Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it, like “dry rain” or “jumbo shrimp.” But you can totally relaxed when you’re out on a date. All it takes is that you understand this one simple truth: You can’t make anybody like you.
We’ve all been taught since childhood that the task in social relations, whether romantic or non-romantic, is to make other people like us. But that is impossible. The real task in social relations is to be curious about the other
person and ask ourselves, do we like them.
It took me well into my adulthood to come to this realization. It was about 40 years ago when I was starting out in private practice. In those good old days before managed care and restricted insurance networks, a medical doctor was free to refer patients to the psychologist of his or her own choice—no 800 numbers, no precertification, no nothing. Accordingly a psychologist starting out in practice would make an effort to meet as many local doctors as possible, in the hope that some of them would make referrals. That’s what I did. I met a lot of doctors, tried to impress them—tried to make them like me.
Most of them didn’t like me. At least that’s my guess, since they never referred anyone to me. But, truth be told, I wasn’t impressed with most of them either. Every once in a while, though, I would meet a doctor I did like. I would be impressed by that doctor but not only that. There was a kind of click, a feeling of chemistry that was almost instant. And, low and behold, whenever I felt that way about the doctor, the doctor felt that way about me—and proved it by making referrals to me.
Why did those particular doctors like me? Had I done a better job of making them like me that I had with the others? Of course not. When a doctor and I liked each other it was simply because we already possessed the raw
material for liking each other: a sense of similarity in outlook, and a sense of mutual understanding.
That raw material is either there between you and someone else or it isn’t. And you cannot create it between the two of you if it wasn’t there in the first place. If it’s there you have a basis for forming a serious and lasting relationship,
and if it isn’t there you don’t. Think of your closest friends. You didn’t make them like you. And they didn’t make you like them. The two of you just hit it off. That click was there.
Reflecting on my experience with the doctors, it finally dawned on my that the task in interpersonal relations, including dating, is not to make someone else like you but rather to be curious about the other person—to find out if you like them. The feeling will be mutual one way or the other. (And if it turns out that you like them but they don’t like you, or vice versa, that means that whoever is doing the liking is kidding themselves about the presence of that click.)
If you really believe that the task for you in dating is simply to be curious about the other person so that you can determine if you like them—if you believe it deep in your bones, as I do—your dating will be totally relaxed. You will be secure in the understanding that when you meet someone new you don’t have to act in any special way, you don’t have to try to make any kind of “good impression.” All you have to do is be you, which is the most natural and
effortless thing in the world. Because you’re not preoccupied with what the other person is thinking about you, it’s possible for you to relax and just see if you like them. Sooner or later you will experience that click with someone. In the meantime, on your dates between now and then, you can just be in the moment and enjoy yourself.
Copyright © by Sam R. Hamburg, 2024