How to Get a Date Worth Keeping by Henry Cloud

Author:Henry Cloud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2019-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

19

Follow a Strategy from Beginning to Middle to End

Tom had just gotten out of his one millionth failed dating relationship. He was good at finding dates, but he was unsuccessful at making a relationship work for very long. He was a “serial monogamous” dater. He would find a woman he liked and stop going out with all others. He would lock in on one woman too quickly.

There is nothing wrong with finding someone you like and stopping the dating of others. This normally happens when you find someone who might be a good candidate for marriage. However, far too many people do not find the right person to get more serious with in the context of going out with enough other people. Such people break up with one exclusive individual, and they don’t date many others before finding the next exclusive relationship. Going out with lots of people would help them to know what they want and to evaluate what they have found. Certainly you can’t be serious with someone and continue dating everyone else. But you can be dating a lot of people in general. And then, when there is one of those you really like, you can get more serious. My point is that people break up with one exclusive one, and don’t date that many people before finding the next one they get exclusive with.

Getting more serious is something that happens when someone “stands out” among the crowd. “There is something different about this one,” you hear relationally successful people say. At that point, the others fade into the background. But it’s too easy for someone to “stand out” if he or she is the only one standing!

So, what I said to Tom was that I wanted him to follow a rule. When he came to me for advice, I made him promise to go out with at least five women at the same time instead of getting serious with one. By “going out,” I didn’t mean getting serious — that is, going out with one woman zillions of times, implying that he was interested when he was not or that there were no others in the picture. I was not advocating any duplicity hurtful to a woman. I wanted Tom to go out on many casual, friendly dates and to tell those women he dated that he was not looking to get serious or exclusive with anyone at this juncture in his life. He was having fun, and if that was cool with someone, it was cool. If they wanted more, tell them he was the wrong guy. Just don’t go from meeting someone to being exclusive with someone with little in between.

Unfortunately, Tom did not follow my advice. He started to, but then he quickly attached himself to another woman, and he went down the same road again. My hope is that he will “get it” at his two millionth relationship, when his dating life is still not working. My point in asking Tom to

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