222: Dating for the First Time in a Long Time

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy, and I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  If you are cheating on your partner, or having an affair, or you’re the “other person,” or you’re engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgments.  Infidelity situations can be a lot of things – they can be exciting, and life-affirming, and amazing in many ways.  And, they can also be incredibly stressful and anxiety-inducing, and they can eat up a LOT of your precious time and energy.  And although riding the infidelity rollercoaster ride might be fun for a while, at some point, you may get sick of your infidelity situation eating up so much of your bandwidth.  When you’re ready to take the bull by the horns and start navigating your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about, I can help you do it.  There are two ways we can work together: you can enroll in my online course, You’re Not the Only One, or we can work together one-on-one via Zoom.  To get started with either option, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  I can’t wait to meet you.

Okay, before we get into today’s main topic, I want to acknowledge that when this episode comes out, we will be in the thick of what some people consider THE HOLIDAYS.  And while infidelity can be difficult to deal with at any time of year, some people find it EXCEPTIONALLY hard to deal with at this time of year.  And if that’s what you’re dealing with right now, I get it.  In years past I’ve recorded podcast episodes about dealing with infidelity during the holidays, so you can dig through the archives and find a number of episodes on holiday-related challenges.  And of course, if you’re hurting and you want my help, enroll in my course, or book yourself an introductory coaching session.  Pain may be an inevitable part of the human experience, but unnecessary suffering is unnecessary!

All right, sometimes the titles I give these episodes make it pretty evident what the episode is going to be about, and this episode is one of those.  We are going to talk about dating for the first time in a long time.  But a lot of what I say today will apply to dating at any stage of your life, so if you’ve somehow found this episode and you’re looking for general dating advice, keep listening.

If you’re wondering why I’m talking about this on my infidelity-focused podcast, here’s the main reason.  I have had, over the years, a good number of clients who are in a committed relationship, and are having an affair, and are having a hard time with their whole situation, and are very convinced that the stakes of their infidelity situation are very high because if both of their relationships didn’t work out, they would end up being single.  And ALONE.  And thus would find themselves in a position of having to get out there and deal with the dating scene. 

And this, for a lot of people, seems like a very, very dire scenario.  A lot of people do not like the idea of encountering the current world of dating.  A lot of people don’t like the idea of dating again after a long period of not dating one bit.  And the dislike of – or absolute terror of – contending with the world of dating is definitely a factor that keeps some people from thinking clearly about what they want to do about their infidelity situation.  I have seen the fear of dating really jam up the gears of a lot of people’s thought processes.  And when people get stuck in their thinking, they don’t take decisive action, or maybe they don’t take any action at all.  Thinking that dating again is bound to be horrible is part of the reason why some people who are engaging in infidelity get stuck and stay stuck. 

So part of why I’m doing this episode is to help reduce the fear of dating you may be feeling.  If you’re in the midst of an infidelity situation, and you want to resolve it to your satisfaction, dealing with your fears is SUPER important.  Any fear you have that is related to your infidelity situation needs to identified and dealt with.  It’s not a problem to have fears!  It’s great to have fears!  But unaddressed fears can keep us stuck in all sorts of weird and undesirable ways.

The other reason why I’m doing this episode is because some people emerge from their infidelity situations single, and they haven’t dated for a long time, and they want to start dating – but although they aren’t afraid of dating per se, they just don’t know how to do it.  Or they THINK they don’t know how to do it. 

And if that’s the position you’re in, I want you to know that you can make your experience of dating whatever you want it to be.

Before we get into the specifics of dating, I want to emphasize something that might sound obvious to you but is NOT obvious to everyone.  And that point is this: you never HAVE to date!  Sometimes people tell me that if their marriage ended and their affair relationship didn’t work out, they would have to get out there and start dating, and they mean that seriously and literally.  And my response to that is, no you don’t!  You never HAVE to date.  That isn’t to say that you’re doomed to be single for the rest of your life.  It’s just to say that at no point in your life do you HAVE to do the dating thing.

Moreover, if you find yourself single for the first time in a long time, there may be great value in dating yourself for a little while before you start dating other people.  What does it mean to date yourself?  A lot of things, including but not limited to, enjoying your own company – or learning how to enjoy your own company, if you don’t yet know what that’s like.  Doing things on your own – and with other people who are not prospective dates – that you enjoy.  Creating a life that you like.  Taking responsibility for having the kinds of experiences you would like to have.  Learn how to fill your own cup.

