why does dating always feel like a performance?

if games are supposed to be fun, why is dating so tactical?

i said i will write my first substack, and i did…but this is not my first, just the first one that actually left my draft and got published… and the funniest part is, i wanted my first to be about ai, or character development or mental health or tech or trying new things

but here i am… talking about the modern dating system

ohhh… is that the only thing you know?

no, i know a lot of things and i am still open to learning, and yes, you might see a little character here and there

let’s call her lady fi… not too much, just enough

as someone who has been in 8 talking stages, 1 situation-ship, 1 heartbreak (and no, the situation-ship wasn’t the heartbreak), and 0 relationships… yes zero, i have never been asked to be a girlfriend

say cheese if you are on this table too, but this isn’t about stats… it’s about patterns, the quiet things that keep repeating even when you think you’re doing something different

because if you’re honest, you’ll notice it too, how something starts well… there is conversation, there is interest, there is that soft excitement you don’t even want to admit yet  and then slowly, almost invisibly, it starts to shift, no big fight, no closure, just a slow fading…

and you’re left there trying to figure out what exactly went wrong, the truth is, a lot is going wrong… but not loudly (being self aware is important)

we are all moving a little more calculated than we admit, somewhere along the line, dating stopped feeling like connection and started feeling like strategy, like there is a right way to text, a right time to reply, a right amount of interest to show

and once you notice it, you can’t unsee it, you like someone, your phone lights up, you smile without thinking  and then almost immediately, something else kicks in

“don’t reply too fast”

and it’s such a small moment, but it says a lot because now you are not just feeling, you are editing the feeling and what makes it even more interesting is that the other person is probably doing the exact same thing

so now it’s two people who are interested both slightly holding back, both trying to not “mess it up” and somehow… that is exactly what messes it upbecause connection doesn’t grow in hesitation like that, it needs something a bit more honest, a bit more direct but honesty feels risky in today’s world and it makes me so sick that even when you are honest you end up being played

and that’s where everything starts from…

Sigmund Freud once said,

“we are never so vulnerable as when we love”

and that line is uncomfortable because it removes all the excuses, it means there is no version of love where you are completely safe

so what do people do instead?

they try to manage the risk, not by choosing better

but by controlling how they show up

• reply a little slower

• care a little less  or don’t care at all

• never be the one that seems too available

it feels like wisdom, but a lot of the time, it is just fear wearing a calm face and psychology actually explains this in quiet ways

the way we attach to people, the way we pull back or lean in, the way we overthink or detach… it often has less to do with the person in front of us and more to do with what we have experienced before… so instead of reacting to what is happening, we react to what might happen and that “might” becomes powerful

• it makes you hold back a message you actually want to send

• it makes you pretend not to care when you clearly do

• it makes you question simple things like “am i doing too much?”  (i said this over a million times to myself)

and the thing is, the more you try to control it, the less natural it becomes.

Erich Fromm wrote that love is not something that just happens, it is something that requires effort, patience, and presence

and presence is exactly what is missing in a lot of modern dating because you cannot be fully present when you are constantly calculating

you are there… but not really there

you are responding… but also performing and performance can get attention, it can even keep something going for a while  but it struggles to create depth because depth needs honesty and honesty cannot survive in an environment where everything is being filtered

this is why so many connections feel like they almost became something  not because there was nothing there but because nobody allowed it to be fully there,everything stayed slightly guarded, controlled, and incomplete

and it’s not always obvious sometimes it just looks like two people slowly losing momentum, two people who never really say what they feel, two people who are waiting for certainty before they show up

but certainty doesn’t come like that… it grows from consistency, from openness, from small moments of honesty that build over time and if those moments keep getting delayed or edited then nothing really forms

and even when you look inward, there are things to admit too  not the loud obvious red flags people like to talk about…

i got red flags to but lets call mine, burgundy flag, more expensive… hahahaha

the kind that don’t look harmful at first, overthinking, giving too much too early, ignoring things because you want it to work and believing that if you just try a little more, it will become what you hope

they don’t feel wrong when you are in them but they shape outcomes more than you think and this is where it becomes real because it’s easy to say “people are the problem”

but harder to admit that sometimes, the way you show up is also part of the pattern

so now it’s not just about them, it’s also about you  (wow… it’s about me toooo) and then you start to see it clearly

how two people can both want something real

and still not create it because both are protecting themselves just enough to prevent anything real from forming and that’s the part that stays with you because deep down, you know it could have been different

if there was less performance, less strategy and less fear disguised as “doing things right” and maybe that is the shift not removing boundaries and not becoming careless but being honest enough to know when you are protecting yourself and when you are hiding yourself because those are not the same thing and if you keep hiding  even the right person will only meet a version of you  and not you

and that changes everything, so maybe the question is not how to win at dating  or how to avoid being hurt completely but whether you are still open enough to experience something that is not controlled

something that feels real, even if it is uncertain because at the end of it all love was never meant to be perfectly managed

it was meant to be experienced and maybe if we stop…