Taking a break from dating? You need to read this.
We were sitting in the living room, as often happened on weekday nights. My roommates and I were strewn, one on the couch, one sitting at the dining table picking away at some microwaved leftovers and me, folded like a paperclip into the chair with a glass of red wine perched on my knee. I had just finished telling them about the third date I had been on this week and this one, I thought, might actually be something. The newest roommate, who had little experience with my dating history, chimed in, "Wow, Samantha, you're a dating machine!" The other, who I'd lived with for almost three years at this point, quickly replied, "Oh, this is what Sam does. She's either really dating, or not dating at all. It goes in waves."
I had to laugh. She was flawless in her assessment.
For the past few years, I had been on rapid sprints of dating, swiping regularly, keeping up with multiple conversations at a time and cramming three, sometimes even four dates into one week. It normally became clear fairly quickly that at best 30% of the first dates were worth a second and so on until within a few weeks, my swiping momentum would slow. I'd become more discerning on who I'd maintain conversation with and before long, the dating apps were back to collecting metaphorical dust in a folder on the second home screen of my iPhone.
I convinced myself that I was resting. “I’m recuperating and I'd be back at it again soon.” I would make plans with a friend I hadn't seen in a while for a wine-filled, leisurely dinner out but bat away any questions about my recent dating spree. Or the roommates would scheme for a Sunday evening event, normally a binge session of whatever poorly written teen drama we had decided to cringe watch together. When asked, I'd say, "If I meet somebody, great! But I'm just not actively focusing on it right now."
What I didn’t understand then, was that it’s exceedingly difficult to find connection if you’re not emotionally open.
To illustrate this concept, I need to take you back to college...
There is a demonstration that is a part of probably every college Psych 101 class. (If you never took Psych 101, I'd highly recommend you pause here and watch this video. Don't read the comments before. Have the experience for yourself!) If you did take Psych 101, let me jog your memory. Eager students sit up a little in their chairs as a slightly vintage video begins playing on the screen. Text on screen asks you to count the number of times the ball is passed by the kids wearing white. Students move in random patterns, passing a ball between them. You diligently count the number of passes. The video finishes playing and the professor asks, "Raise your hand if you saw the gorilla." The room murmurs with nervous laughter as they look at their neighbors, all silently wondering, "Wait, what gorilla?" At this moment, the professor clicks play on the second half of the video where you spot another student, this one dressed in a gorilla suit, comes walking into the frame, pauses in the middle of the students, does a little chest pound and walks off. It seems incredulous to you now that you could have missed something so obvious, but you clearly did.
This concept is called "selective attention." Selective attention is an energy saver for our brain, allowing it to eliminate ancillary tasks to focus on the project at hand. Hilariously, in this analogy, our future partner is the gorilla. If we are emotionally open, taking in the full scope of our life - we have the opportunity to spot the gorilla. Emotional openness is not a passive state, you can't do it in the background. Something as simple as counting passes was enough for you to miss the gorilla the first time! Many of us live our lives counting the passes by focusing on our work, hobbies or friends, thinking "I'll meet him when it's the right time." But we aren't interacting in the world in a way that is open to connection.
And it makes sense why! Emotional openness, being open to connection, can be draining. The openness requires us to balance our expectations and hope and it opens us up to disappointment.
Emotional openness is necessary for the possibility of connection in your life.
It's having a metaphorical extra seat in your dinner reservation. You're add the seat to the reservation so that you are open to someone walking up to join you (and almost as importantly, this spirit is key to people having a signal that they can walk up to you - in this metaphor and more practically, in real life). At the end of the evening, if nobody arrives, you pay the bill and head home with the knowledge that nobody joined you this time but you were open to the possibility. While that openness is necessary, over enough time, living with that emotional openness will eventually deplete your tank and the instinct is to stop leaving the seat open.
Being emotional closed is not the same as a dating break, but a lot of dating breaks are periods of being emotionally closed.
Confused? I'm about to break down the common types of dating breaks but before I do, let's get clear for a second, what's the point of a dating break to begin with?
In my opinion, we take breaks from dating in order to 1) recharge our emotional openness battery or at least top up the tank and 2) gain perspective, heal or learn so that we can be more ready for future connection.