So often – not always, but often – people go into dating a little desperate.  They’re trying to fill a need.  They’re lonely.  Or they’re afraid of being single.  Or they’re afraid they’ll never be in a committed relationship again.  Or they want confirmation that they’re attractive, and desirable, and worthy of someone else’s love and care and attention.

People often ask me about dating red flags, and when they do, they’re always talking about things that could be considered concerning in OTHER people’s behavior.  But I think the biggest red flag to be aware of when it comes to dating is your own motivations.  If you think you have to date, or you feel desperate to date, or you think you want to date, but you don’t have clear reasons as to why, that is stuff I encourage you to address.  If, upon some reflection, you realize that you’re hell bent on dating because you’re feeling lonely or needy, digest that loneliness and neediness before you start dating.  You are going to have a much better time dating if you go into it with your cup already full.  Or full enough, anyway. 

On the most general level, if you are looking to date because you’re hoping someone else will create your happiness, you’re going to run into trouble – YOU create your happiness.  Your relationships with other people are the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

And on a more specific level, if you’re dating out of desperation, you’re more likely to say yes to things that you don’t truly want to say yes to.  Or put differently, you’re more likely to lower your standards, or change your standards in ways that don’t serve you very well.

So get your relationship with yourself in order!  Maybe it is in pretty good order, and if so, great.  But if you don’t even know what it means to have a relationship with yourself, or if you’re pretty sure your relationship with yourself is not in great shape, I highly recommend that you turn your focus to your relationship with you before you start dabbling in dating.

Having said all of that, let’s say you DON’T feel lonely or desperate.  Let’s say you’re as sure as you can be that you aren’t interested in dating because you’re trying to fill some sort of need.  Let’s say you feel good about your relationship with yourself, and you enjoy your own company, and your life is pretty good… and, you’re also excited to get out there.  You want to meet some new people.  You want to connect with new humans, in all sorts of different ways.  You want to have some fun.  You want to have some sex.  You want to explore all of it.  Or maybe, you know you want a serious relationship, and you want to look for the person you want to have a serious relationship with, and you want to do that intentionally, through dating.  Great.  If you’re ready and willing to start dating, but you don’t know where to start, what do you do?

My recommendation is that before you do anything else, you get as clear as you can on what you want out of the experience of dating.  At this particular moment in time.  For instance, are you looking to meet someone you might want to form a long-term relationship with?  Are you looking for people you might want to have sex with?  Are you just trying to see what dating is like these days, and demystify the whole thing?  There aren’t any right or wrong answers to this question – the point is to just get clear on what YOUR answers are.  When we have vague intentions, we get vague results.  When we have clear intentions, we get clear results.  So if you haven’t thought about it yet, think about it now – what do you want out of the experience of dating?  You can always adjust your ideas about what you want in the future.  By thinking about what you want, you aren’t planning out the rest of your life or anything like that.  You’re just getting clear about what you want in the present and the near-term future, and that is a really important thing to do that a lot of people do NOT do when they’re dating again for the first time in a long time.  These days, what a lot of people do is just get on the apps!  Because that’s just what everyone does these days, right?  Not necessarily… more on that later.

Similarly, I also recommend that you get as clear as you want about WHO you want to date, or what kinds of people you are interested in dating.  And the really cool thing is, you can cast as wide of a net as you want to!  You can say, I’m interested in dating anyone who happens to strike me as even remotely attractive.  You can also get a lot more specific, and say you’re looking for people of a particular gender, age, ethnicity, profession, country of origin, etc.  You may already know that there are some people you just wouldn’t want to spend time with.  Like for me, I would have a hard timing dating an extreme fitness enthusiast.  I quite like exercise, I do care about taking care of my health, but I’m not sure how well I’d do with a super-competitive triathlete.  Similarly, there are certain sexual things that I don’t think I could ever get into.  I do not want to play with other people’s poopy.  I don’t want anyone else to play with my poopy.  I’m not embarrassed about my bodily functions, but if somebody wanted me to shit on them, I don’t think I could do it.  I mean, MAYBE I could if I was totally bombed out of my tree on some very special substances.  But that’s a very big maybe, and moreover, I don’t have any interest in trying.  And that’s not to criticize anyone else’s preferences!  I just don’t have a shit fetish.  Or an extreme exercise fetish.  And I am as sure as I can reasonably be that although I have changed in ways that have surprised me greatly over the years, if for some reason I was to start dating anytime soon, I would rule out shit fetishists and extreme fitness enthusiasts immediately.  Because I know I’m just not interested in that stuff right now.  And my best guess is that the chances of that changing are pretty low.

