Heads up: This is not really a post about rationality. That said, there are few times in your life when you are more prone to biases and emotional overrides than when you engage in dating. 

We are emotional creatures above all. Knowing principles of rational thinking and tactics for overcoming biased thinking will not protect you from emotional triggers. That's why we structure our lives strategically to begin with, instead of just improvising. 

Practical > Romantic.

As a rationalist, you want to taboo the word romantic altogether. 

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Welcome! This is a unisex guide. Where there is gender specific advice, it is mentioned explicitly.

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One of my goals in life is to have my existence provide positive net value to humanity - or at least to selected subsets of humanity. Here I wanted to write about something that I have significant expertise in, which is also a vastly underestimated and overlooked topic in the context of human life in general. According to me at least. Yes you got it right from the headline: this is about dating. 

This is a beginner-friendly post. Although comprehensive enough, the post is really more of a primer to get you to reflect over your dating life and understand why this is worth your time, rather than a fully fleshed out introduction to all relevant concepts you may wish to consider while optimizing dating. 

The primary aim of this post is to make you think rationally about dating and why it matters. The secondary aim is to give you some hints on what you may want to be doing, if your end goal is a committed relationship that makes you more happy and/or more efficient in your life pursuits. The third aim is to make you understand some core principles related to the topic. 

Dating matters

Dating matters a lot, both to us personally and to society as a whole. We are social animals. If we are good at dating, then our happiness increases at least while we are occupied with dating, which is in itself valuable. Our life expectancy and general health also increases.

I strongly recommend that you have a goal to be happy; if nothing else, it helps with dating too. So, there's a nice feedback loop. For more on why happiness matters, see How to be happy and Pain is not the unit of effort.

Behind the fun of it there is also the point of it. If we excel at dating, then our chances to establish healthy, meaningful relationships also go up. This is helpful both to us and to society. That healthy relationships are useful is pretty self-explanatory. They improve family life, improve general social cohesion and cooperation, provide a cost effective way of life, can create lasting happiness and can help to raise the next generation as well as possible. I don't think I need to elaborate further.

Finally, I want to remind you that mating behaviors are by default genetically hardcoded into all of us, so we all have to deal with them sooner or later. Suppressing our sexuality or our built-in social drivers only cause psychological problems down the road. And being in control of our general behavior is better than not being in control, most of the time. 

A short introduction to the concept of dating & dating coaches & me (SKIPPABLE)

I am a dating coach, among other things. 

I have made most of the classic mistakes myself before I even turned 25. I have had heartbreak and loss. That's when I started studying the concepts of dating, seduction and romantic relationships for years, sometimes casually, sometimes seriously. Now I occasionally offer coaching on dating. 

Since that became something that I want to do, I have also purchased online courses for industry reference. I have taken an online course in how to coach others using Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy and received a little certificate. I am a social natural by disposition. I have social intelligence, (whose ques I frequently ignore.) Finally, I have a M.Sci. with cell- molecular biology as main subjects and I have leveraged that education towards understanding social and sexual dynamics. 

These are my current best credentials for calling myself a dating coach, and that's pretty much how that works. If I coach on the topic of dating, that makes me a dating coach. 

The point of all of this is that there is no formal authority in the world of dating. This is not very surprising, as the word itself lacks a clear-cut definition. 

So what is dating then?

Let's backtrack. The etymology of dating is linked to the word "date". The word "date" is relatively new. It was allegedly mentioned as early as 1896 by columnist George Ade. The source booklet is found here but I have not read it myself. I refer to the Wikipedia article on dating. I do find the time period probable. Anyway, today we use the word "dating" in a much wider sense. 

I usually introduce the concept of "dating" as something along the lines of 'the current paradigm of socializing with romantic & sexual intent, preceding a fully committed relationship'. Many of the self-proclaimed dating coaches you would find online, are not even interested in relationships, so this checks out. 

For the purpose of this article, dating means engaging in activities with romantic and sexual intentions, prior to long-term partnership commitments. You get the gist. This is what we will roll with. It will do for now.

One more thing.

Dating coaches don't come with a University diploma. The same is generally true for relationships coaches too, so I suggest that you evaluate all advice related to your love life with a certain amount of skepticism and a large dose of critical thinking. Still, remain open minded to the possibility that you can learn something valuable from those rare souls who dare try to help others with their love lives. Just make sure they are genuinely there to help. 

On that note... 

