Resiliency is crucial in the dating process. I don't care who you are; unless you're very, very lucky you're going to be rejected. And no form of rejection feels worse than to be rejected by a potential lover. If we don't get a job we applied for, we usually don't take it personally. We recognize that our qualifications may have been good, but someone else's may have been better. Or there may have been some kind of favoritism or politics involved. We get over it and send out more résumés. But we find it much harder to be rational and objective about rejections in the dating world. We assume we must be unattractive in some way. Too old. Too fat. Not sexy enough. No personality. A loser, plain and simple.

In order to bounce back after this kind of rejection, you have to understand one thing: rejection says more about the other person than it does about you. It's not your fault that you don't fit into someone else's idea of who you should be or what you should look like. You weren't rejected because you're old; you were rejected because of someone's unfair expectation that you should be young.

Resiliency requires a healthy ego. You have to believe that you have a unique combination of qualities that will be recognized and valued by the right person. But you want to be sure that your ego is not so inflated that you are unable to make reasonable compromises.

You should have standards, but those standards should be grounded in reality. Most of us are going to have to compromise on something if we're going to find a romantic partner.

If you insist on having non-negotiable demands, they should be on core values. For example, if you want to have a child, you don't want to waste time with people unalterably opposed to the idea. If you feel strongly about religion, you should restrict your search to fellow-believers. If you're passionate about the visual arts, you probably won't be happy with someone who wouldn't be caught dead in a museum or art gallery.

But if you're unduly hung up on age, weight, or looks, you may want to re-think your demands. Naturally, there has to be a physical attraction, a "chemistry", but too many of us, especially in personal ads, reject people out of hand, without giving chemistry a chance to develop. We have an ideal physical type that we think we want, and anyone not conforming to that type is excluded. This is extremely short-sighted. You should try to be flexible about anything that doesn't violate your moral principles or your most deeply-held values.

©2008

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