The goal can be stated simply enough: the
overwhelming priority, when on a date with
someone we like, is to persuade them to like
us back. But the simplicity of the mission
masks the complexity required to achieve it.
Typically, the advice focuses on externals:
what to wear, when to unfurl a napkin, what
to order… But such counsel, however well-meaning,
is at odds with what we ourselves know about
attraction: that it is profoundly focused
on psychology. However much we may deny it
to friends, a date is ultimately a search
for a potential long term-partner. So what
really renders someone attractive on dates
are signs that they are emotionally well-equipped
for what good-enough long-term relationships
require. The capacity to find an ideal full-bodied
Chianti on a menu may be impressive, but what
we’re really alert for are signs that someone
is going to be a decent companion twenty years
from now when we have received a difficult
medical diagnosis or are feeling weepy and
ashamed at the progress of our careers. Here
then are some of the things we might do to
prove attractive to another person on a date:
i. Tell them that we are a bit mad. We might,
in the course of the conversation, light-heartedly
drop in that we’re not quite sane. Perhaps
we have great difficulty getting to sleep
or get very anxious in social situations.
Maybe we are often deeply sad on Sunday evenings
or have a painful rivalrous relationship with
a sibling. The key is that, as we reveal these
vulnerabilities, we can suggest we have a
mature, compassionate, unruffled relationship
to them. Yes, we may be a little mad, but
we are eminently sane enough to know about
and be unfrightened of our follies; we have
mapped them, are able to warn others of them
and can protect those we love from their worst
sides. What we require in a partner is not
someone who is perfect, but someone with a
good handle on their manifold imperfections
– who can warn us of these in good time,
and not act them out in ways that will ruin
our lives.
© Flickr/Quinn Dombrowski
It is deeply reassuring to witness vulnerability
well-worn and madness confidently understood;
to see someone mature enough to talk about
their immaturities in an undefended and serenely
curious way. Over the long-term, every possible
partner will be revealed as rather crazy in
some dimension of existence or another. So
what really counts is not whether or not they
are psychologically complicated, but how they
relate to this complexity: the degree of insight,
calm, perspective and humour they can bring
to bear upon it. Conversely, there should
be nothing more terrifying on a date than
a person who sticks a little too aggressively
to the idea that they are totally sane and
entirely normal. Anyone over the age of twenty
possessed of the idea that they are ‘easy
to live with’ has evidently not begun to
understand themselves or their impact on others.
We should probably skip desert and head home
early. ii. Ask our partners how they are a
bit mad The enquiry should sound playful,
natural and wholly compassionate. Having laid
out our flaws of character, we should take
it as a given that – despite their evident
strengths and accomplishments – our date
too will have a litany of their own madder
sides. We should create a safe space in which
we imply that it is extremely unsurprising
that our date should be a bit ‘broken’
in certain areas; everyone is. We can gently
enquire into what makes them in particular
anxious or depressed, what was untenably difficult
in their childhoods or what they in particular
regret and are ashamed of. This can prove
charming because what we’re ultimately looking
for in love are not people who find us perfect,
but people who will not flinch from the sight
of our wounds. We want to be seen for who
we really are and forgiven; not mistaken for
someone else, idealised – and then one day
condemned.
© Flickr/Steven Guzzardi
iii. Reveal we’ve been a bit lonely and
sad lately We often assume that people want
to hear that things are going brilliantly
for us – and that we become winning for
others when we can show we’re triumphing
in the world. But what really warms us to
others is evidence that they share in some
of the very difficulties and confusions that
we are beset by in our private selves. If
love involves a desire for an end to loneliness,
then some of what we no longer want to be
lonely with are our more melancholy dimensions
that most people have no time for or interest
in – and that we therefore have to take
care to hide from others in a bid to look
competent and strong. How seductive, therefore,
to stumble on someone around whom we sense
we will no longer have to be jolly in a brittle
way; someone who can give us room, through
their own candour, to confessions of feelings
of loss and sorrow. There can be few things
more charming on a date than to hear, from
someone who looks extremely self-possessed
and competent, that they’ve been feeling
unusually isolated and very perplexed of late.
They’re showing us the fertilised soil in
which our love can grow. iv. Pay some compliments
We can, understandably, get anxious at the
idea of having to pay our date some compliments.
The approach can feel too direct, demanding,
almost sleazy. But there is an art to good
compliments that starts from a different place:
a recognition that most of us struggle to
maintain a basic grasp on what is decent and
good about us, and privately hunger to hear
from someone else certain basic but psychologically-sustaining
things about our characters (that sound unbelievable
when we try to say them to ourselves): that
we aren’t wholly stupid, that we are sometimes
funny or perceptive and have a few qualities
to contribute to the world. We can be so worried
by our own inadequacies that we forget that
the person across the table will have an equally
large share of them – which it lies within
our power to calm.
These antics and more belong to a properly
rich sense of what we might need to talk about
on the audition of our lives we call, with
touching modesty, a date.
To learn more about love try our book on how to find love, which explains why we have the types we do and how our early experiences shape how and whom we love.