...When it comes to the ability to initially attract a romantic partner, remember this: beyond biological factors mostly outside your control, charisma and social skills are important factors in dating success. But these factors are not frequently broken down into comprehensible pieces, by say, rationalists or scientists. If you get advice by say a friend who is good at this stuff, you cannot easily look it up in a peer reviewed article and logically evaluate the advice after hearing about it (not to mention how most of published popular psychological research is unreliable due to weak statistics, too lax p-values, p-hacking and a general lack of reproducibility). Therefore, there is something to be said for any kind of social success record that promotes the authority of the advice giver. Also, you can perform experiments to test these ideas in the field. 

Part 1 - The Goal of Dating

It is generally a good idea to start with a goal. If you are good at setting goals, becoming strategic in how you pursue them becomes much easier.  In fact, goal setting is intrinsic to strategy. This is not trivial! Humans are not automatically good at setting goals and humans are not automatically strategic.

Let's say that "dating" as a concept refers to "'the current liberal paradigm of socializing with romantic & sexual intent however we like, prior to entering fully committed relationship'". This definition works at least in developed countries. Or to put it more succinctly: the current era of dating is the romantic paradigm following the courtship era. More to the point, a general understanding is that people nowadays tend to chat up people they find attractive, and go on dates with people they like, prior to marrying them.

So dating is not the same as courtship, not the same as arranged marriages, but rather getting to know people you like before you marry them or otherwise enter into a companionship with lasting commitments. 

Then,

What is the goal of dating, is a suboptimal question to ask the void, given how vague the definition of dating is. 

Instead I will ask you,

 What are your dating goals? And what is your end goal?

These are important question. Most people do not have a clear idea of what they want in life, whether it is related to romance, career or money. But if you want a good life partner at some point, it makes a lot of sense to define what a good life partner is to you. 

I recommend that you define to yourself what kind of partner you are looking for. For example, you can list the roles of a partner that you are looking for. Then you, ah, prioritize them. For example: 1) A good co-parent  2) A fun conversational partner and 3) A helper in the household. This could be one such list. I notice here that a good lover is not included. 

Now, make no mistake, this is not enough. You can't pinpoint a life partner so easily. Your preferences may also change over time as you collect experience. But this is better than nothing. Ideally, you want to know yourself pretty well, including your goals and preferences, before you, I don't know, commit to share your life with another person indefinitely. 

It is important to start with a solid goal in mind, because otherwise you are likely to just end up wherever your instincts take you. Do not doubt this fact, for your instincts are strong.

Don't rely on instinct 

Nature has a path for you, but it doesn't care where you end up. 

(Society and Religion may have plans for you too, but you may not like those plans either.) 

As a species/genus of species, we have survived for quite some time now. This was not thanks to careful planning or due to humans being the chosen ones. Rather, our success is owed to randomness and to our general fitness, brought about by evolution. This was made possible thanks to our inclination to procreate. We always spent time and energy on having sex and babies, because that's what we instinctively wanted to do. This explains why you and I are here, from a biological point of view. 

Along the way we happened to evolve the neocortex, self-reflection, strategical thinking and condoms. 

Now, you would think that people who casually flirt without much thought behind it, are acting on instinct still to this day. You would be right. If you guess that they often have sexual motives, you are right again. The sex drive is very, very strong in us, just like it is in other animals. But despite this, many adults don't even know themselves what kind of sex life they would like to have! At least that's my impression, based on various evidence I have picked up here and there, and based on the commonly known fact in psychology that many people suppress their sexual desires out of shame. If true, this goes to show how blind our instincts are.

Following your instincts and letting primal attraction triggers, oxytocin and inherited patterns do the work for you, can be a efficient way of bonding with someone, but it will likely not be enough to secure a good companion in this day and age. 

Our instincts are occupied with finding a match, any match, before the fertility window closes. This is important, but it should not be the only factor that matters...

...especially since there are so many more people alive now and so many more potential matches today than thousands of years ago!

 Modern humans usually get their careers going in their 30s and 40s, which is late from the Point Of View of our ancestors, given that the average human life span for most of our past did not reach beyond these decades. We can debate the exact life span throughout (pre-)history, but there is large consensus that genetically speaking, we are meant to have babies way earlier than we do today. We are meant to raise them into adults much faster too. Our genes are probably surprised at how long we live nowadays (this is a matter of speech - our genes are not sentient in such a way). This alone should hopefully be enough to convince you, that our primal biology is not optimized for the modern pace of life. Society doesn't want people under 18 to start making babies.

