We must love with our brokenness

If somebody asks you what you look for in a relationship, you might list things like trust, respect, patience, and shared interests. These are pretty common criteria for relationships. Okay, so you meet somebody who possesses all the things you're looking for. You go on a few dates and then you realize that there's no chemistry. What happened? If we're all looking for the same things, why isn't it easier to fall in love? It's possible that the list of expectations we've authored in our heads omits certain realities.

(I'm going to ignore the objectifying nature of dating apps for this post. I could get into how the brain processes online dating, but I'm due for a lighthearted post.)

Let's pretend we're on our guilty-pleasure dating app. In curating a profile that communicates our best selves, we might choose content featuring our best angles, a balanced selfie-to-group-photo ratio, a witty bio, and a clear call to action that'll certainly attract the right people.

So we have the perfect profile and we're ready to go. Swipe left, swipe up by mistake, swipe right and

It's a Match!

(Congratulations, somebody has fallen for
your manufactured internet persona!)

I'm not trying to shit on us. We're not consciously deceiving people on the internet, I assume, because few of us are that audacious. But that's really what it comes down to. Let me explain.

We put our best selves forward in many interactions. A few reasons people do this:

1. We refuse to look at the parts of us that don't convey perfection.
2. We acknowledge our character flaws, and we think we're good at hiding them.
3. We are looking for "positive energy" and figure the only way to attract it is to exude it.

This is something called impression management that Goffman (1959) pre-internet defined as the way we maintain control over how others view us. Today, the personae we feed on social media tend to be fed through liked-based conditioning. Person A got 40,000 likes for posting X, so I'll assimilate. On Tinder, there's even a fucking toggle switch for "smart photos" which orders your profile photos for you based on an algorithm that gets more suckers to swipe. In a face-to-face interaction, we're conditioned by smiles, laughs, hugs, and second dates. Person B really liked when I talked about Y, so I should talk about that more often.

Most of this happens unconsciously. It might be brought into consciousness here and there, but the majority of it happens in accordance to mental structures we probably aren't aware of, like attachment styles derived from early childhood.† So what does this mean?

Tying in attachment theory, few of us are blessed with secure attachment styles--meaning that many of us have trust or communication issues. Some of these issues are fallout from our relatives' experiences.† Some of these issues indeed are consequences of our social and emotional realities. It's not easy to acknowledge our own shortcomings, in part because many of them are invisible to us. You know the cliché about a fish in water? Even if we consider ourselves to be painfully critical of ourselves, we do not see everything. However, with the help of counseling or even difficult conversations with our loved ones, we can begin to understand our behavioral quirks.

Before you go changing anything about yourself, I want you to sit with the things that aren't considered profile-worthy. For example, I tend not to give people second chances. It depends on the situation, of course, but I have a chronic tendency to move on. I've grown up believing essentially everyone is replaceable on an interpersonal level.

Wouldn't that stuff be nice to know on a first date? How often have you met somebody who seemed put together at first but was actually an emotional A-bomb? True, unconditional love involves accepting all the pieces of a person. We've just been conditioned to hide the broken ones.

And the good thing is: We're all a little bit broken.

(Photo by Omar Khan)

I was on the phone with my best friend talking about this, and she said it reminded her of the Japanese Kinsugi art form which repairs broken pottery with golden lacquer. It honors the brokenness, valuing the piece's history. Rather than discarding the item, this art form puts the broken pieces together to make something arguably more beautiful than it was before.

Being aware of our cracks and missing pieces, we can use those to connect with others. The more aware of ourselves we become, the deeper we can look into other people. I like to ask questions that give me between-the-lines data about potential partners. One of my favorite questions to ask is "If you had to give one piece of advice to the entire world, what would it be?" This not only shows me what they think the rest of the world needs to hear, but it's often indicative of what's going on inside themselves.

Too often, we're encouraged to look at virtue in other people, but choosing only to look at light doesn't rid the world of darkness. While it's not necessary to interrogate your date, gathering and exchanging information about each other's brokenness can help you connect on a deeper level than if you'd maintained a perfection-based, superficial relationship. Ask yourself what you're ashamed of and locate the origin of those qualities. Only when we broaden our self-image to include the brokenness can we find somebody who might either be broken in a similar way or in a way that complements our brokenness.

Also, being single is the fucking tits. You don't need to rush yourself into anything that's going to stunt your own growth. The relationship you have with yourself is the most important.

If you'd like to vent or talk about your weirdest Tinder date, please use the contact form on the right-hand side of this page to get in touch with me. I'd love to hear from you!

Until next time, friends, take care. :)