Dating sucks because you don't play your role

If you struggle to meet people romantically, it might be because you don’t play your role.

In traditional courtship, the roles are:

• Availability: The woman signals availability through the way she holds herself. (An inner and outer posture that says, “Gee I sure wouldn’t mind if the right man bought me a drink right now.”)

• Approach: The man responds by approaching. (“That’s my cue!” [approaches])

Gender norms have opened up, so now anyone can play either role – if you live in a more liberal part of the world.

There’s also the third option we could call mutual escalation, where both people do availability and approach. It’s what a lot of my queer friends default to, but hetero people do it all the time. Picture two people gradually finding their ways closer to one another on a dance floor, responding to one another’s subtle cues. Here’s what this looks like:

Mutual escalation is the one that I do because, honestly, I am a chicken. I’m afraid to do pure approach because being rejected sucks, and this role structure susses out interest in advance. But it has its downsides (see footnote).¹

As for the other roles:

It’s obvious how to play the approach role. The basics are that you just go up to someone and say hey. You don’t need a pickup line; you just need a vibe of genuine curiosity about the other person.² The old infrastructure for approaching has somewhat disintegrated. It’s become harder to meet people at, eg, bars. Instead, I recommend:

1. Making a list of activities that you enjoy or want to explore (eg DnD, meditation, climbing, boardgames, dance, etc).

2. Searching with Google or an LLM to find groups that do those in your city.

3. Approaching people you’re curious about in those groups.

Worst case scenario, now you’ve said hello to someone who shares your interest.

The availability role is more subtle. We often talk about external signs of availability: dressing in ways that say “come flirt with me,” flirty body language, etc. However, I think availability is ultimately more of an internal stance. It’s a vibe that honestly broadcasts, “If you think you’re a match, you can come talk to me.”

For instance, I know several stunning women who dress beautifully, but no one ever approaches them because they put out the vibe of unavailability with their entire being.

By contrast, even though I am not a gorgeous woman, on days when I feel super duper available to being approached, things like this happen:

I get that “playing your role” in this way might sound terrifying.

• Availability: “What if I signal availability and then get approached by creeps???”

• Approach: “What if I come off as creepy???”

First, I would check whether these are your actual concerns. Could it be that you’re not actually afraid of either of these things, but that you’re trying to protect your tender heart from being broken? Hm?

Dating is weird these days.

If you’re dating in your 30s, everyone’s walking around with a ghostly chain-gang of exes who have broken their hearts.

If you’re dating in your 20s, you’ve been so marinated in irony and cynicism that making a sincere connection might feel like exposing your heart to terrifying forces that the culture offers no trustworthy guide for.

I wish I had advice here other than discover your role and play it with courageous sincerity and that energy might eventually attract the type of person you’re looking for. But I don’t! (Although see the footnote for a caveat.)³

“Why should I listen to you?”

Maybe you shouldn’t. I think I’m only a B-minus when it comes to long-term romantic relationships. However, I am world-class at meeting people who I have chemistry with (even if the default outcome for me is that – after a romantic period – we just become close long-term friends).

“But I don’t want to ‘play my role.’ I just want to meet people.”

Then boy do I have the tweet for you:

1. Downsides of the mutual escalation approach:

• Higher skill barrier: It requires both people to be good at understanding subtle cues from the other person (which are often deliberately obscured by plausible deniability). For example: did they just move next to me at the snack table because they’re signaling interest, or did they just want a snack?

• Illegibility: Most people operate in the more conventional approach-availability role structure. Mutual escalation sometimes doesn’t occur as a possibility for these people. I’ve spoken to women who figured I was rejecting them because I didn’t just immediately approach after an initial flirtatious glance. Meanwhile, I was waiting for the mutual escalation dance to happen, and it just wasn’t happening.

• Missed opportunities: Mutual escalation doesn’t work for the roughly one time per week I fall in love with some random person walking down the street. It only works in environments that are conducive to slower approaches.

2. Granted, you can still succeed at approaching up without feeling curiosity about the person being approached. But that’s probably not a recipe for a good relationship. Signaling desire without curiosity means either (a) you don’t take the other person as a serious mate prospect or (b) you’re overconfident about whether there’s chemistry before approaching; you’re projecting.

3. Actually I do have advice: if you like to dance or think you could become someone who does, social dancing makes the whole thing much easier. You get a low stakes wait to train playing-your-role across many iterations. Moreover, there are few better ways to test out chemistry than dancing. I can often tell in the first few seconds of dancing whether I’m attracted to someone, whereas I really am bad at this with the apps.

“But I suck at dance moves.” Me too! You’re in luck: