- Do not project your hopes and dreams *and your own personality traits* onto other people.
- Trust everyone, but trust no one.
- Do not listen to what they say – rather watch what they do.
- Never go into a date thinking “this could be the one.”
- Date with no intent other than getting the experience under your belt of going on a lot of first dates.
I could probably write a doctoral dissertation on this topic, but the items above are really the key pieces.
Yes, I’m a cynic, but I’m an optimistic one. I won’t say I give people the benefit of the doubt, but I withhold judgment in either direction. It’s been said to me by many men I’ve dated that I am hard to get a hook into. Some of that is just literally who and how I am, but it’s also a skill set that has been developed over 40+ years of dating—a watch and wait, if you will.
If you let your libido, your chemical twitterpation, your anxiety to be paired up, or your own insecurities about yourself make decisions for you, and you don’t learn from those mistakes, you will be doomed to repeat them. You will, at best, be constantly broken-hearted and, at worst, put yourself in real danger (women in particular).