The Dating Playbook: 13 Things To Do Before You Start Dating

In my practice, I have the privilege of joining clients in their pursuit of finding and keeping romance. If someone wishes to find a life partner, I believe it to be one of the most important decisions that person will make. Especially in today’s society (often by default) your partner will become your best friend, lover, primary support, and emergency contact on all medical forms. They are the person you choose to be with more than anyone else, the person that connects you to yourself, world, and future.

We should not take the process in finding this person lightly. Whether you are just starting to date, getting out of a long term relationship, or finally committing to seriously dating after many years of singlehood – being proactive about how you go about it can drastically impact your fate.

I have compiled a few dating tips straight from the therapy room. They are broken into separate articles, each tackling different aspects of the process.

The Dating Playbook: You’re Here!

The Dating Playbook: 14 Tips For The Dating Life

The Dating Playbook: 16 Ways To Bounce Back From Break Ups and Rejection

 

1. Start to Clean Your Side of the Fence

Imagine opening a screen door that leads to a backyard. You peer out to see a yard full of scattered lawn chairs, gardening equipment, and aimless trash that’s blown in from the back alley. ‘What a mess!’ you think, ‘who would want to spend their time here?’

Before we date, we must take the time to look at our backyard. Except instead of lawn chairs and trash – it’s the stories, beliefs, relationships, trauma, rejections, memories, and behaviors that keep us from welcoming the love we deserve into our side of the fence.

Without taking the time to consciously clean our side of the fence, we become victims to the agendas of the past. Without even knowing it, we can say we want certain things for our love life while the trash in the back has other ideas.

Your “stuff” may be difficult to change and take years to grasp and heal. The key here is to have a good idea of what haunts us from the past and bring it to consciousness while dating (and letting go of what we can). It’s about starting the process of understanding and healing the past.

 

2. Heal and Change Your Beliefs About Relationships

“We confuse love with familiarity”

Your internalized beliefs about relationships are one of the main areas to explore on your side of the fence. For the most part, all of us have some emotional trap from our past. Formed early in life, these beliefs were passively imprinted into our psyche from interactions with family, teachers, and peers. Later in life, they impact who we pick in our romantic relationships as they guide our decisions to fit old models of relating.

For instance, someone that had a demanding mother who required a lot of attention and care, forms a belief that their needs aren’t important and tends to put themselves second in relationships. To confirm this belief, they might attract a narcissistic partner.

Review the examples of common relational beliefs and see if any resonate:

“I’m not good enough; I’m unlovable.”
“I have to please others in order to get my needs met.”
“People always leave me.”
“People hurt and manipulate me.”
“No one is there for me.”
“I need to help or fix others.”

It’s a slow, deliberate process to change these beliefs. Most importantly, you have to be motivated to change, and acknowledge that they are no longer helpful and are inhibiting you from having a fulfilling relationship. The specific ways to change them vary, and you may need assistance from a professional.

3. Study Your Patterns

If you’ve been in relationships in the past, you can usually start to see patterns. Even if you haven’t been in many relationships, that is a pattern in itself – or maybe you can at least see patterns in those who you’re attracted to.

Take inventory of ALL your previous relationships. Draw a timeline on a large piece of paper and plot each relationship throughout the lifespan. I would also suggest adding your parents to the timeline. Write down specifics about each relationship, for example:

What attracted you to him/her?
How long did it last?
What lead to the breakup?
How did we generally interact?
What was most frustrating about him/her?
How did you act differently with him/her then with your friends?
How did emotional and sexual intimacy progress?

Did you sexualize your need for love? In general, what can I observe about my sexual behaviors with each partner?
For the most part, how did I feel while I was with him/her?
Did I feel safe with him/her?
How did this person remind you of a previous relationship, how was it familiar (friend, parent, ex-lover)?
How would the relationship rank in having healthy relationship traits? (Such as: shared values, flexibility, mutual respect, healthy boundaries, communication, and interdependence.)

