Stop Hunting for a Boyfriend and Get a Life

A few weeks ago, I was having coffee with a younger friend of mine, and he told me that he was really sick of dating and roaming around the apps. He had been doing it for years. He had had plenty of dates, hookups, and conversations that all sort of fizzled out. There were men who wanted sex from him but no dinner. There were men who wanted dinner but no sex. He said he was starting to feel that there was really no one out there that could match what he was looking for.

Of course, it is normal to feel confused in a situation like his, but there was something else that I noticed. The main preoccupation of his life had become the project to find a boyfriend. That's why he checked the apps from the moment he woke up, he checked them on the train to work, and he checked messages again while he was waiting for friends to have dinner or something. If he went to a party, it was because he had a fear of missing out. Mr. Right might just be there! And then he would go on dates with guys that he wasn't really interested in, but he thought he might become attracted to them. For him, every new face was an ever-so-slight possibility of a potential relationship, a potential boyfriend.

I can only refer to my own experience, the long-term relationships that I've had over the past decades. None of them started because I was looking for one. I was doing something else, I was working, I was happy with myself, and then they arrived in my life. For example, one appeared after I moved from my provincial town to Amsterdam, and another one after I moved to New York. I was actually quite happy being single at that time. There were one or two who had been friends before they became boyfriends, and yet others resulted from serendipitous encounters, and only in hindsight did I see what had happened.

There is no special wisdom in my experience. The greater scheme of things did not provide for me, but I had other things to do. I moved cities, I had a job, I made friends and went out, and I had a lot of hookups. I also travelled the world and made a lot of mistakes. And, very important for me, I needed to make money to spend it. Of course, there were times when I felt alone and lonely. There were times when I really wanted to have that boyfriend beside me. But finding that guy was never a project. That, I think, is a distinction that is very important.

You see, when you really start to hunt for Mr. Right, every guy that you meet has to fit in mold. You don't know much about the guy, but in your mind, you already decide if he might be the right fit or not. You decide on the spur of the moment if he looks good enough. You start to figure out if he's really available and what he is like emotionally, does he fit your style? Does the guy even want a relationship? And what would happen if you introduced him to your friends, or does he snore? There are so many questions! And all that happens while you have a coffee. So what do you do?

The thing is that dating apps have made it feel perfectly normal to think about another guy in this way. It's not that you simply encounter a man. You inspect this person: his age, height, photographs, hobbies, location, sexual preferences, and intentions. On a screen, he shows up alongside hundreds of other guys. It is super efficient if you want to buy an airline ticket, but for human beings it is maybe not ideal.

There has always been a strange correlation between attraction and intention. The guy who looks like the perfect husband on a screen can leave you completely cold when you meet him for real. Someone who doesn't meet what you're looking for can stay in your mind for weeks. Even weirder, a friend that has been a friend for ages can all of a sudden become sexually interesting. Isn't that weird? Then there's the man you almost didn't meet who changes the next two decades of your life. Your desires don't really care much for the practicalities of life.

And of course, there's another big problem if you try to search too hard. People can see it on your face. Guys know when they are being auditioned, and they feel it when they meet someone who needs the coffee chat to be a success. The conversation gets a weight that it doesn't deserve. A message that takes longer than you expect starts to carry undeserved importance. Even a mediocre first date could be a potential boyfriend. What happens is that you don’t meet guys anymore. You start evaluating them for their potential to become a boyfriend. And you have to wonder: are you really meeting people, or have you turned yourself into your own human resources department?