Now some of you may be thinking that I’m talking about shit fetishes just so I can talk about shit fetishes.  And of course, you’re not entirely wrong, but I’m not just talking about poop just to talk about poop.  Some of you do not know this, but you need to know this: people ARE into pee and poop, not just in terms of going to the bathroom themselves.  They’re into playing around with it.  They’re into sexualizing it.  People are into ALL KINDS OF INTERESTING THINGS.  And so it’s worth checking in with yourself and saying, “If I went on a date with someone, and I really liked them, what could they say that would make me not want to see them again?”

The point of asking yourself this question is to start to get a sense of what your deal-breakers are.  You may already know some of them!  You may know some of your deal-breakers quite well.  But you may have others that you haven’t quite recognized yet.  And that’s okay – one of my beliefs about dating is that it can be a terrific adventure, and a terrific process of discovery, and I’m not saying you should try to figure out EXACTLY what you want and don’t want ahead of time, and scrupulously pursue certain kinds of people and avoid others.  No.  But, you also want to begin to be aware of what’s okay with you and what isn’t – and you can do SOME of that before you go on a single date.

So start to consider – what behaviors might someone display on a date that you think you would like?  What behaviors might someone display on a date that you wouldn’t like?  Having a sense of what you think you like and don’t like doesn’t have to be iron-clad.  It just helps you be more intentional about who you want to spend your time with.  Or how much time you want to spend with someone.  Or whether or not you consider someone’s behavior concerning.

On that note, I want to say that a lot of people talk about “red flags” in dating as if there is a universally agreed upon set of behaviors that are by definition problematic.  I do not see it that way.  One person’s red flag is another person’s blazing green light.  What one person considers an undesirable behavior, or feature, might be attractive to another person.  Or perhaps neutral to another person.  So instead of looking for external guidance on what counts as a red flag and what doesn’t, I encourage you to start thinking about what you are okay with and not okay with in terms of dating behavior.

And again, you can refine these ideas as you go.  If you haven’t been on a single date in 20 years, you might want to say, well, as long as I’m not afraid for my safety when I meet this person, I’m fine with having dinner with them, or hanging out for an hour or two!  No problem!  So what if they talk about their taxidermy collection the whole time, and never ask me a single question about my interests?  I’m just here for the adventure of it!

But if you find yourself going on dates with person after person who talks only about themselves and doesn’t ask you any questions, you might say, hmm, I want to adjust my criteria a little bit.  And you can!  You can refine your sense of what you want as you go!

Another thing I strongly encourage you to consider before you start dating is how enthusiastic about someone do you want to be before you decide to go on a date with them?  Or on a second date with someone?  How attracted to someone do you want to be before you kiss them?  Or take your clothes off with them?  Or have anything that could be considered sex with them?  You get to set the bar for all of this stuff.  Some people are like, “I’m dating for the first time in a long time, I just want some dating experience, I’m not trying to be too selective right now.”  Some people are like, “I have only had sex with two people in the last twenty years, I just want to get out there and have sex with different people and see what it’s like.  As long as I am even remotely attracted to someone, I'm up for pretty much anything.”  And if that’s where you are, that’s great!

But on the other hand, some people are like, “If it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a NO.  If I’m not 100% enthusiastic about going on a first date with someone, I will not do it.  If I am not 100% sure I want to kiss someone, I will not do it.  If I am not 100% attracted to someone, I will not fuck them.”  Etcetera.  This approach is fine, too!

And it’s also fine to be somewhere in the middle – maybe you want to be 70% enthusiastic about someone if you’re going to go on a second date with them.  Whatever!  The point is to have SOME sense of what works for you!  The point is to have SOME sense of what you’re going to say when the person you’ve been having a drink with says, “Hey, do you want to come back to my place?”  Or if you go on a date with someone and the next day they text you and say, “Do you want to get together again?”  You want to start to develop a sense of your own criteria.  Or your own standards. 

Sometimes people think the answers to these kinds of questions are OUT THERE, somewhere.  And by these questions I mean questions like, “How do I know when I should have sex with someone I’ve just started dating?”  Or “How do I know if I want to go on a second date with someone?” or “How do I know if I want to swipe right or swipe left?”  Some people google and google and google in an attempt to answer these kinds of questions.  But here’s the deal, people: answers to these kinds of questions are not OUT THERE.  They’re in you.