Similarly, the complex desires and utility functions (or simply values) that we have today in our "modern" and "enlightened" societies, are poorly aligned with the ways of times long past, just like the challenges of the stone age differ significantly from those today. A man living in the bronze age (so a fairly modern man) was probably well adapted to outsmarting roaming bears and avoiding pissing off the clan leader, but those skills may be poorly suited for researching cancer while juggling a fifteen-year-old marriage and university politics. 

If you disregard thinking about your goals in advance and follow you instincts, then you take a big gamble. 

If you chase the hot girl/guy without a second thought, you may unexpectedly "win" and initially have a lot of... fun. (Wait, what? That's awesome!) This in turn, may lead to a relationship. (Wow! How great is that?) But the relationship was a hasty decision. It may transform into an unhappy relationship. (Oh. I see.) This in turn, may cause severe anxiety, possibly depression, and put heavy brakes on your career and personal development. (...)

This is not what we want. We want you to be in a highly rewarding relationship, not just a relationship. Sure, even if you are perfect and even if you set out with good intentions, you may happen to end up in a failing relationship anyway, that's normal. But the odds of that NOT happening if you plan first, are much in your favour. The odds of success are higher. Over the course of a life, your chances to score jackpot once, (which if you adhere to monogamy is all it allegedly takes,) are much higher if you start out right every time. 

Your goal is to get to know the other person, not make them fall in love with you

Active dating should be mostly about looking for and testing compatibility in people you already find attractive. Dating should not be about generating attraction with people who don't make a good match. Sure, you may want to highlight yourself to other people, but you shouldn't actually change yourself to make them like you. You look for attraction, then, because you don't rely on instincts, you look for basic compatibility. Then you test it.

Yes, it is possible to learn to charm and seduce people without inherently being especially attractive to them or compatible with them, but why would you focus on this, especially as a long-term strategy? It makes no sense.

Yes, it is possible to put a lot of effort into becoming generally speaking more attractive to a large number of people. This is an effective way to find people who want to date you. But it is more efficient to become more attractive to the right kind of people, if your goal is a compatible partner.

My suggested to-do list before you enter committed relationships

1. Establish clear modes of communication
2. Make sure both of you are capable of conflict resolution; make sure you are able to accept mistakes and give apologies (you would think this is an easy one)
3. Make your life priorities clear to each other and make sure they are not in direct conflict (ideally you have aligned goals or set common goals)
4. Establish/make clear personal boundaries
5. Discuss family and make strategies to handle family
6. Discuss friends and the importance of friendship
7. Talk about how you like to rest & recover and make sure you see eye to eye on this
8.  If you have a sexual relation, which I highly recommend if you want to live together as romantic partner, talk about sex and make sure you both strive for a good sex life (a sex life maintains your bond through the power of biochemistry)

Part Two - Dating Algorithms 

The general algorithm for finding someone

Passive dating is about stuff you do before going on dates and actively trying to charm and seduce people. One of the most important things here is to learn about dating and training your social skills. It's also about becoming attractive. 

If you want to attract more people, become more attractive. This is somewhat of a specialty of mine, but since this is another complex topic, let's just say that this is doing anything that increases how much the potential mates appreciate you and are drawn to you. Let's divide it into two parts.

a) Instantly recognizable attraction

You can achieve this by working out* and shaping your body, by minding your body language, by dressing better, by becoming more charming and by by being open to flirtations. The last one merits further elaboration. Basically, if you are super attractive, but tired, grumpy and pushing everyone away, you will not come across nearly as attractive as before. If instead you are open, flirting and welcoming, it enhances your inherent attractive qualities.

*Of these, I want to point out the importance of prioritizing physical exercise and health in yourself and in your partners. We live longer and longer, and taking care of your body with physical exercise and proper nutrition will expand expected life span, increase health in old age, and prevent mental illness and mental decline. Therefore exercise is one of the easiest and best habits to screen for in general (nutrition is harder to screen for early on, and sleep is even harder to screen for).

b) Long-term value

You can increase your attractiveness by becoming more successful in a recognizable way and by becoming a better person. Work on your goals, your career, your finances, your temperament, etc. Being a good lover would also go here.

I really won't elaborate further here, and please don't nitpick. Understand that when we speak of attraction in a social context, we are dealing with evolution, core human psychology and other heavy stuff. Keep it simple, keep it applicable.

