I want to start dating casually. How do I turn off the illogical, hopelessly romantic part of my brain? | Leading questions
Are you responding to reality or possibility, asks advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Knowing the difference might help your better judgment win out
How do I start dating casually when I know I’m going to catch feelings even if I don’t want to? My last relationship ended about a year ago and I’ve been taking time for myself and healing and all that good stuff but I now feel as though I’m ready to get back out there.
I haven’t dated casually before and I’d like to try it out, but even if I know it’s a bad idea, there’s going to be a significant part of myself that might fall in love with whoever I spend time with. How do I turn off that completely illogical, hopeless romantic part of my brain?
Eleanor says: With all respect to the hopeless romantic part of your brain, a lot of theories of love would say you’re probably not falling in love with whoever you spend time with. Not really. You’re doing something else which can be every bit as fun and destructive: getting a crush, for example, or what psychologist Dorothy Tennov called limerence – a state that “happens to us” with a “quality that defies control”.
It can be hard to tell the difference between these things and falling in love. They share a lot of the same symptoms. But it’s very important to know which you’re feeling.
Love isn’t, by definition, for everyone we meet. We don’t love everyone we connect with socially, or even feel attracted to. Love responds to what we know; crushes and fixations respond to what we don’t.
When you find yourself having feelings for someone, you can ask yourself if you are responding mainly to possibility or to actuality. Does it happen with everyone? If so there’s a good chance you’re affected by things like newness and potential, rather than the person themselves.
Knowing the difference can be one part of reasoning with the hopelessly romantic part of your brain. If you know you’re reacting to the rush of possibility, that can help debunk the feeling a little. Understanding the feeling of limerence is a little like knowing you’ve eaten a weed brownie. Knowing why you’re feeling this way doesn’t stop the feeling, but at least you don’t think the walls are actually moving. You can understand it as an illusion even if you’re still experiencing it.
You say you want this part of your brain off. The question is, what pulls you back to having these feelings for people, even against your better judgment?
In a sense, catching feelings for every new person is a way of living in our imaginations. Another question might be: what’s wrong with what there is? Why does the fantasy of this next person seem more attractive than your current situation? Of course, I don’t know the answers. Sometimes retreating into fantasy is a way of avoiding bad self-esteem – when we realise that we keep falling for others, it can suggest we’re not as comfortable with ourselves as we thought. Or sometimes we’re just bored. But the basic question is: why is the vision of a possible world around the corner more appealing than the one we’re in now, even though it comes with tremendous uncertainty?
Ask yourself why exactly do you want to avoid this feeling? Dwelling on the answers might help, in the same way that habit forming is easier when we focus on why we want to develop them. Possible answers might include “it’s annoying to be so vulnerable”, “it feels too invasive of your attention”, “it makes your appraisals of yourself go through someone else’s eyes when there’s no reason to think they have a better take on things than you do”.
It’s always a little mystifying why we do things against our better judgment. If you can figure out what keeps pulling you back to these feelings, you might clear some room to resist them.