Okay let's look at dating breaks a little more closely. I see four types:
Monastic: This type of break is an emotional monastery. You're taking a break from the whole concept of finding a romantic partner, not just the act of going on dates. You might lean toward plans that are very specific or limited in their scope: A movie night where you won't leave the apartment. Or a girls brunch at a restaurant where no straight man would dare set foot in. Can be accompanied with claims of "I'm working on myself" (but often that “work” looks more like distraction to work on other parts of life and very little confrontation of dating desires or patterns).
Rebellious: A rebellious break doesn’t quite look like a break. It can involve casual hook ups and one night stands. The number of boys (if you are woman interested in men) you talk to or flirt with may actually be higher than usual but these men tend to be the type that "you'd never want to actually date." This dating break is focused on a break from the emotions involved in romance or love, but not a break from attraction. In a sense, you're rebelling against the idea of dating by demonstrating to the universe that you can find connection without having to do the dating - but deep down, there's a recognition of the two different types of connection at play here.
Masquerading: This is the most insidious type of a dating break because it's in fact, not a break at all. Unlike monastic or rebellious breaks, you're not completely shutting off your hope to find connection, you're just only willing to engage in the lowest stakes, lowest energy methods. Rather than openly swiping and going on dates, you go about your life but find occasional opportunities to dip your toe in the waters to test for connection. This might be taking every opportunity to go out with friends, always with your head on a swivel for someone or accepting every party invite when there might be new people there. You tell yourself you're not actively dating but you still have that hope for connection tucked into many of your plans and can find yourself secretly disappointed when nothing comes of it. In this way, you're still depleting your tank little by little.
Restful: A restful break is the holy grail of dating breaks. This break will be full of activities you love, whether that's a hobby, spending time with friends that lift you up and honoring your body's needs for rest, exercise etc. This break generally feels like you're adding things into your life rather than taking something away. It also usually involves some healthy reflection about what didn't work out in this last period of dating and what you want to do differently in the future. After breakups, following the necessary mourning and letting go, there is often seamless transition into a restful dating break where you rediscover yourself as an individual. You may not be fully aware of the emotional reflection going on, just noticing that you’re observing your friends’ relationships or people on the street and comparing and contrasting with your past behavior and future hopes. You're open to learning about connection even if you're not actively pursuing it. For all these reasons, a restful break will often end with a proactive decision to date: "I feel like I'd enjoy dating again" rather than a begrudging, "Ugh, I should probably start dating again, it's been a while." It's also not uncommon for people near the end of this period to serendipitously meet somebody as their emotional openness becomes palpable to those around them.
If I were to draw a grid of these four types, it would look like this:
If the point of a dating break is to leave the period with our emotional tanks recharged, then monastic and restful both do the job. But when we consider the second factor - being better set up for connection when we re-enter dating - then monastic has a fault - we aren't doing any real learning about ourself because of that feeling of being emotionally closed. We're not learning from or healing from past disappointment if we're simply closed off to the topic. Emotional openness is required to heal, learn and grow.
So, my friend, what should you do with all this information?
If you are currently on a dating break, time to get really honest - which type of dating break are you in? If you are...
In a rebellious break, what is particularly scary or difficult for you about the emotional, romantic part of dating? Why do you feel safe with the casual or physical but not with the emotional or romantic? What feels safe about the type of people you’re spending time with that you don’t feel when you’re with the type of people you typically date?
In a masquerading break, what parts of dating are particularly exhausting that led you to take this lower effort approach? Is there a particular type of date that you find the most debilitating? Or is there a component of dating, like putting on makeup and doing your hair or spending more time at bars, that really doesn't feel like you but you do it but its a key part of a story you've been telling yourself about dating?
If you're in a monastic break, what did you difficult about being open in your last stretch of dating? In what ways did you feel disappointed, hurt or sad about your most recent period of active dating? What did you feel like you needed to retreat from?
If you're in a restful break, that's amazing - enjoy!
From this place of knowledge about what has been draining, disappointing, scary or sad about dating in the past, you can begin the work of reflecting on your patterns and stories around dating that might be causing you to repeat these experiences. And in turn, you can begin make adjustments that can move you more toward a dating life (and life in general) that is sustainable for you and helps you maintain your emotional openness tank over time.
Do you feel like you don't have the tools or the awareness to identify these things yourself but you haven’t been implementing changes at the rate you’d like?
