Pressures of Dating

Dating is full of stress. I'm pretty sure many people can remember the stress of their first date. This stress and pressure come when planning, asking, and going on a date. Here are just a few examples of things that affect people that are going to date someone, whether it's just one time or consistently. These things will pressure them as long as they are dating. Some of them are social pressure and others are things that we put on ourselves.

The thing I have noted that caused a feeling of pressure was the feeling that they are way out of their league, so you can't ask them. We are always overthinking what is necessary for a date. Lastly, the pressure that you are going to possibly marry this person. These put pressure on dating and make it, so people are scared or unconfident about dating.

People are always comparing things to other things, putting things into groups or categories as we go through our daily lives. We do this with people we know and people we just see passing by. Then we take the groups we have made and compare ourselves to them and usually end up putting ourselves in a lower group than others. We compare ourselves so much to the perfection we see, not based on what we actually know.

Here was a piece of advice to overcome this with dating and ask ten girls out on a date. If more than four say yes, you can as the people you feel that you can't ask out. When you see that you are getting told yes more than no, then you should ask the people you feel are above you because, for all you know, they could say yes is always 50/50 unless you don't try.

People always try to impress others by going over the top, making a big show of asking someone out, or taking them on the most impressive/ expensive dates possible. T.V. doesn't help this by having any dating shows or couples having some big show of affection in front of huge crowds of people. As a society, people have normalized the big date and that is hard because college stunts and new graduates don't have that kind of money. They feel that they can't go on dates, or they don't have time to plan something that big or albeit out. 

Dating is not supposed to be a huge advent or complicated plan. It's a time to talk and get to know someone, so finding a way to do that is what a good date is. Giving someone your time, and being willing to listen to them and remember things about them. Maybe after a few dates, you will find out their wants and dreams. At the same time, they are learning about who you are and how you treat people around you.

Lastly, we put a lot of pressure on what comes after dating, and we have almost turned dating into the period that is supposed to be the time when you have become a couple. To use an old term that we have almost stopped using, courting is still a time that we use, but it is now the time that you are now just constantly dating one person. Dating needs to be thought of as three different periods that can take the pressure of the end goal of dating marriage. This part of dating is the period of group dating and just doing things with different people and trying to meet many people. 

The second part is when things get more serious with someone, but shouldn't make it, so you are just dating them exclusively. What dating should be for every 3--10 dates you have with them, you have 1--4 different dates with other people. This is a time that you find out how they are in their personal life. Lastly, the courting part is when you are exclusively dating each other, you both should know that you are doing this and be willing to meet family and talk about the future with either comfortably. That is how dating should progress and be an open discussion, always knowing how the other feels about things and where they are going.

With some of these suggestions, dating stress may go down, but it is imperfect. Dating is always changing and who knows where things will be in the next few years. Each person is different and if they wish to date someone, ask them, and you never know where it may go. It could just be one or two simple dates to a park, hike, or dance. It can be simple but fun. Dating is a time to learn and understand what others are like.