This is complete bonk:
The truth is the exact opposite. Love is the best fuel to propel you to incredible victories. There’s nothing like falling in love to give you a qualitative leap in every aspect of your life.
Both N and I were a complete mess on every level the day before we met. But our passion for each other propelled the kind of growth in all areas that would have never happened otherwise.
People create mental obstacles before trying to open themselves up to a possibility of love. I need to find a better job, a need a better wardrobe, I need to lose weight, I need to solve every problem to be ready for consumption as a fresh and clean product. This is fundamentally wrong because nobody can be new, shiny and problem-free forever. If he can only love you at your best, how will he love you postpartum, aging or failing at something?
It is easier to keep to routines, do the dumb things you gotta do to have a good life (like exercise, cook healthy food, do well at your job even when it’s irritating, etc)… if you’ve already ditched the anxiety of “Does X like me? Am I good enough?” OK, check, done. Now we can get on with life because we always have a safe, stable, reassuring, comfortable home base to return to.
There’s this weird idea that, you find love and if it’s unconditional you’ll “let yourself go” and turn into a fat unemployed slob because why bother… and that seems to be *more* likely if you start with the assumption that nobody will like you unless you are perfect, or that you have to uphold unnaturally (to you at least) high standards in order to maximize the desirability rating of the potential partners you can attract… well, yeah, if you were making a fulltime job out of masking who you really are, you’re definitely going to be exhausted and turn back into a dumpster fire after you get what you think you wanted out of it (status! attention! novelty!), probably the first time you hit a real resource-draining crisis. Don’t do that!
Meanwhile, settling down all committed with someone who actually likes you (when you’re not pretending to be a moviestar)… now you’ve chucked a huge source of uncertainty and stress out of your life, and you have room to grow into a better version of yourself, instead of continually shoehorning yourself into a warped set of external standards.
Absolutely. If that happens, step away from dating and do the activity with imagining the perfect relationship in detail that I described yesterday.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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