We Are All Guilty Of Relationshopping As We Date

You’ve probably never heard of relationshopping, but we’ve all been guilty of it as we search online and offline for potential mates. From its root words, the term is a combination of relationship and shopping. You probably get what it means already.

Relationshopping Will Never Bring Us Love

In short, relationshopping occurs when you have a checklist for the people you want to date. Please understand that having standards is way different from having a checklist. The checklist focuses more on superficial characteristics instead of ones that truly matter. This is one of the reasons why we cannot go anywhere when we have a checklist in place. Other reasons include:

1. It’s simply not realistic.

Do you think that you’re going to find the perfect person? The one who will check out all of the boxes in your list? He or she will never exist because there will all have small quirks that could annoy the person we will be with.

2. You are limiting yourself.

When you stick to your list strictly, you are limiting yourself from meeting people who could potentially be of interest to you. Think about a pattern. If the pattern never changes, then things will continue to be as they are. If your list did not work for you in the past, then why should it work for you now?

3. The Hot-Cold Empathy Gap

Experts say that we experience the hot-cold empathy gap as we make decisions. When we are in a rational state (the cold phase), we make concrete decisions that seem logical. We plan out our day, or we list down characteristics of the person we want to meet. However, in our hot phase, our emotions kick in. What we initially planned doesn’t end up happening, or we don’t end up doing them because our emotions are involved.

The best thing to do is to do away with your checklist and stop relationshopping. Your standards need to be there, but you need to be more flexible and give people a chance. When you’re open to moving out of your comfort zone, you might just meet someone interesting enough who is worth your time to get to know. For more dating tips, read other posts on the blog.