Relationships & Awareness
What Are You Dating For?
“You’re either in it for the long run, or in it for the heartbreak,” I told my friend John a few years back during one of our many meandering chats – conversations that were as pointless as they were profound. This particular gem stuck and became our go-to line whenever one of us felt those pesky butterflies for someone new. John’s initial reaction, however, was, “What do you mean? No one really dates for the heartbreak.” And it is true. As the wise Mr. Mercury says – when seeking a relationship, we’re all looking for somebody to love. I have not come across a single person in their sane mind that’s said (or written on their Bumble profile) -“I’m looking for someone to shatter my heart into a million pieces so I can spend months picking them up afterwards”. Here’s the kicker: often, whether consciously or not, we very much do.
What is attraction? What is love? Why are we drawn to some people and avoid others like a traffic jam? Why haven’t all the singers, writers, poets, and artists found a different topic to sing, write, idealise, and paint about, but have all chosen ‘love’ since the dawn of time? What makes it so important that it can build us up or tear us down? And why on Earth did I decide to dive into the mess of a relationship blog instead of writing about the search for the perfect pen or mastering the art of folding laundry?
We’ve all agreed that belonging = important, and relationships = belonging = important. Many psychologists, sociologists, and other -ists will bombard you with explanations about the evolutionary benefits of partnerships and how love is an adaptive mechanism that ensured our survival. Fantastic. Thank you, great-great-cavewoman, for inventing love because you needed your hunter to come back to the cave and help with the kids. But what do we do now, when there are no tigers prowling around on 5th Avenue, just a parade of emotionally insecure people dragging their luggage behind them?
And let’s not forget everyone’s favourite – attachment styles. The hidden cheat codes of our love lives. Whether you’re an anxious chaser of love, an avoidant rolling stone, a disorganised push-pull master or that rare secure unicorn, your attachment style is the puppet master behind your dating decisions. Anxious types might swoon over emotionally unavailable partners because anxiety lights their “spark”, while avoidants dodge intimacy like it’s a telemarketer. Recognising patterns, anyone?
So what’s the magic answer? Awareness. It’s a word tossed around so much it’s practically lost all meaning, like “synergy” or “agile”, but there truly is no other shortcut. We all have our blind spots, and while full awareness might be as utopian as a drama-free reality show, I firmly believe that if we want to survive the emotional Hunger Games of modern dating, we’ve got to start climbing the ladder, one step at a time.
And that’s what ‘in it for the long run or in it for the heartbreak’ boils down to. Are we genuinely ready for something lasting, or are we subconsciously setting ourselves up for another round of heartbreak?
Dating for heartbreak is like signing up for a gym membership you hope will make you work out but know you won’t use. You get sparks for the people who are emotionally unavailable, unreliable, or just plain incompatible with you. Why? Because it’s the ultimate safety net against the vulnerability of truly opening up. It’s like opting for a cheap thrill on the anxious-avoidant rickety rollercoaster – exhilarating, unpredictable, and guaranteed to leave you feeling drained and questioning your choices.
On the other side, being in it for the long run means strapping in with patience for some serious digging. It means facing your fears, confronting your issues, and being willing to grow alongside someone else. Making space for someone to come in with their luggage and put it next to yours, so you can slowly and safely unpack it and throw away the stuff you’ve both outgrown. It’s not the Hollywood blockbuster romance with dramatic music and rain-soaked kisses; it’s the indie film where the couple talks about their feelings over a cup of tea. It’s real, it’s raw, and it’s rewarding (so they say).
Both are legitimate choices. Those intense dopamine-intense dynamics that keep us hooked can sometimes help us figure out what the hell we really want. And maybe after a while, they make us more ready to dive into something deeper and more enduring, given we are aware of our own drives, of course. Awareness helps us navigate the emotional minefield with a bit more grace (and fewer therapy bills) and set our expectations straight so we’re not caught as blindsided on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.
I recently took a break. Not the Ross-and-Rachel we-were-on-a-break kind, but a full-on self-imposed hiatus from all the very many unreasonable forms dating takes nowadays. No swiping, no dating sites, no story likes, no sliding into or accepting slides into DMs, no ‘let’s just meet for a coffee’, no online dates, no bread-crumbing, no zombieing, no casual dates – nada. I sat down, with myself, and decided that I was gonna dissect the part *I* played in the dynamics of my relationships like a frog in science class. And that no matter how long it took, I was going to do it on my own, and not going to get into another quest for a heartbreak.
A. Because it gets (psychologically and emotionally) tiring and I’d had it.
B. Because I didn’t want to hurt another person on the other side who’s also made of flesh and feelings just because I’m “emotionally unavailable”.
It took me circa 6 months to understand, mull & get over the fact that regardless of how I consciously approached my choices before, I had always been in it for the heartbreak. The people I chose or let near me were never bad dates; they were just dates I somehow subconsciously knew were not gonna be my long-run person. I was attracted to the emotionally unavailable because – surprise surprise – I was that too, and we tend to find strange comfort and safety in what is similar & familiar even though it might be the exact thing we say we don’t want. Or I chose to ignore red flags & incompatibilities because I kept them as an exit door for when things just got “too much”. And despite none of this being a conscious decision – I am sorry, and time was needed to close those chapters with myself.
It did take a lot of courage, too. To admit to myself that I not only contributed, but also did the same things I would then complain about. And that my seemingly committed lovey-dovey self-image was in total dissonance with my suppressed fear of losing my freedom, whatever that meant in my head. Then, to decide amongst the possible options of not dating at all, being in it for the heartbreak, or truly giving myself (and someone else) a chance to see how it would be to start something while leaving the door for the long run open, which would mean letting go of the past, not repeating the pattern, and allowing to crush like a 14-year-old before life and love got super complicated because we made them that way and someone hurt us along the way.
And I did decide.
You don’t need to go on an Eat, Pray, Love journey, turn into a hermit, or do a silent meditation retreat to “find yourself.” And don’t get me wrong – I’m not advocating for long breaks or “I can buy myself flowers” vibes (on the contrary, but more on that in another article). Heck, I don’t even know where this is gonna take me, but it’s a tried-and-tested useful prompt for a bit of introspection that might work for you too. Sitting down with yourself, grabbing a pen and paper or talking to the mirror and being honest with yourself: Are you in it or the long run, or in it for the heartbreak?
Thanks for reading.
