Overfiltering your dating pool
There’s a common pattern I see in some men who ask for dating advice.
There’s a common pattern I see in some men who ask for dating advice on the Optimized Dating Discord group. This failure mode is exemplified by this statement: "I have a well-defined system for filtering matches based on compatible beliefs or interests", coupled with nonexistent dating life.
“How is having deal-breakers bad?”, one might ask. “Isn't it a good idea to weed out people as fast as possible, instead of wasting time trying to build a relationship that won't work long-term because of incompatibilities?”
I can point to several problems with this approach to dating.
Probem 1: if your standards are so strict they disqualify the vast majority of your dating pool, you have essentially filtered yourself out of having a dating life entirely. Meeting someone who satisfies all your criteria will be an extremely rare occurrence, making you wait months or years between dates. Dating is a social skill that needs to be trained, and without experience you are probably going to mess something up before or during your infrequent dates. Spending so much time dateless will make you bitter and depressed. Worse, since you go on dates so rarely, every upcoming date will make you very anxious and stressed-out, further killing your chances.
Problem 2: dating can be a positive and enjoyable experience even with someone who is not destined to become your lifelong romantic partner. You get to make new friends, enter diverse social groups, engage in fun novel activities, and have amazing sex. Filtering just for lifelong partners robs you of many great experiences and potential personal growth associated with casual dating. Furthermore, it's common for casual one-night stands to turn into serious relationships.
Problem 3: don't confuse “compatibility” and “similarity”. If you somehow manage to start a relationship with an exact mental copy of yourself, this can be disastrous as both parties can't synergize their strong points and can't compensate for each other's weak points. A fighter and a healer go farther than two fighters or two healers, so aim to build a well-balanced party instead of engaging in romantic inbreeding. Luckily, the set of compatible people is much wider than the set of similar people, as there's multiple character archetypes that can be compatible with a given archetype.
Problem 4: online dating profiles are fine for figuring out if someone's attractive or not, but they are not good for determining if someone is a potential life partner. Long-term compatibility is very complicated and can’t be simply distilled to a few paragraphs of self-description. In addition, a lot of people are really bad at writing dating profile descriptions. By only accepting people with profiles filled-up to your liking, you are discarding a very large group of potential matches who are just not great at writing dating profiles. I encourage everyone to swipe right on profiles with empty descriptions, as long as the photos look attractive to you. Even if it turns out you're not compatible, you still went on a date with an attractive woman, which is a win in my books.
Problem 5: putting your criteria up-front on a dating profile is almost always a bad idea. It makes you appear extremely invested in these topics. This can scare away many people, even those who actually fit the criteria. For example, if you have a light skin tone, would you date a woman who put “No blacks” on her Tinder bio? She might simply have a legitimate preference for a certain appearance, but putting it upfront is a social faux pas.
So, when does filtering make sense?
1. When you're filtering for a trait that instantly turns any interaction with this person into a negative experience - in other words, a hard dealbreaker. “Convicted child molester" might fall into this category. Political leanings, occupation or beliefs do not.
2. When you have a lot of matches and very little time or money to go on dates with all of them. Let's just say that men who ask for dating advice online are rarely in this situation.
To clarify, I don't suggest you go and swipe right on every profile that comes up on your dating app. This will just get you marked as a bot and shadowbanned. It's more accurate to say that I suggest being more comfortable with the state of uncertainty about your match's personality, and to postpone the judgement of someone's inner world until the moment you actually meet.
For dating app users this mindset in practice looks like swiping based on appearance and not based on description. But in this case you're not treating appearance as more important than personality and beliefs - you're just putting appearance first on dating apps chronologically, in a similar manner as an appetizer which goes before the main course. Ultimately, I hope that whichever approach you choose, you feel happy with your dating life - whether you try lots of appetizers in the hope of finding a place that can cook you a great main course, or you prefer to be a filter feeder.