You get to decide what’s right for you and what isn’t, when it comes to dating – or anything else in your life.  You get to decide what’s important to you and what isn’t – when it comes to dating, or anything else in your life.  And if you aren’t yet exactly sure what’s right for you or what’s important to you, or what you like or don’t like, or what you’re looking for or what you’d rather avoid, that’s okay!  Start to clarify what you know, and then as you actually start dating, you continue clarifying, bit by bit.

So, to summarize my general pieces of advice.  You never HAVE to date.  If you want to date, get clear on why you want to date, and what you want out of your experience of dating.  Learn how to enjoy your relationship with yourself before you start trying to connect with other people.  If you’re dating out of a sense of need, address those needs yourself rather than expecting someone else to meet them.  Get clear on who you want to connect with, and who you don’t want to connect with.  Get clear on what’s appealing to you and what isn’t.  Get clear on how wide a net you want to cast.  Get clear on how enthusiastic you have to be about someone before you do particular things with them.

Having a sense of what you want out of dating will help you get what you want out of dating.  I know a lot of people have all kinds of dating horror stories.  Don’t worry, I’ve heard them.  And just like anything else in life, dating has the potential to be many things – exciting, great, weird, awful, confusing, you name it.  That’s true, AND, it is also true that when you know what you want to experience, you set yourself up to be able to create that kind of experience for yourself.  Don’t expect to have some magically great experience of dating if you don’t even know what you want out of dating.  Don’t be shocked if you have a weird experience of dating if you haven’t taken the time to clarify your own likes and dislikes.

Now let’s move on to a few specific things I want to address.  I work with a lot of people who have never used dating apps, and are absolutely terrified that if they were to start dating again, they would HAVE to use dating apps.  You probably already know what my response to that is.  It’s quite simple: no you don’t.  You can totally ignore the dating apps.  You can just pretend like they don’t exist.  I’m completely serious.

Let me assure you that I am completely aware that some people really do believe, firmly, that you do in fact HAVE to use dating apps if you want to date in this day and age.  I know that!  But this simply isn’t true in any absolute, objective sense.  No matter what anybody tells you, there is more than one way to skin a cat.  Even if a lot of people are using dating apps these days, that does not mean you need to or have to or should even consider trying it.  It is still completely possible to meet people the old-fashioned way.  More about that in a moment.

But of course, you COULD decide to experiment with the dating apps, even though you might find the idea of doing so a bit strange.  Sometimes strange isn’t bad.  And if you do decide to get on the dating apps, you can be really intentional about how you use them.  That could be a whole podcast episode in and of itself: making use of dating apps INTENTIONALLY.  Maybe I’ll do that one another time.  For now, I’ll just say this: if you do decide to get on the apps, be thoughtful about how you want to use them and what you want to get out of using them.

Now, despite what some people say, it IS possible to meet people by getting out of your house, and participating in the world, and being open to connecting with people.  Get off of your couch.  Go do things that are interesting to you.  Engage with the people you interact with.  Be present when you’re out and about and meeting people.  Participate in social life.  There are ways you can do this well and effectively even if you don’t consider yourself to be a big socializer!  Quantity of engagements do matter, but quality matters, too.

What does this mean more specifically?  Get back into your old hobbies.  Or find a new one.  Or go volunteer.  Or start going to a place of worship, if you do that – or go to a new place of worship, if you’ve been going to the same one for a long time.  If you don’t have to work, get a fun part-time job, just for kicks!  These are just a few examples.  The point is to get out there and do things.

When I tell people to do this, they sometimes say, “Well I tried that.”  And then I ask a few more questions, and it turns out that they, like, went and did some one-off volunteer activity and didn’t connect with anyone immediately and thus declared the whole get out and meet people strategy a failure.

Here’s the deal, people: no matter what dating strategy you employ, it probably isn’t going to get you your desired results instantaneously.  That’s true whether you use dating apps, or work with a matchmaker, or you tell all of your friends you’re available and ask them to set you up with people, or you volunteer twice a week with a nice group of people, or you make a point of talking to five new people a day, somehow, some way.  It may take time to get what you are after.  It may take time and repeated efforts to get what you’re after!  And I encourage you to consider that unproblematic.