Once you have optimized your attractiveness to a level you find reasonable, you need to expose yourself to other people.

The general algorithm for finding a potential mate is then a repeating function. I put it in pseudocode below. 

	
	While X !== Potential_Partner(X):
		run Become_More_Attractive()
		run Expose_yourself_To_More_People()

You basically run through a bunch of people and then look at their character, to see if they could be a potential partner. While you don't find anyone, you work on becoming more attractive and increasing your exposure. 

Note: I made a much more accurate pseudocode as well initially, with recursive lists and function outputs. This got way too complex real fast.

You get the idea. You can build on this simple template. You can modify it to be more specific.

If you want to attract the right people, then work on becoming more attractive to them. 

Since you want the right people to be people who like the real you, this roughly translates into becoming the best version of yourself. Then, my expert advice is to tune down the best version of yourself slightly in areas where you could be more socially pleasing instead, until you have secured a date or two. 

You need to test the match once you have secured it, and engaged with your potential partner. This is active dating, like going on dates and hooking up. 

For x in potential_partners[]:
	If x == Attractive:
		If x == Compatible_(basic_stuff):
			run ActivateShowIntent
			run ActivateCharm(Max)
			run CommitmentTests(ALL)
		Else:
			pass
	Else:
		pass
print("You tried")	
run ChangeSomething(YOU)

When you fail, consider using the try harder option.

How to increase positive exposure to the right women as a heterosexual man

This piece of advice is for heterosexual men. If you are not, you may still get some ideas from it. 

I structure this as a simple step-by-step list. You can carry out these step continuously.

1. Find your social tribes. Find your people. Prioritize tribes where you can meet people in real life, with a strong preference.

   (can take a while)

2. Sort your tribes in ascending order based on how many women there are in them (more women = higher priority)
3. Leverage the women, then the men, to network with more single women and expand your tribes
4. Sort your social tribes with women based on how many single women are in them (estimate frequency) 
5. Sort your social tribes with single women based on expected compatibility
6. Look for potential mates in your social tribes in order, starting with the most promising tribe

Step 7: If this failed, leverage ALL tribes (including men only) to find more people to interact with

How to increase positive exposure to the right men as a heterosexual woman

Overcome your built in instincts and fears and take control over the initiative. 

1. Approach good men you are attracted to on your own, instead of waiting for them to make the first move
   
   (If they are put off by this, they are not worth your time)

There is no step two. This alone will help you gain valuable experience initially.

Advanced: Striking a balance

The concept I want to introduce now is useful, but a bit theoretical. It is the idea that in dating, you are constantly performing balancing acts. The best outcome is achieved by not being too strict with any criteria, but not allowing too much slack either. 

For example, you don't want to look for perfect compatibility, but you don't want to date just about anyone either. Similarly, you want to be charming, but you don't want to be sleazy. You want to take charge and be driven (especially as a man you want to be able to lead) but you don't want to be pushy or desperate. There is a pressure in both directions, and you must find the balance.

In sexual selection, males benefit from frequent mating and mating monopolies, whereas females benefit from quality control and only mating with the best males. This fundamental dynamic creates the original competition.

As you can see, this pressure to balance is a general principle, or perhaps more accurately, a general feature of self-optimizing, dynamic systems that follow the principles of this universe. There is a great article on this topic here on LessWrong: Studies On Slack. But it is slightly advanced. It's perfect for someone who studied natural science at an undergrad level though, especially a biologist or a biochemist. I believe that understanding this can help you significantly.

If you are into mathematics, I can introduce the idea further by saying that in combinatorics, the full potential (maximum combinations, maximum number of outcomes) for a set is found in the middle. If you have six elements, the no. of combinations is at a maximum when you combine 3 out of 6 elements. 

In the real world, such as in nature, a balance between slack and competition allows for the most outcomes. With a larger sample space, there is more potential for something truly useful to arise. This is the starting point to keep in mind.

Part 3 -When you are in a relationship

How to maintain and build on a relationship is beyond the scope of this guide. But there is one thing you should do every now and then, that ties into the point of dating. That thing is performing checks.

Ask yourself:

• Are you happy?
• Is this what you wanted?
• Have you tried your best?

This is so important that I included it with its own header and all. 

If the relationship is not working out, find a way to move on. No really, avoid the sunk cost fallacy. Please read the below articles.

Staring into the abyss as a core life skill

The Importance of Saying "Oops"

Good luck!