every man you pass with hopeful eyes is counterproductive. The people who give this advice are usually the ones who tell you that they met their partner when they were least expecting it. That doesn’t happen to everybody, and sometimes it takes actual effort to meet someone you like.
- “Don’t shave your legs on the first date.” This one doesn’t seem to be as prevalent, but it’s still floating around out there. It means that you shouldn’t shave your legs the first or even second time you go out with a guy so you’ll be less tempted to have sex right away. Surely, making yourself feel like a gross hairy monster is going to be a great confidence booster even if you’re not the type to have sex on the first date.
