My Best Dating Advice

Possibly cynical? idk

Here are my credentials to be providing dating advice: six people have seriously intended to marry me, which I understand to be an above-average number, even for poly people who can date multiple such people concurrently. In spite of this, I am objectively unmarriageable: severely mentally ill, unemployable, messy, forgetful, below average in appearance, and in possession of unusual and inconvenient moral standards. So whatever I’m doing right, I must be doing it very hard.

My advice is—and I don’t know how cynical this is—that people love unconditional positive regard. I think for a lot of people unconditional positive regard is lowkey addictive.

Caveats:

• I date the kind of people I date, i.e., shy insecure nerds. People with good self-esteem might be less susceptible to unconditional positive regard.

• If someone likes you because you have unconditional positive regard for them, you need to keep having unconditional positive regard. If you suddenly start having conditional ambivalent regard, you’re going to have relationship problems. Only give people a level of unconditional positive regard you can maintain in the long term.

• Unconditional positive regard only works if people already like you at least a little bit.

• I think I’m using the term the same way therapists do, but I’m not confident (I’ve never been to therapy school).

Unconditional positive regard has two components, the “positive regard” and the “unconditional.”

Unconditional

People pleasers are reading this and going “Ozy says that if I am more of a doormat, then people will like me more! All my dysfunctional coping mechanisms confirmed a good idea by my favorite blogger!” No.

If you’re a people pleaser, then you have all kinds of conditions on your positive regard regard: that they like you, love you, comfort you, reassure you, are happy with you, don’t leave you. Be honest. If your girlfriend broke up with you—not in a mean way, just out of incompatibility—would you hate her? If so, your positive regard is conditional.

People pleasers usually have a lot of what some people call “covert contracts.” Covert contracts are imaginary deals you make in your head:

• If I never disagree with you, you’ll be my friend.

• If I never say ‘no’ to you, you’ll like me.

• If I have a good job and look nice and do whatever you say, you’ll marry me.

• If I help you move, you’ll invite me to all those cool parties I keep not getting invitations to.

• If I stop nagging you, you’ll get a job.

• If I go to therapy and work through my childhood, you’ll stop drinking so much.

• If I buy you dinner, you’ll have sex with me.

• If I have sex with you, you’ll clean up the house this weekend.

• If I listen sympathetically to you complain about your boyfriend, you’ll realize he’s an asshole, break up with him, and date me.

Covert contracts are a bad idea. If you’re lucky, the other person never notices the covert contract, and you wind up disappointed because the other person had no way of knowing you wanted a clean house or party invitations. If you’re unlucky, the other person notices and they feel manipulated and pissed off. They didn’t even WANT dinner. They would have never agreed to some kind of sex-for-food underpaid prostitution arrangement.

Eliminating covert contracts whenever they crop up is an absolute prerequisite for unconditional positive regard.

Does unconditional positive regard mean you never set boundaries? Never ask for things you want? Put up with being treated like shit? Of course not.