Dating Advice, Part 1

When I was four years old, I had a classmate named Nikki whom I really admired. I had this giant crush, and I guess I thought the feeling was mutual. However, before the greatest affair of our pre-school class could ever come to be, I made a pre-emptive move. When Nikki’s mother showed up one day to pick Nikki up, I walked over and told her “I’m sorry ma’am, but I can’t marry your daughter because she isn’t Jewish.” I hope I didn’t offend Nikki or her mother too much, but at an early age, I had an understanding of what I wanted out of a partner.

Fast forward to my early twenties, and I still have a clearly defined picture of what I’m looking for. As far as my life goes, finding a Jewish girl to marry was always the priority. But as a young adult, there are other issues to worry about, like say, a career.

Career paths never worried me growing up. I had some ideas of what I wanted to do, but even leaving undergrad, I wasn’t too worried. Much to the dismay of my parents, I set up one interview before school ended, and if I didn’t get that job the plan was to go into stand-up comedy for a while and work eventually. My parents were delighted that the one interview worked out.

Now, as I study to get my MBA, career is the main focus of my life. I hardly get a chance to log onto JDate, and real life meeting is very limited due to time. However, I did think about dating as I went to an MBA conference last week.

The conference had a number of areas to help work on your resume, as well as elevator pitches, mock interviews, etc. One thing that boggles my mind about all this is how open people are to admitting they need help, and going to get it in terms of career growth. Careers and dating are the two big parts of young adulthood, and yet one is so much more of a taboo topic than the other. “Singles” events are always named otherwise in Dallas, and in order to get real advice on dating one has to do some serious searching. Googling “resume help” is a lot more helpful than googling “dating guidance”.

So why don’t we talk more openly about helping singles get better at what they’re doing? It’s not always a matter of finding the right person; we don’t say to people “that’s okay, you’ll get employed when the right employer accepts you for you”. We know people have to work to sell themselves for a job, doesn’t the same need to be a real conversation for dating? Come back next week for my answer, and in the meantime feel free to discuss in the comments!