4. Identify Your Dating Strengths and Challenges.

Strengths– Write a list of all the things you bring to a relationship. This will especially be handy when you feel any sudden rush of inadequacy. Keeping your strengths in mind will allow you to comfortability review your weaknesses. It will also give you a reasonable measure of what you can offer, helping avoid too much “dating down”.

Challenges– It isn’t enough to love someone, there are practical aspects of finding a life partner that go beyond their natural affinity for you. Let’s say you’re a guy that has no job, lives at home, has no friends, and has poor personal hygiene. You get frustrated when the supermodel CEO doesn’t return your call. It induces some shame, but hopefully a healthy shame – one that sparks an honest look at what you can actually offer another person.

Or, perhaps you feel confident in what you have to offer, but are hindered by a deathly fear of rejection. You avoid dating, and have debilitating anxiety with just the thought of approaching someone to ask them out. You now have a choice to let this anxiety continue to control your life, or do something about it. Find ways to build your confidence, such as intentionally exposing yourself to multiple rejections. Here are some more examples of the obstacles I commonly see:

• Complicated family dynamics: taking care of a parent, enmeshed with family member.
• Stuck in old habits of lifestyle: Not wanting to let go or change aspects of the single life.
• Mental or emotional challenges: persistent depression, social anxiety, recent death of a loved one.
• Lack of resources: Low funds for dates.
• Lack of access to singles: refuse to go on dating apps, work from home, lack of social network.

 

5. Know How You Attach

There is much to say about how our attachment styles affect our relationships. The cliff notes version goes something like this:

• There are four types of attachment styles: secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful-avoidant.
• Depending on your history, you will lean (if not fully embody) at least of the attachment styles.
• When you become emotionally intimate with someone, your style of attachment starts to expose itself.
• Your style of attachment will affect things like: comfort with intimacy,
communication, general behavior in relationship.
• How you and your partner’s attachment style interact inside the relationship, deeply impacts the health, longevity, and fulfillment of that relationship.

To figure out your attachment style, you can take a short quiz online or read more about each type. Read the book Attached, especially if you suspect being anything other than secure.

 

6. Reflect on Why You are Dating

Your motivation for dating can have a major impact on your romance-seeking success. Here are some common examples for why people date that may leave them vulnerable to settling or poor decision making:

• Fear of being alone.
• Biological clock is ticking.
• “All my friends are married”
•A relationship will make me happy.
• Parents are hounding me for grandchildren.

I am not trying to minimize these factors, they can help add energy and conscious action to dating – but their presence can, at times, negativity impact your approach.

 

7. Assess Your Mating Market

Evolutionary psychology shows us how peculiar the common dating strategies are in today’s culture. Thousands of years ago, it was more common to find a mate within your tribe, rarely would someone mate with an outsider. This is contradictory to meeting complete strangers in a crowded bar.

Instead of focusing on the crowded bar, think about your social circle. Expanding the amount of people you come in contact within more intimate settings such as meetups, work, sport leagues, and other general interests creates a greater realistic dating market.

Another valid angle, is looking at where you live. The goal is to meet singles of the gender you desire as well as matching them with your personal values and goals. If you live in the middle of Iowa in a small, predominantly religious community but have conflicting values and low access to singles, it might be wise to consider moving to a more viable dating market.

 

8. Start a Meditation Practice

As I’ve highlighted thus far, so much of what holds us back in our relationships (and dating) is influenced by the unconscious mind. This part of the brain is difficult to change, but absolutely possible. New research promoting neuroplasticity (that our brain has the ability to change throughout our lives) leaves us hope that we can change these deep-seated reactions to love and intimacy.

Mindfulness and meditation allow us a better chance to slow down these reactions, bring them to consciousness, and change our emotional reaction and behavior. Through diligent practice, we can find ourselves relating in new informed ways.

