Finding the love of your life should be fun and even exciting. But all of the new dating apps have made looking for the love of your life so mechanical. Does dating bore you? Maybe you need to take a break from all of that technology and live a little. Try going out to have a good time instead of going out to apply a test to every person whom you date.

Fun versus Success or Failure

Once upon a time we wrote about success on the first date.

You met this great man or woman and the two of you are going on a Saturday night date. Will you have fun? Will he or she like you? Will you have success on the first date? This depends, to a degree, on what you are looking for. If you simply want to meet someone new and get to know them you will likely have success on the first date. If you are looking for sex on the first date, that is a different matter. Developing a meaningful, long term relationship is not going to happen on the first date. But, sometimes there is love at first sight and you know from day one that he or she is the person you will spend the rest of your life with.

If dating has started to bore you then you need to consider dating just to have fun. Be spontaneous and don’t start making lists of the person’s good and bad points. It’s OK to meet someone, do something together and then consider after the fact if you want to see them again.

Trying Too Hard

We also wrote that trying too hard can jinx a relationship. The point is that some of us are caretakers. We get our good feelings from doing things for other people. That trait is not always good for a relationship and can first become boring and then destructive to you and your friend.

Caretakers believe that they are selfish if they take care of themselves instead of care-take others. They believe that they do not deserve to take care of themselves – that they have to earn love. It’s not that they don’t know how to love themselves – it’s that they don’t believe that they have the right to love themselves unless they are alone and no one needs them.

Getting rid of your sense that you don’t count, don’t deserve happiness until everyone else is OK and that love needs to be earned can be difficult.

Going out on a date to have fun is taking care of yourself and is healthy. If dating has become boring it may be because you are trying too hard to meet the perfect person or it may be because you don’t like yourself enough and believe that you need to become a servant to your new friend in order for you to receive love and acceptance. In each case you need to change course, go out on dates for a good time and don’t plan so hard for the future. It will arrive in its own good time.