3 Simple Explanations For Why You're Still Single - Mark Manson

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2. You Have Absurd Expectations

There are two new dating stereotypes that have cropped up this generation. They are:

1. The man who is fat, balding, underemployed, anti-social, unhygienic, who decorates his apartment with his collection of original, mint-condition, Star Wars action figures (all in fighting poses), who spends his weekends engrossed in Manga comic books and internet porn, and who is then perpetually frustrated that every woman he likes is somehow unable to appreciate all of his amazing qualities. He then comes to the conclusion that—obviously—there’s something horribly wrong with the women in the world.
2. The fashionable, beautiful, 30-something, career woman who wants to settle down, but despite having dates lined up every night of the week, she laments that there are “no good men out there.” The last man she dated was an accountant, played racquetball, and spoke French. But she dumped him because he had bad fingernails and didn’t want to go to business school. The man before that won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, but she dumped him because chemistry is such an impractical profession anyway—I mean, really, get a clue!

The man feels entitled to date anyone despite the fact that he brings basically nothing to the table in an intimate/sexual relationship. The woman brings something to the table, but feels entitled to date someone who brings everything to the table in an intimate/sexual relationship. Both are terribly delusional in regards to their dating expectations.

These flavors of delusional expectations come down to perfection—people who expect perfection in others and people who expect others to acknowledge the perfection in themselves. It’s debatable which is more insufferable.

Of course, these absurd expectations occur in each gender and take on many forms. I once met a woman who was unhealthy and overweight and, with a straight face, stated that she would only consider dating a man if he had six-pack abs (unsurprisingly, she was still single). I had a friend in college who once dumped a woman he had been crazy about because her taste in movies made it impossible for him to respect her opinions.

There are people who assume that any sort of disagreement or argument signals a deathly incompatibility and a future of pure misery, so they end it. Then there are people who expect the opposite sex to fall down and beg for their attention and affection and then get genuinely pissed off and vicious when they don’t. There are people who think that because you shared a chicken basket and watched a Tom Hanks movie together, you’re now owed a phone call every single day and if that phone call doesn’t come they go on a screaming tirade.

It’s really simple: We all have our own imperfections. Everyone we date also has their own imperfections. Intimacy and romance is determined by people who have comparable and complementary imperfections to one another.

Learn to appreciate some people’s imperfections. Learn to appreciate and improve upon your own. Otherwise you’re going to be single (and angry) for a very long time.