How to Not Die Alone by Logan Ury

Author:Logan Ury
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

5) Play.

Think back to the best date you’ve ever had. Perhaps you met up at a tequila bar, ate perfectly cooked carnitas tacos, and sipped spicy margarita after spicy margarita, whispering increasingly flirty things in each other’s ears, until it felt like you were the only people there, which, eventually, you were? Or did you go for a late-night walk, confess your fears about your fraught relationship with your brother, and then have him kiss away your tears, which transitioned to a full-on make-out, pressed up against your door?

What made your best date so great? Probably not the fact that your companion satisfied eight of your top ten criteria for a partner. You probably had fun! And yet fun is rarely something we build into our dates.

Enough with these robotic “press play” dates. Let’s make your dates about play.

What comes to mind when you hear the word “play”? Little kids running around a playground? Maybe you think dating is serious—you want to find a partner yesterday—and you simply don’t have time to play around.

But play isn’t just for kids at recess. And playing isn’t the same as playing games. In fact, it’s the opposite. Playing games involves deceit and misdirection. It’s a waste of time, because your love interest will discover at some point who you really are, and then what? Play, on the other hand, involves being a present, honest version of yourself—just a little lighter.

In an article in the New York Times called “Taking Playtime Seriously,” Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, a professor of psychology at New York University, explained it this way: “Play is not a specific activity, it’s an approach to learning, an engaged, fun, curious way of discovering your world.” Play is intrinsically motivated—that means it’s for its own sake, rather than achieving a goal.

Let’s say you’re on a date in the park. You might play by looking around and coming up with backstories for the people nearby. You could use these improvisational backstories to start analyzing which couples you think will last and which will break up—and why. Or you could run around and see how many dogs you can pet in fifteen minutes.

I understand this approach can feel a bit forced at first. Instead of pretending this is how you usually behave, try being self-deprecating about it: “Hey, this might sound a little strange, but what if we tried…” You’ll get points for creativity even if the person declines to participate.

Have fun. Be silly. Make a joke. Humor is a great tool to create a sense of play. When we laugh, our brains release a happy cocktail of hormones, changing our psychology. Laughing releases oxytocin—the same bonding hormone released during breast-feeding—and makes us trust the other person more. (And if it’s oxytocin we’re after, laughing is a more socially appropriate activity on a first date than breast-feeding.) Laughter lowers levels of the stress hormone cortisol, allowing us to relax. Laughter also creates a dopamine hit, activating our brain’s pleasure centers. It reinforces our behavior and makes us want to go back for more.

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