For more information on rewiring the brain and useful meditation exercises for relationships check out the book, Rewire Your Brain For Love by Marsha Lucas PhD.

 

9. Make a List Before Going to the Grocery Store

There’s a big difference entering a grocery store with a list of items than a random trip with no direction. It’s amazing how so many people will fail to write a list of items that they are looking for before entering the grocery store of dating.

Take the time to explore what you’re searching for in a relationship. Some examples are: shared values such as starting a family, mutual respect, emotional connection, love of travel, and same religious affiliation. These can be easily forgotten in the heat of a new relationship.

Write an extensive list and prioritize the items. You can even create categories such as – “Needs” and “Nice to Have’s“. With the list in mind, the trip to the grocery store becomes quicker, more efficient, less stressful, and reduces aimless wandering.

 

10. Visualize

We are used to defining ourselves by our past, and if love has eluded us in the past, it could be difficult to imagine what this new life would even look like. When we create a vision of what we want, we start to feel a greater sense of drive towards those things.

With visualization, the future begins to direct our decisions and state of being instead of the past. Someone that’s committed to finding a loving, mature, and fulfilling relationship is different than the person who is acting from the vision of failed relationships and outdated beliefs about love.

Integrate visualization with your meditation practice. Let your mind imagine what you want life to look like, feeling it fully, while also surrendering to the attachment of that outcome.

 

11. Have a Release Ceremony

Now that you have identified your unhelpful and outdated beliefs, heartbreaks, and patterns it’s time to release them. Of course – some of these things may take longer to fully heal – but letting go of the past is a key component of fully committing to the process of finding love.

Take a sheet of paper and write down “I release” at the top. Below, write the list of things you are willing to completely surrender today. These could be:

• The remnants or resentments of a former lover.
• A belief such as, “I’m unlovable”.
• An expectation from a family member to marry a specific type of person.
• A fear, such as ‘fear of rejection’.

After making the list, it’s time to let it go, and get creative. Here are some ideas:

• Wash it away with water (down the toilet, put the pieces in a river).
• Burned up by fire (Burn in a fireplace, burn it and put ashes down sink).
• Put it in the earth (Bury it in a park).
• Tear it up (through it in a trash can, stomp on the pieces).
• Blown away by the wind (Throw it off a cliff in to the wind).

Feel the emotional release of letting go of these psychological weights. Feel free to scream, cry, or simply smile as a sense of freedom and readiness for new love enters your being.

 

12. Buy a Dating Journal

Committing to keeping a journal of your dating journey serves as a designated place to record things like your priorities, anxieties, and post-date reflections. It’s also an efficient way to refer back to see unforeseen patterns that may be holding you back.

Keeping a journal may be cumbersome at first, but it can help you remain grounded and reduce blind spots.

 

13. Gauge Your Readiness
You may say you’re ready to meet your soulmate and live happily ever after, but your emotions may have a different agenda. It happens more than you’d think, one part of you wants it more than anything, and another is saying “hell no”. Dating is a responsible choice. 

To test this, close your eyes and imagine meeting the person of your dreams, they have all the qualities you say you’re looking for, and is ready to commit to you for the long term. Turn your attention to your body, notice the emotions that come up. Be on the lookout for fear, anxiety, or a shutdown response. These indicate there is an emotional belief blocking your goal. Continue to be curious about this response and figure out the emotional message, then work to clear this the best you can before wholeheartedly committing to dating.

And let’s face it, some people may never be cut out for relationships. They may not be relationship-oriented or have the motivation to do the work that’s necessary to be ready. This is an important reminder for those that believe anyone could be a viable long term partner, that’s simply not true.

Let the Process Continue…
Now that you’ve gotten a grasp of your past, changed some beliefs, and let go of the things holding you back – its’ time to jump in the dating pool.

The next article covers the tips for while you’re actively dating. The following article covers how to cope and move on from ghosting, rejection, and unrequited love.