There are lots of useful parallels we can draw between the experience of dating and the experience of looking for a job.  And one is, when we’re looking for a job, we MIGHT get really lucky and hit the jackpot and get the first job we apply for.  It could happen.  Or the moment we decide to look for a job, someone we know might say, “Hey, I know someone who needs someone just like you to come and work for them.”  That could happen, too.  But it’s also possible that we’ll have to search for a lot of job postings, and send a lot of resumes out.  I was on Facebook recently and I saw a post from someone I like but don’t know very well, and she was talking about how she recently found a job after having been unemployed for a while.  And she shared that she’d applied for 300 and something jobs before finding the one that she ultimately got – which, she said, is seeming like a terrific fit for her.  Now, there are a lot of questions we could ask about how she approached her job search, and was she being really selective about what she applied for or not, and we could better understand the significance of her number if we had a little more context.  But right now I don’t care about that.  Right now, my point is simply that if we want something, we may have to go after it again and again and again in order to get it.  Not once, not twice, not a dozen times.  Maybe dozens of times.  Maybe hundreds of times.  Not necessarily hundreds of times, but maybe. 

So if you’re just starting dating, and you’re expecting that something amazing is going to happen right away, I want you to consider that it could!  But it also might not!  And that doesn’t mean you need to give up and declare the whole experiment a failure.

That points to another thing I want to address.  I hear a lot of people saying things like, “Oh, dating in my area is the worst.  Dating in my area is ESPECIALLY hard.”  People also say things like, “Well, at my age, all of the good people that I would theoretically be interested in are taken.  Anyone who is single at my age has something wrong with them.”

I want you to be really careful about saying this kind of stuff to yourself.  Even if what you are saying has some truth to it – which it might, but it also might not – telling yourself these kinds of things is not going to help you get what you want.  You want to focus on what is possible, NOT on what you think is impossible.  What I see, over and over again, is that people who are looking to have fun connections with lots of people can find that experience just about anywhere – IF they believe that is available to them!  People who are looking for love can find that just about anywhere – if they believe that is available to them.  People who are looking for a committed relationship can find that just about anywhere – if they believe that is available to them.  When you take responsibility for what you have the power to control, you’ll be amazed by what you can experience.  When you complain that things external to you are not to your liking, and you don’t take responsibility for dealing with those circumstances differently, you’re not likely to be thrilled with what you get.  If you genuinely believe that dating in your area or at your age truly is especially difficult, okay.  Then the question becomes, what are you going to do about that?

The last thing I’m going to touch on today is the matter of your history of infidelity.  If you’re dating again for the first time in a long time in the wake of a gnarly infidelity situation – or a not-so-gnarly infidelity situation, for that matter – you may be wondering if or how or when you should tell people you are dating about that piece of your history.

Assuming you’ve gotten tested for STIs and assuming you’re practicing safer sex and putting all other questions about the possible transmission of microbes aside, my answer to the question of when to talk about your history of infidelity is, it very much depends.

If you’re just meeting people casually, whether it’s for dinner or sex or dinner and sex and you have no intentions of getting seriously involved with them, your history of infidelity is quite possibly irrelevant.  If you’re getting only superficially involved with people, there may not be any reason to discuss your experiences with infidelity.

Some people ask about this because they believe they are tainted by their experiences with infidelity and they need to let anyone and everyone they interact with on any sort of a dating level know about their taint immediately.  Some people think they need to stick a warning label on themselves, or brand themselves with a scarlet letter A.  I do not believe that you need to do this.  Because for one thing, you are NOT tainted.  Okay?  Okay.  Furthermore, everybody has some complicated things in their past.  When you meet someone new, there may come a time when you want to get into the details of your relationship histories with each other, and if and when that happens, that’s great.  But until then, put your best foot forward, and see what you like about the new person you’re getting to know.  Find out if they’re even worthy of hearing about the details of your life before you start sharing them.

Now, some people have told me that when they’re on the dating apps, they see profiles that stipulate “no cheaters!” and they get really freaked out.  There’s a lot I could say about that, but suffice it to say, if somebody wants to write you off before they even meet you, let them.  There are plenty of other fish in the sea.

Okay people, if you have been freaking out about the possibility of dating again after a long time, I hope this episode has helped you dial down the panic.  If you are actually beginning to date again after a long time, I hope this episode helps you do so more intentionally.

If you want my help dealing with your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about, there are two ways you can have me as your coach.  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One.  You can get started with either of those options by going to my website, mariemurphyphd.com, and either way, we’ll find you some relief and a clear path forward.

Thank you all so much for listening!  Have a great day.  Bye for now.