Dating, Living, and Being Your Best Self

Dating, Living, and Being Your Best Self

 In a comment on my post last week about living your life as if you were on a date, a reader named Jean posted this comment:

    Thanks for this article! But regarding the ‘be yourself’ advice… I’ve always wondered, which self? I have a best self who is on time, considerate, well dressed, brave, follows my dreams, etc. I also have a worst self who is late, selfish, lazy, a slob, and a scaredy-cat. The rest of the time I spend climbing away from one and towards the other, but frankly¹ I spend more of my time near the ‘worst self’ end. I used to have a long-distance boyfriend who only saw my ‘best’ self and therefore had an unrealistic view of me. I got tired out trying to keep up his good opinion of me, and the relationship crashed because I wasn’t comfortable.

Jean raises some really interesting questions, and I thought it would be instructive to consider them in a longer form than is really practical as a blog comment.

My immediate² thought is that the goal is to be our best selves all the time. But that shouldn’t be exhausting; in fact, I think that when we are truly being our best selves, it’s invigorating. Think of that energy we get when we meet someone and fall in love – you find yourself suddenly “on the ball” throughout your life, not just the parts that you spend with this new person. Or consider the creative person’s “flow”, that state of mind and action where everything just seems to come naturally, where we lose track of time, where ideas and their execution seem to blend together into a seamless, effortless whole. What is that if not us being our best selves?

What’s exhausting is faking that. Pretending to be our best selves. Because usually we aren’t really being our best selves, we’re being someone else’s idea of what our best self should be – or what we imagine their idea of our best self is. Think about it: if you love doing something, if doing it feeds and fulfills³ you on a fundamental level, how hard is it to do that thing, to be that person? Usually, it takes a serious effort to keep us from doing it!

This is why I hate books like The Rules, a dating guide for women that essentially⁴ smothers⁵ the best self and replaces it with a facsimile self crafted to avoid offending anyone and to secure a mate at all costs. Look at some of their “Top Ten Rules”:

    * 2. Show up to parties, dances and social events even if you do not feel like it.

    * 5. If you are in a long-distance relationship, he must visit your three times before you visit him.

    * 8. Close the deal. Rules women do not date men for more than two years.

Frankly, that sounds exhausting to me. The constant focus on marriage (that is, living towards the future instead of living in the now), the constant self-censoring to make sure you don’t put more into your relationship than your partner, the constant denial of your own feelings and state of mind – is that your best self, or the authors’?

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I don’t know anything about Jean or about the situation with her long-distance ex, but I have to wonder: was she really being her best self or the idea she had of what her best self should be like. I know that when I first found myself in the dating pool in my early 30s, I found it exhausting all the time – wearing clothes that I wasn’t all that comfortable in because I felt they were the “right” clothes, acting⁶ a social role that I wasn’t entirely⁷ comfortable with (as a gender⁸ studies professor, traditional gender roles leave me flat), putting on an “all is well in the world” attitude when sometimes I was nervous, overworked, or even flat broke. It took me years to realize that I wasn’t doing myself, or my dates, any favors by trying to be someone other than I was – even if I somehow managed to impress them, it wasn’t really me they were impressed by but some other guy whose part was played by me.

My own dating life took off when I started being as honest as possible about who I am, what I want, and where I wanted things to go. I dress nice, but I don’t dress out of character. I do those “chivalrous” things because I feel like it, not because it’s expected – and I expect the same kind of small considerations from my date, or I let her know that I’m really not the right kind of guy for her. I share my goals and aspirations⁹, my values and beliefs, even my feelings on religion and politics (oh no!) freely, and encourage the same openness from my date.

I’m not saying Jean or anyone else should be their “worst self”, on a date or anywhere else. I’m saying that there’s a good chance Jean’s strengths and the weaknesses she describes go hand in hand. For instance, she talks about being a “scaredy-cat” – but we’re all scared, to be honest. Not just in dating, but throughout our lives. What’s exhausting is to pretend we’re not, or to live our lives avoiding the things that scare us. Being our best selves doesn’t mean not being afraid, it means being honest about being scared, accepting that fear, and forging forward in spite of it. Jean talks about being lazy – but we’re often lazy out of fear, fear of failure, fear of being imperfect, fear of letting people (including ourselves) down. I’m not saying “be lazy”, I’m saying that laziness can easily arise out of a desire to do well by ourselves and by others and the worry that we can’t live up to that desire. When we open up to others in a real, honest way, those fears often dissipate – or at least become things we can deal with rather than things that control us.

Do you see what I’m saying? When I say “be yourself”, I don’t mean cave in to your worst impulses, I mean put your real strengths on display while being honest – with yourself, especially – about how those strengths and your weaknesses fit together. Or more to the point: let yourself be human.

Here’s the thing: in dating as in business, teaching, marketing¹⁰, writing, and just about everything else, it’s good to offend people, if you come by it honestly. I don’t mean you should start swearing at strangers, of course, but that the goal is to draw to yourself the people who are actually compatible, whether as partners, business associates, audiences, or customers, and avoid the ones who simply are not. Take a lesson from Apple, whose “I’m a Mac” commercials work precisely¹¹ because they offend – they offend people who would never buy a Mac, and create a sense of community among the ones who would and do.

To bring this down to the concrete, I would wager¹² that Jean’s relationship – like so many others – failed not because it was simply too exhausting to be her best self, but because the person she was being when she tried to be that best self wasn’t really her. Maybe the relationship itself was on shaky ground, maybe she didn’t yet have the confidence in herself necessary for a strong relationship, maybe her partner wasn’t ready to accept her as her whole self. This is speculation¹³, of course, but I think if the “best self” Jean put forward had really been her, she would have found it energizing¹⁴, not tiring.

I don’t pretend any of this is easy. I struggle to live up to what I’m saying here every single day, and I fail about as often. But they’re instructive failures, interesting failures – and with each one I feel a little closer to my best self. Hope this helps!

1 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

2 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

3 fulfills   

v.履行（诺言等）( fulfill的第三人称单数 )；执行（命令等）；达到（目的）；使结束

参考例句：

• He always fulfills his promises. 他总是履行自己的诺言。 来自辞典例句
• His own work amply fulfills this robust claim. 他自己的作品在很大程度上实现了这一正确主张。 来自辞典例句

4 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

5 smothers   

（使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的第三人称单数 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制

参考例句：

• Mary smothers her children with too much love. 玛丽溺爱自己的孩子。
• He smothers his hair with grease, eg hair-oil. 他用发腊擦头发。

6 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

7 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

8 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

9 aspirations   

强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音

参考例句：

• I didn't realize you had political aspirations. 我没有意识到你有政治上的抱负。
• The new treaty embodies the aspirations of most nonaligned countries. 新条约体现了大多数不结盟国家的愿望。

10 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

11 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

12 wager   

n.赌注；vt.押注，打赌

参考例句：

• They laid a wager on the result of the race.他们以竞赛的结果打赌。
• I made a wager that our team would win.我打赌我们的队会赢。

13 speculation   

n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机

参考例句：

• Her mind is occupied with speculation.她的头脑忙于思考。
• There is widespread speculation that he is going to resign.人们普遍推测他要辞职。

14 energizing   

v.给予…精力，能量( energize的现在分词 )；使通电

参考例句：

• a refreshing and energizing fruit drink 提神并增加体能的果汁饮料
• The time required after energizing a device, before its rated output characteristics begin to apply. 从设备通电到它开始提供额定输出特性之间所需的时间。 来自辞典例句