The Game of Dating

Dating is a tough job, especially in your thirties. It is the constant struggle between being easy-going, the way you were in your twenties and wanting to get serious about settling down.

Top it up with everyone around you having babies and then telling you the biological clock is ticking away at super speed.

If the complexity of relationships and imaginary clocks isn’t enough, the fear of letting go the freedom of roaming around in your pajamas all day long without having to look pretty and having 100% control of the TV remote is too much.

It is hard, but dating in your thirties also comes with its perks. After all the experience, you are quite clear (hopefully) of what you want out of a relationship and where you might want it to go. You have most often moved away from the superficial stuff to focus on the real thing.

I have been in the dating pool for the past 15 years now. That’s almost half my life. 15 years is a long time and one might think that it’s long enough to have mastered the art. It isn’t so. For the first 10 years of playing the dating game, I was chasing a mindless dream. A dream, I don’t even remember now. The next four years is when I started to understand the complexities of ‘ever after’.

However it is only a year ago that I really understood what I was looking for in a relationship. Call it wisdom that comes with age or 14 years of practice, I narrowed down to four key things that I had to do to be happy. And hooked, hitched or single, these have to be practiced all the time.

1)   Unlearn

The people you meet now have as much history as you, the best you can do is unlearn habits, ideologies and baggage of past relationships and believe that this one might be different. Most of the times with this unlearning, you see the same habit with a new perspective and it isn’t half bad.

2)   Be yourself

There is no point becoming a person out of your partner’s vision. You are not twenty-three anymore and have nothing to prove to anybody.

Love yourself, be what you are and be happy about it.

3)   Speak up and then speak not

Speak up when you have to, be honest about what you want out of the relationship but at the same time, learn the art of keeping quiet once in a while. Relationships are not a power play and there is no corporate ladder to climb here.

4)   Invest

Our baggage makes us negative. As you unlearn, let go and start loving yourself once more, you can invest again.

Do it with faith, love and joy.