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The Only Way to Date Succe… — The School of Life shadowing | TryShadowing
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The School of Life
The Only Way to Date Successfully
The Only Way to Date Successfully
The School of Life
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6:50 · Nov 12, 2025
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Dating
is
ostensibly
the
business
of
searching
for
someone
to
love,
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0:02
Dating is ostensibly the business of searching for someone to love,
0:07
but in order for it to go well,
0:09
it requires us to first work on a much more fundamental relationship
0:14
that we have with ourselves.
0:17
We won't be successful daters
0:19
or indeed successful lovers
0:21
if we haven't first reached a healthy perspective on our own natures.
0:26
Dating presents us with the ultimate test of our powers of discernment
0:30
and of our sense of self-worth.
0:33
So, what exactly does it mean to suggest
0:35
that we may need to learn to love ourselves before we go on to
0:39
try to love someone else?
0:42
Merely that we won't be in any position to work out who is kind
0:45
and good,
0:46
who's worth investing in until we are firmly on our own side.
0:50
We need to have overcome our self-suspicion to be sure of what we deserve,
0:55
to have a healthy sense of our value in order to correctly judge who
1:00
could adequately reward our presence,
1:02
and in order not to despair at all the rejection we will inevitably encounter
1:08
on our journey to love.
1:10
Here then are some of the many rules born out of adequate self-love
1:15
that stand a chance of keeping us safe
1:18
and more or less calm during the turbulence of the dating process.
1:23
If they take an age to answer a message, we must walk away.
1:27
If we feel obligated but deep down don't feel comfortable, we must walk away.
1:32
If they make us feel ashamed or scared, we must walk away.
1:36
If we need to keep reminding ourselves that they're right on paper,
1:40
but something in our depths stubbornly says no, we must walk away.
1:45
We must forever banish the idea that choice is limited.
1:48
It is in its way infinite.
1:50
There will always be other people.
1:52
The pool is constantly being refilled.
1:55
The situation can change in an instant.
1:58
We must wait as long as we need to.
2:01
We should spell out what we want clearly on.
2:04
If they run away immediately, they would have done so eventually in any case,
2:08
so we're merely saving ourselves time.
2:11
We should try not to go off people who threaten to be nice to
2:14
us,
2:15
and we should strive not to fall in love at once with those who
2:19
ignore us.
2:21
We should accept with grace that most people won't want us.
2:24
We're really not for everyone, and we don't want most people either.
2:28
This is going to be an exercise in a million perplexing ways in
2:32
which one human can fall short of another's hopes.
2:36
We aren't being willfully fussy.
2:38
We're interviewing for the most important job in our lives.
2:41
We're trying to stay true to a legitimately distinctive vision of happiness.
2:46
We have no option but to be very difficult.
2:49
Then again, we only have to be lucky once.
2:52
We're trying to fill a single very important chair, not a bus.
2:57
If there's an ex in our background haunting us with a sense
3:00
that it could have been much better with them,
3:02
it evidently couldn't, or we wouldn't be here.
3:06
So, let's not compound our difficulties with nostalgia.
3:10
Our exes became exes for solid reasons.
3:16
Don't be too jealous of the married and the settled.
3:18
Life has a habit of eventually forcing everyone to take equal sips from the
3:23
cup of sorrow.
3:25
Watch out in dating, as in relationships, for the so-called polite, people-pleasing,
3:31
cowardly, shape-shifting ones.
3:34
The ones whose disinterest wears a smile
3:36
and who waste so much of our time with their dread of being rude
3:40
or unkind.
3:43
Some people are going to be plain unwell.
3:45
Mental illness is a reality for a fair percentage of the population.
3:49
We should be ready.
3:52
However auspicious a situation might appear, we must assume nothing too readily.
3:57
We won't know for sure for a very long time.
4:00
We must quash premature enthusiasm
4:03
so as never to have to pay an undue price for it down the
4:06
line.
4:07
We must keep repeating, like a mantra, every time promise dawns,
4:12
but we just can't tell yet.
4:15
Attraction matters.
4:16
This isn't an unholy or cheap demand.
4:19
This is more than merely friendship.
4:22
We should candidly register when the feeling is missing and move on without shame.
4:28
We mustn't go to bed too soon.
4:30
This creates obligations, which is going to be exhausting to work our way out
4:34
of.
4:34
Let physical intimacy be the result of confidence in their emotional rightness,
4:40
not an attempt to catalyze a bond.
4:43
There's going to be plenty of time for all that later.
4:46
Take regular breaks.
4:48
These auditions are terrifying.
4:50
We're right to feel tearful and fed up.
4:53
It's appalling to have to write
4:54
and then delete so many scripts for our possible futures.
4:58
It's sad to have to keep realizing how far we still are from home.
5:05
Try to identify a concerned,
5:07
kind friend on whom to rely for counsel
5:10
when perspective starts to slip
5:12
and madness threatens.
5:14
We should notice, more than we usually encouraged to do,
5:17
whether or not they actually interest us.
5:21
Are their minds richly filled?
5:23
Do they make us feel cleverer than we feel on our own?
5:26
Do we want to know what they think?
5:28
We might have to spend another 7,000 dinners with them.
5:34
We should refuse all non-reciprocal situations.
5:37
They're either keen on us, viscerally keen, or we must walk away.
5:42
We are never here to coax, beg, or drag the unwilling.
5:46
We should be ready for numberless rejections and drain them of too much meaning.
5:50
We mustn't turn them into referenda on our right to exist.
5:55
They're about poor alignment, not about every loss we've ever had.
6:00
We must know that we could be alone, possibly forever, if we have to.
6:04
It's conclusively better to remain single until eternity than to give room to a
6:10
compromised candidate.
6:11
Solitude at least allows us always to maintain hope.
6:17
Finally, let it take as long as it has to.
6:20
If we're still here this time next year or the year after that,
6:23
so be it.
6:25
Dating is an extremely demanding process.
6:28
We're often going to feel close to surrender and folly,
6:31
but the more we are on our side,
6:33
the more we'll be able to hold in mind a critical truth
6:36
as we return home from yet another disappointing encounter.
6:41
We aren't in any way unlovable.
6:44
We just haven't found the right love yet.
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