Be Authentic, Be Dateless
Last year, around this time, I got vulnerable and wrote about my dating life: What if I’m Single Forever became one of the most read stories on my blog. Over the year, I wrote about all the interesting dates I went on. Most of them were surprisingly humorous, some unbearable, and a very few memorable. If you’re one of my regular readers, you must have noticed that all the stories I wrote in the last few months were non-dating related.
So, what happened? Well, I listened to Brené Brown and she ruined my dating life! If you don’t know who she is, go watch her TED Talk (over 56 million views as of today) or read her New York Times bestseller Daring Greatly. She talks about how “authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” So, I took her advice literally and applied it to my dating life. But before I tell you how my dating life got ruined, let me give you a glimpse of what I did prior to that and what made my dating life so colorful.
I haven’t shared this info before, so some of it might come as a surprise. A year ago, before I made my dating profile on Tinder, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, and a few other Chinese dating apps, I asked a few of my closest friends (mostly girls) to help me design a winning profile. “Don’t use your real name, just put Alex,” one of them said (If Brené Brown was there, she would’ve rolled her eyes.) My friends also asked me to enter a fake age (10 years younger than my real age,) “say you’re outgoing” (I’m actually an introvert,) and a lot of other lies. No wonder I attracted all the wrong girls for a year. The only real things on my profile were my photographs. Once I published it, I had no problem getting matches. It felt good. Being unauthentic was the way to go.
There was one problem though. None of the dates really went anywhere. And after a while, I started to get hopeless. Don’t get me wrong, initially it was a lot of fun. And I got to write about it. But eventually it all started to feel pointless. A few months ago, I heard Brené Brown on a podcast, and it made me realize that no wonder I was attracting all the wrong girls into my life. I was not being authentic.
So, I decided to change my dating profile, and replaced all the lies with the truth. I showed the world who I really was. Here, I would have loved to feature a soundtrack with the music rising to a crescendo, but actually the exact opposite happened. There was complete silence. No potential matches. No dates.
WTF! Is my real self that bad? I thought, Or do we all have preconceived notions about certain ‘identities.’
Last week, I changed my profile back to my unauthentic self, and viola, I was back in business. We certainly live in a messed up world, either that, or I’m just hopeless. At the same time, this sudden change didn’t feel right. In the last few months, even though I wasn’t dating, I felt that I had more confidence in myself. But as soon as I changed my profile, I lost that connection. This is not who I am, I thought.
This Saturday evening, I went on my last date of this year-long experiment. It was about time I brought this gongshow to an end. We went for sushi. She reminded me of my ex, not only because she was gorgeous, but because she chewed her food with her mouth open. When a girl is hot, certain things don’t bother me (I’m not perfect.) As I had already decided that this date would end my experiment, regardless of which way it went, I took a risk.
“I have to confess,” I said, “I’m not who I said I was.”
“You are so funny,” she touched my hand and laughed, “are you a spy?”
“I’m not being funny,” I said, “my name is not Alex.”
“Woah,” she whirled her hands around my face, “here comes James Bond 007.”
“My name is Afzal.”
“What’s that, French Canadian?”
“No, Arabic.”
“Are you Arabic?” She jerked back.
“Arabic is a language.”
“So, you’re not Canadian?”
“I am, it’s just my name, it’s an Arabic name.”
“So how can you be Canadian?”
“Never mind,” I said, “let’s eat this sashimi.”
At that point, her loud chewing was getting to me. She didn’t appear that hot anymore. On the other hand, I felt really good by telling her the truth. It was quite apparent that she had a certain viewpoint about Arabs. And I was curious to see what she thought of other races.
“You know, my mom was born in Burma, and my dad was born in India,” I picked up the saki vessel and poured it in her empty cup.
“Where is Burma? In France?” She took a sip of saki.
“It’s actually south of China,” I said.
“I thought you were half French,” she put the last piece of sashimi in her mouth, chewed, and said, “so your dad is Indian. Do all Indians talk with funny accent?”
WTF!!! I chugged the cup of saki. I wanted to keep this an uneventful night, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Do all Chinese people chew with their mouth open and talk at the same time?” I said.
She closed her mouth, swallowed whatever was left in there, picked up the saki vessel and threw it on my face.
I went home, took a hot shower, and then deleted all the dating apps from my phone.
Thank you Brené Brown for inspiring me to be authentic. I will make it a daily practice of letting go of who I think I’m supposed to be and embrace who I am. And most importantly, I will learn to duck just in case a girl ever throws a drink at me again.
