Why high expectations can ruin your dating life

Dating is not child’s play. It gets even harder when we enter the café with a ton of unrealistic expectations. Why do we love having that checklist for the perfect partner? And how do we prevent too many expectations from ruining our love life?

Dating is not always fun

Dating is not always fun and exciting. Often, it’s a nerve-racking rollercoaster that leaves you disappointed. It can be very frustrating, especially if it never seems to work out. Sometimes, this is due to typical male rudeness and evasiveness. When a nice date turns into two people eating in silence, for example. Or when you’ve been your best self and secretly find your date very cute, but you’re later brushed off with “That was fun, I’ll see you around!”, followed by nada.

It’s annoying and a real blow to your self-confidence. Still, it’s a part of the game. Sometimes, you’re simply not on the same wavelength, and, at other times, you’re more attracted to the other person than they are. And sometimes, it just wasn’t meant to be. You need to deal with that, preferably as quickly as possible, before spending days staring at an empty WhatsApp screen. There are books, films and series devoted to the phenomenon of the long-suffering, waiting woman and the outcome is always the same: if they don’t call, don’t respond, and don’t seem keen on a second date, they’re just not that into you.

Get over it and put your energy into more promising ones from the partner pool.

Gentle beast in bed

Pitfall number two? Our boundless checklists. Potential partners must be smart, funny, and caring. They should be good-looking and not have any annoying imperfections. Like narrow shoulders, a crooked nose or a receding hairline. Ambitious and hard-working? Yes, please, but not so much that we can’t drag them along on shopping sprees or weekends in Paris.

They also need to be sensitive, but not too sensitive of course, because that’s not sexy. We want a sex god in bed, but in between roughing you up against the wall, they also have to be able to love you tenderly. And, above all, they should be THE ONE, a true soulmate who can expose the depths of your mind with ease.

Something like that. Difficult to find? Yep, we think so too. Not that we always realise it ourselves. In despair, we retreat after the umpteenth failed date, endlessly analysing how it could have gone wrong. Armed with bottles of wine and a group of friends to listen patiently, we illustrate bad scenarios in which we’re left behind on singles island like desperate spinsters, while everyone around us is happily putting rings on their fingers and  having babies.

Our unattainable ideal

These high expectations don’t just suck the fun out of our dating life. They also cause us to put our dates under an extremely strict and unfair microscope. We get so excited by our carefully constructed ideal that we sink into a deep depression when the man in question subsequently shows minor flaws or deviations. In our rigid ideal image, there’s little room for them – what moves them, what they stand for, and who they really are.

Speed dates and singles nights

The developments around dating don’t always help either. Where we used to meet casually in the pub, many singles now turn to speed dating, dating apps, or singles nights. Dating has become a lot like a job interview. The profile picture doesn’t blow you away? Are the answers to your first two questions not dazzling enough? Then we swipe away or move on to the next candidate.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t give us much chance to discover whether the other person is a good match for us. An intimidating stream of serious questions? Nope, that won’t get you very far either. Sure, maybe at the end of the date we might know if they want to have children and what medical problems there are in their family, but the chance of a second date? Most likely absolute zero.

‘Checklist mentality’

And that has consequences for the success of our love life, says counsellor and relationship expert David Bennet in an article on Bustle. Although it can be useful to keep a few criteria in mind, in reality, a checklist does more harm than good. According to Bennet, the clients who struggle the most always have a “checklist mentality” when they go on a date. They see their ideal partner almost as a LEGO construction that they can assemble with building blocks that fit perfectly together.

The problem, according to Bennet, is that the connection with a partner needs to be so much deeper and more complex than simply a list of desirable qualities. It’s a bit like Charlotte in Sex in the City, who’s on a quest for perfection, suddenly falling for the short, balding, flat-talking Harry. What a lot of people don’t realise, Bennet would say, is that their ideal partner probably doesn’t exist. If someone makes you feel good, who cares if they’re a few inches “too short”, don’t have a university degree or prefer to spend their Saturdays on the football pitch?

Why do we have such high expectations?

But why do we set the relationship bar so high? According to psychotherapist Esther Perel, this is because we’re much freer than we used to be. We’re no longer linked to that boy from the village, we no longer have to fear being called an old spinster if we haven’t found a partner by the time we’re 25, and we certainly do not need that partner to look after us. Perel argues that intimacy has therefore taken on a different meaning: from an economic necessity to an inner need. And that results in other demands.

