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This comment says more about you than them. It never "just clicks". Meaningful relationships take work. In the modern adversarial dating environment, people ar

This comment says more about you than them. It never "just clicks". Meaningful relationships take work. In the modern adversarial dating environment, people are very wary of one another. Helping someone get to know you means getting them to let down their defenses. People are defensive and cautious these days for good reason, but often times it means meaningful connections with potential just don't happen out of apprehension. These days, a lot of people want a readymade partner. All the tough work of becoming should be finished, there should be no personal growth left to do. If he/she doesn't already have everything you expect then time to look somewhere else. This is unhealthy. We have to rediscover how to look past the trinkets and into the human being we say we want something more with. It's a pretty idea that people just click, that true love happens effortlessly, but it is not true, and it is a perfect fiction that destroys peoples reasonable expectations and destroys their lives in the process. How many people waited for perfection like that until they found themselves alone at 40? The only thing that just clicks is sexual attraction. If someone believes someone else owes them romance for putting in effort they have no idea how to go about it, perhaps they never will. When you meet someone who you think is special and you decide to do the work of getting to know them and putting yourself out there for them, you do that knowing that they might not reciprocate, you accept failure as a possibility and you choose to take that risk and engage gracefully.

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hnfong 5y ago
It does "just click". I agree meaningful relationships does take work, but it's much more natural than "quitting your job so you can WORK on courting your future-partner FULL TIME".
- Buge 5y ago
  Yeah, I think there's a healthy middle ground between "courting is inherently unhealthy" and "you should quit your job and court full time".
  - tawan 5y ago
    And it doesn’t even have to be conscious decisions either. In my case: I was working for two clients as a freelancer but mid projects it clicked with an exchange student who was about to head back to her home country in two weeks. But it really clicked, such that I neglected my ongoing projects in a really unprofessional manner. I didn’t want to, because I really needed the money, however I just slowly stopped working on the projects so I can spend as much time as possible with this exchange student. And when I wasn’t with her, I was losing sleep thinking of her, even writing songs for her - a prototype courting behavior. Needless to say, my unprofessional behavior came back to bite me years later when I was interviewing and the potential employer was checking references including my former clients. Was that all healthy middle ground? I don’t know. I just know that 10 years later, 5 of those married, and now with two children, I don’t really care :). I'm just as happy as one can be.
meheleventyone 5y ago
For me at least that immediate sexual attraction has definitely worked out very well and resulted in long-term relationships. It probably helps that sex first, questions later is more socially acceptable where I’ve lived than it seems to be in the US. My wife and I didn’t even get married until our kids were 5 and 3. The idea of courting where to put it bluntly you are campaigning to get someone to see you as worthwhile is pretty weird. Which isn’t to say relationships aren’t hard work but that it’s not front-loaded. At least in my experience.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  Well to me, its less getting someone to see you as worthwhile and more getting someone to see you for who you are and letting them decide if they like what they see. I spent some time in my life doing the dating thing, attraction first, and they weren't bad times, but they weren't things I wanted til I die. For me, the only long term relationship that matters is the last one. Doing things the way I've always done them wasn't going to work, and honestly I wasn't particularly looking, I just stumbled into someone that I thought was amazing and decided to do it right. There's sex before marriage, but it didn't start off as a sexual attraction. I didn't want to mess around and see where it goes, I knew where I wanted it to go, and I was upfront about it. Being deliberate about what you want, and clear and open about wanting more from the start, it is a risk, it is easy to put the wrong message out there, and it is work from the get go. Putting the effort in to show that you really care, that this is really what you want, and that you're not some clingy weirdo trying to wife up the first girl that looks at you is not easy in today's environment.
- Buge 5y ago
  The other point of view is that parents splitting up is very traumatic on kids, so effort should be spent on trying to avoid that. A promise to stay together (marriage) is one possible way to try to avoid that. I don't think courting is trying to front-load the effort, but rather to avoid back-loading effort. Raising kids is a lot of work, and to prove that the two of you are willing to put effort into that, you put effort into planning cool dates while courting. Once the kids come along less effort is spent on cool dates, and more effort is spent on the kids.

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hnfong 5y ago

It does "just click". I agree meaningful relationships does take work, but it's much more natural than "quitting your job so you can WORK on courting your future-partner FULL TIME".

Buge 5y ago
Yeah, I think there's a healthy middle ground between "courting is inherently unhealthy" and "you should quit your job and court full time".
- tawan 5y ago
  And it doesn’t even have to be conscious decisions either. In my case: I was working for two clients as a freelancer but mid projects it clicked with an exchange student who was about to head back to her home country in two weeks. But it really clicked, such that I neglected my ongoing projects in a really unprofessional manner. I didn’t want to, because I really needed the money, however I just slowly stopped working on the projects so I can spend as much time as possible with this exchange student. And when I wasn’t with her, I was losing sleep thinking of her, even writing songs for her - a prototype courting behavior. Needless to say, my unprofessional behavior came back to bite me years later when I was interviewing and the potential employer was checking references including my former clients. Was that all healthy middle ground? I don’t know. I just know that 10 years later, 5 of those married, and now with two children, I don’t really care :). I'm just as happy as one can be.

meheleventyone 5y ago

For me at least that immediate sexual attraction has definitely worked out very well and resulted in long-term relationships. It probably helps that sex first, questions later is more socially acceptable where I’ve lived than it seems to be in the US. My wife and I didn’t even get married until our kids were 5 and 3. The idea of courting where to put it bluntly you are campaigning to get someone to see you as worthwhile is pretty weird. Which isn’t to say relationships aren’t hard work but that it’s not front-loaded. At least in my experience.

betwixthewires 5y ago
Well to me, its less getting someone to see you as worthwhile and more getting someone to see you for who you are and letting them decide if they like what they see. I spent some time in my life doing the dating thing, attraction first, and they weren't bad times, but they weren't things I wanted til I die. For me, the only long term relationship that matters is the last one. Doing things the way I've always done them wasn't going to work, and honestly I wasn't particularly looking, I just stumbled into someone that I thought was amazing and decided to do it right. There's sex before marriage, but it didn't start off as a sexual attraction. I didn't want to mess around and see where it goes, I knew where I wanted it to go, and I was upfront about it. Being deliberate about what you want, and clear and open about wanting more from the start, it is a risk, it is easy to put the wrong message out there, and it is work from the get go. Putting the effort in to show that you really care, that this is really what you want, and that you're not some clingy weirdo trying to wife up the first girl that looks at you is not easy in today's environment.
Buge 5y ago
The other point of view is that parents splitting up is very traumatic on kids, so effort should be spent on trying to avoid that. A promise to stay together (marriage) is one possible way to try to avoid that. I don't think courting is trying to front-load the effort, but rather to avoid back-loading effort. Raising kids is a lot of work, and to prove that the two of you are willing to put effort into that, you put effort into planning cool dates while courting. Once the kids come along less effort is spent on cool dates, and more effort is spent on the kids.