There is a popular belief today that more experience, even failed experience is better. People like to reference Thomas Edison’s discoveries with the lightbulb to prove this point. While taking failure in stride is a necessary practice in any career, I no longer believe the argument holds water when it comes to dating.

Taking a job for the experience will likely land you many more career prospects in the future. Taking a relationship for the experience is a cruel and manipulative exercise in futility which will not ultimately bring you any closer to finding your forever person. The only acceptable reason to enter into a relationship is because you genuinely believe that it may be your last relationship. Any other goal is a death sentence to the romance. You are dooming yourself and your partner to failure before you’ve even begun.

Some like to argue that this kind of casual companionship is acceptable so long as the goal is just to have fun and both parties agree to it. I disagree. Desensitizing yourself to failure in romance will only deaden your ability to recognize success when it does come. A lifetime of settling for mediocre, seasonal flings will never impart the skills necessary for attracting your future spouse. Learning how to manipulate a person’s feelings is in complete opposition to learning how to love them. If you really do want to find your future spouse you should be loving them as if you’ve already met them by maintaining a virtuous, properly ordered lifestyle. That person is out there in the world somewhere right now, making mistakes of their own and in need of your prayers.

Finding the love of your life is far more difficult than the movies make it out to be. It will likely be one of the greatest tests of your patience. You may have to go on a lot of first dates in order to find your one and only but you never will if you settle into a habit of companionship with the wrong people. It doesn’t matter how pleasant or convenient that companionship may be. If you can’t see yourself marrying that person someday you shouldn’t agree to a second date. 

People like to boast about the quality or quantity of the frogs they’ve kissed as if these make them an expert dater but the only love experts I care about aren’t dating anymore. In the end it doesn’t matter how many almosts, puppy loves or catastrophic mistakes you’ve had. The only one that matters is the one that wasn’t a frog at all. When it comes to romance, getting it wrong is easy. Getting it right is something you’ll only ever do once.