Dating easy, relationships hard, or something else? (marry, man, lover)
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Dating and casual sex is easy. Finding someone you actually want to be with is certainly harder. Normally once you find that person the relationship is easy.
However, I rarely feel attracted to anyone else. If I do, it's usually always either the wrong person, wrong time, wrong place, or all combined. So as a result, I haven't been in a relationship. I don't let it get to me though. That just tells me it's not that serious. It's out of my control.
Thanks for the replies so far! I was thinking there might be a pattern, that could be correlated with personality, (sorry for making this sound like a science experiment ) but I'm not seeing anything like that, yet.
I haven't dated in almost a year so there is some rust there. I did meet a 19 year old at my college and she seems very nice and friendly to not only me but other people. I will pursue this and see where it goes.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JR_C
A comment in another thread inspired this thread. The poster said that finding dates/casual sex is easy, but keeping/maintaining a relationship is hard. That seemed counter intuitive to me, as it seems like it would be easy to maintain a healthy relationship, (assuming both parties want a relationship) but it's difficult for me to find dates.
I have next to no experience with this kind of thing, as my longest relationship was somewhat long-distance, and we only met IRL for two dates. So, I'm curious about what your experiences are.
Do you agree with that poster, that dating is easy, but maintaining a relationship is difficult? Or, do you find dating difficult, but once you've found mutual interest, it's easy to keep the relationship healthy? Or, do you find it all to be difficult, or all pretty easy?
Dating is easy.
Maintaining a relationship can be simple or complex.
But neither are the hardest part. The hardest part is when dating is finding someone you want a relationship with, who wants a relationship with you, where you're both on the same page about what you want from a relationship, both emotionally available, and have the potential to fall in love with each other.
I can count the times I've 'dated' on one hand, each because I couldn't think of a good excuse not to and didn't want to appear rude or discourteous when the offer was made. No second meetings ever eventuated, thank the Lord.
I suspect my mother accepted my father's marriage proposal for similar reasons. It certainly wasn't because they were a good match.
I've really never dated. I got married to everyone I dated, (only 2) I guess it's because I only dated men I was really simpatico with in the first place. Both relationships were easy as falling off a log, and both were/are long term.
To me, it would be tiring to keep dating a bunch of people....like just going in circles.
This is definitely true for me. Dating is easy for me, but maintaining a relationship has been difficult for some reason. Being single again, it is actually frustrating, and causing me a lot of self doubt as to if I am doing something wrong, or if I just have rotten bad luck. Especially when everyone around me is in great relationships.
I find dating to be hard and relationships to be easy.
But I am kind of that way with everything in life. I find making friends to be hard, but once I have friends, they are usually friends for life. I joke that it took me forever to find a car that I liked, but when I did I bought it (and want it to last forever... this was 13 years ago. I secretly hope to drive my car until I am my granny's age).
Back to relationships (and romantic ones at that). My difficulty is it takes me a while to find someone I like. When I did online dating, I dated a lot of men and I hated it. I took breaks form it because to me, it was stressful meeting so many strangers. I would be online for a month, and take a three or four month "break." When I found the man who is now my boyfriend, I was happy to stop. And I am so happy in the relationship and he's such a great match for me that I've said it before and I will say it again, if anything happens (we break up, he dies, gets abducted by aliens, whatever), I am done. I won't date again. I don't hate men or anything, I just don't want to have to go through all that process to find someone again. I don't want that kind of stress in my life again.
As for the relationship itself. It's so easy when you find a good man. It's like maintaining a car in a way. First, pick a good car that fits your lifestyle and wants (in this case, a good partner who shares your values, lifestyle, goals in life, etc). Then, you don't wait for things to get bad to fix it, you do maintenance all the time and that helps to avoid the big problems (in this case, relationship maintenance by doing small things to remind your lover how much you love them, how much they mean to you, how much you appreciate them), etc.
I think being single and not looking is the easiest.
That's always been the easiest for me. Every time I think I would like to try to date, I realize that I'm just too used to being perpetually single to put in the effort needed.
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