Last week, this article from The Cut about how dating is a nightmare went viral. Well, to be fair, I don’t know for sure that it went viral, but I have seen it pop up in the few of the corners of the internet where I actually look, so I’m considering it viral.
My husband and I started dating ten years ago last month, but before I met him, I was single for a solid five years, and was also single for most of my twenties. Articles about how hard it is being a single woman still resonate with me, a lot, because I can viscerally remember what it’s like to fly solo to a destination wedding. You spend the weekend with a smile plastered on your face, introducing yourself to everyone and pretending to be totally at ease with being there all by yourself while internally you are panicking in the buffet line wondering where you and your plate of green beans are going to sit.
Whenever I meet people who met their partner in their early ‘20s, or even earlier, I can honestly not imagine how luxurious that must have been. Honestly, meeting a partner at any point in your life is luxurious. In my mind, it’s not a coincidence that I didn’t write my first book until my husband and I were together, even though I’d known for fifteen years before that that writing books was what I wanted to do. Writing books takes a lot of energy and can kill your confidence. Dating takes a lot of energy and can kill your confidence. It’s hard to do both at the same time.
The Cut article profiles several women who have done everything they’re supposed to do, still haven’t met anyone, and are still having a hard time. In reading it, I wasn’t surprised to find that these women were frequently given bits of advice that are nauseatingly familiar to me. In a TikTok video, one woman cries that she is tired of people telling her a dream man will “come along when you least expect it.” Another woman tells the article’s author that “she also hates it when people tell her a relationship will happen when she stops trying to make it happen.” Scroll through the comments on on these posts, though, and what do you see? More of the same, along with hundreds of comments telling these women they just need to work on themselves and love themselves more.
When is the last time you met a woman who was not working on herself? Or a woman who was not trying to love herself more?
In my single days, I went through plenty of periods where I’d be like, I am not trying to meet anyone right now! I’m just going to go out with my friends! I’m just out with my friends, having fun! I’m having fun! Look at me, having fun and not trying! Is anyone looking at me having fun and not trying? I really hope so!
This is also the kind of stuff you hear all the time when you are struggling with infertility. People love to tell you that you’ll get pregnant when you stop trying to get pregnant. Almost everyone seems to know someone who went through years of struggle only to give up and then boom! Baby on the way! When I “stopped trying” to get pregnant, for the first several months, I existed in a state of suspended hope. It’s really going to happen now, I thought, now that I’m not trying! Reader, it did not happen.
When people give you this kind of advice/admonishment, it often seems like they really believe that the only thing standing in the way of you getting what you want is…you. That’s why this kind of stop trying and it’ll happen advice is so often directed at women. Women are told that they must try, and try hard, in every area of their lives, so when they do that and it still doesn’t work, it’s easier to still point the finger at them that it is to admit that so many of our social systems and cultural mores are just, well, broken. Of course it’s not working when you tried so hard, sweetheart. You tried too hard. This is another way of saying never forget that the problem is you.
When you’re trying to get what you want by not trying to get it, then you set yourself up for an internal thought battle, where you’re trying to pretend to feel differently than you do, and then are beating yourself up for not being able to do so convincingly enough to fool yourself. Whew! It’s exhausting. And dating, like trying to get pregnant, is exhausting enough already. Haley Nahman has a great piece on how “trying to” get pregnant is inevitably hard.
Sometimes, someone’s problems do magically resolve as soon as they stop trying to solve them. It does happen, but a broken clock is also right twice a day. What makes it seem like this is the solution (and not an anomaly), though, is that these are the stories people share. These are the stories that get passed on. The stories where this does not work do not. When our stories are about how we tried our best and still didn’t get that happy ending, we tend to keep them to ourselves because we think no one wants to hear them.
For every woman who deletes all her dating apps and then meets Mr. Right on a plane, there are thousands who delete their dating apps and then just don’t date. As one woman in The Cut article says “There’s such a thing as people who just don’t find their person and don’t get married.” Just as there are people who stop trying to have a baby or get a promotion or whatever it is they are trying to achieve and then…just don’t get it. Doree Shafrir has a great piece about how one of the only pieces of media that has depicted this reality is, of all things, Bluey.
For the past several years, as social media has taken over our lives, we’ve been living in an adrenaline fueled echo chamber of positivity. I think of it as an inspirational clusterfuck, where everyone wants to constantly remind you—if you’re a woman—that you were meant for more! You deserve to have all your dreams come true! You can get everything you’ve ever wanted! Your dream life is waiting for you!
But what if it’s not? Not all of us are going to get everything we want out of life. Some of us are going to have dreams that do not come true. The lives that we are living now are not just a trailer for the lives—the better lives—that we might someday live, the lives where we have more and are more. This might seem overly depressing or too negative, but it’s not. It’s just the truth.
However, in this clusterfuck era, we’ve come to believe that there’s almost something shameful about having a dream that doesn’t come true, or about wanting something that you don’t get. Because all we ever hear are stories of the opposite, we feel like we are the only ones who weren’t able to make it happen. Now we have a double-whammy that we’re dealing with: the grief and disappointment that comes with something you desperately want not happening, and a feeling of utter loneliness because you think you’re the only one who’s ever been there. You’re not. Not at all. We’ve all been there, we’ve just been conditioned not to talk about it. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could change that?
So stop trying if you want to stop trying, if you’re ready to stop trying. Don’t “stop trying” because it’s the one thing you haven’t tried yet.
How to Stop Trying is available for pre-order from Bookshop, Amazon, Target and pretty much wherever you buy your books!
This really resonated with me, not in the romantic relationship department (I've been with my husband since we were 22), but it many other ways. I've always had high expectations for my life, and accepting that some things just aren't going to happen for me has been difficult. I particularly like this bit: "The lives that we are living now are not just a trailer for the lives—the better lives—that we might someday live, the lives where we have more and are more." Thanks for writing this, Kate!
"social media has taken over our lives" What about friends, family, work, bars? Especially bars. That used to work pretty good : )