Millennials do not waste any time

Relationship therapist Gary Brown adds that dating has become more difficult for millennials and Generation Z. They suffer from “unrealistic expectations of immediate gratification”. What does he mean by that? Nowadays, everything we want is just a click away. Why shouldn’t we want to meet our future partner in the same way, quickly and precisely tailored to our specific needs?

This is why we always expect a conversation to run smoothly, with quick, clever jokes and interesting turns. If the conversation falters, we immediately assume that there’s no match. Misunderstandings are a signal that cannot be ignored, as a true soul mate would immediately understand what you mean and empathise with your personal stories. Also, the sparks between you should be abundant from the very first moment you look into each other’s eyes. Stardust, exploding celestial bodies and the whole shebang – we won’t settle for less.

On to the next

Are we aware of all that’s missing already within those first crucial seconds, minutes or hours? Then we tend to believe there’s no point in investing more time. Time is also an issue for the single person yearning for a relationship. We’re busy with school, work, friends, and becoming the person we are meant to be. And building a solid, serious relationship requires emotional effort that we’re not always willing to take. So when a partner doesn’t meet our demands quickly enough or when the first inevitable bumps appear, we dump them for fear of wasting valuable time. On to the next person with high potential.

We know that a good relationship takes time and energy, but that doesn’t mean that we really want to put that time in. After all, we don’t necessarily need that partner.

Why expectations don’t work

Now, of course, we can think we’re independent “women of the world”, but in the meantime, we still spend a ridiculous amount of time bemoaning a non-existent love life.

So the main question is simple. How do these unrealistic expectations ruin our dating life? Well, this is how: 

1: Expectations build walls

With a huge set of demands, we put a wall between ourselves and every potential partner that crosses our path. They don’t immediately meet all the requirements on our list? Then we cut them off mercilessly and make no effort to get to know them better. Not only does this put a lot of pressure on those potential partners, who, after all, have to make an otherworldly good impression to grab our attention. It also means that we let countless great candidates go because they don’t 100% meet our expectations.

Relax a little and take the time to really get to know the person in front of you. Who knows, they might surprise you, and you might surprise yourself! 

2: Expectations ruin the moment

If we constantly monitor whether our date lives up to our expectations, we’ll never be able to experience the present moment. High expectations are common among perfectionist people who think a lot about the future. They plan their perfect wedding, always have a comprehensive answer to the ultimate 5-year plan, and they know exactly how to plot their career. It’s nice to be so focused, but unfortunately, love doesn’t catch on in that way. Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans, a Beatle once said, and that’s the simple truth. A solid plan is smart, but it’s more important to feel, live, and experience the present. Especially when it comes to love. 

3: Expectations create tunnel vision

Unrealistic expectations prevent us from seeing the person opposite us for what they really are. We focus only on the check marks on our list, ignoring all the nice, charming, and attractive things that were not on our list. We’re working with a strict manual, and if they don’t tick every box, you’re done. That way, a date is doomed to fail, because no one will get that perfect score. It’s not fair to them and not constructive for our love life.

You’re not in a romantic comedy

While it may sound cynical, the very best way to avoid being disappointed is to have no expectations at all. Open up to the other person, let things happen as they do, and be a little open-minded when you’re dating.

And forget all those romantic chick flicks you’ve consumed over the years. Love at first sight is rarer than you think, and the ideal Prince Charming usually turns out to be a bit disappointing in reality. Thanks to romcoms, we have a completely distorted view of what a relationship should look like. No, that jerk of an ex we’ve been chasing for months won’t suddenly show up at our door with a big bunch of flowers. And no, we usually don’t know within a nanosecond that something’s meant to be and can start planning on riding off into the sunset together on a beautiful horse.

We have to accept that our love life has nothing to do with the sugary spectacles on the big screen. Our partner will not fit our ideal picture perfectly and that’s a good thing. They’re human, not some perfect prince created in the minds of screenwriters. Our love lives are not perfect, just as our partners will never be perfect nor will the hyperactive cocker spaniel we take in before our sex lives are shattered by the arrival of crying and energy-draining babies (spoiler: prepare yourself).

But that’s totally okay. It really is.