The One Arrow Effect

Greetings, Datology community. This is your host, Candice Thompson, licensed marriage and family therapist, and we are back for another episode.

If you've been following along for a while or started with some of our earlier content, you would know that Matt and I faithfully recorded a season one and two, and then COVID hit, and it's been sporadically dropped bonus episodes ever since for many years. And I'm here to officially announce that this is season three, episode one. So why, you might ask, Candice, are you dedicating time to recording a season three after all these years?

That's a good question, and I want to give you some backstory. So this summer, the last few episodes I recorded was based on having some organizations in the Bay Area collaborate with me on creating singles events. And I wanted to have this platform be a space to rev up that community, market those events and get singles back together in person spaces. And for whatever reason, those two organizations decided not to follow through with those events.

And I got several emails with people hoping that those events were still happening. And I decided to host one in November on my own at a German brew house. And it was actually delightful. About 17 men and women came and we had such a good time. And I have received much positive feedback since then. And so in January, I hosted another event that had over 30 people come. And it seems like this is something that I'm doing now, which is lovely.

When I was single, there were tons of groups on the peninsula in the Bay Area and. For singles. And just so many churches come to mind. Sanctuary was one of them. Reality SF had a huge singles population at the time. Central Peninsula Church had a young adults group. And these groups had hundreds to thousands of singles. And it was so much fun because there was lots of events happening with other people in the same stages of life.

And I made lots of friends and had opportunities to date all sorts of people and learn about myself. And unfortunately, and I think this is because of COVID, those spaces just don't exist. And, you know, those people ended up getting married to one another. And so some of those churches just don't have that large of a population of singles that have come together.

However, I know that you all are out there and I've heard at these events how some of you feel overlooked by your churches for not having these spaces dedicated for this unique season of life. I think it's so important. So my plan is to continue to host these events to provide you all with opportunities to hang out. And it's been just so much fun so far. So the best ways to hear about the events are to follow Dateology on Instagram at dateology underscore events.

And I will post all of the events there. And I also relaunched our website. It is www.dateologypodcast.com, and I'll have event information there as well. So stay tuned. Later on this week, I'll be speaking at Peninsula Bible Church to their young adults group on finding wisdom and freedom in dating.

If you're interested in coming to that, I will put some information in there. In the show notes. So that's what's happening here. It's really exciting, and I'm pretty pumped for season three. Another piece of my career right now is that my LinkedIn has actually been fairly popular. If you want to go follow along there, I talk a lot about mental health, mental health tech, and advocacy for good pay for mental health workers.

And because of that success, I've made a lot of new fun connections with professionals that are also working in the dating sphere. And so next week, I have an author I'm so excited about, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, who is the author of Exaholic, which I've mentioned here on the show in the breakup episode before. It's actually a book I found when I was getting over a breakup, and it absolutely helps me really find some footing over getting over that individual.

And so I'm so excited to have her here and speak with us next week. That episode will drop. And then there's another podcaster who's coming in and other influencers. So this is a really fun time in dateology's history. And I'm hoping some of the topics we can just get more deep thinking about what it looks like to be single later on in life and just more complex topics than maybe we have covered in the past. So please stay connected.

Today's show is going to be about the one arrow effect. And this is also something Matt and I had briefly talked about when we were recording some of our earlier content. And it's this idea that when you're in a community of people, it feels like you only have one shot to date people because you don't want to be known for someone who dates around. How this came up is during the last in-person event, I did some live recording.

And so I asked the question of what do you wish the opposite sex would know about dating? So we're going to listen here to the feedback I got and I'll jump back on and give you my insights. All right. I hear a lot of my single guy friends at church saying, like, well, I don't want to be that guy who asks all the girls out. So it holds them back from even going to ask. So would you rather date the guy that dates multiple women if he was feeling both of the ass?

Because one thing that I hear a lot is this. If you're in a community, you have, like, one shot, like one arrow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So I feel like they have to wait to use that arrow versus trying several women. Well, this goes back to our whole weird hang up around dating is like, whoa, like it's a serious thing. You're literally getting to know someone. Don't even think romantic. Just talk to people and then see if there's commonalities.

And I don't know. I think there's a balance to it, though, to what you said. I think there's a balance. Because if it's a guy that's going out and like they're known for like, hey, I'm going to take you on a date.

Oh shut down go to the next girl hey i'm gonna take you on a date like if it was intentional to be like oh i really i'm like i've gotten to know you like someone in my community gotten to know you i would love to see where this goes would you like to go and then you know if it didn't work out okay and then waited time to be like oh i actually am interested instead of just shooting this shot everywhere then that's that's different right like

intentionally if i knew this guy right if This guy said, oh, he actually really liked her, but it didn't work. Yeah. Okay. I'm okay with that. Oh, yeah. And you're interested in you now or me. I would be okay doing it. And if he realizes that, oh, my gosh, this guy would be great for my other friend. Yeah. Why can't guys advocate for other guys? Yes. There is so much passion in that audio. I absolutely love it. And I hope you can get from the vibe how much fun we had at this event in January.

So this concept, I have heard it many times. It is one thing that holds people back from dating is I don't want to be known in the community as someone who dates around a lot. And I think that's a fair fear. And what I love about these women and what their contribution was to the conversation is there's different ways to do it.

So certainly you have the individuals that go around and you know they ask every person out, could be male or female, and it doesn't feel as special or thoughtful or intentional. And that seems to be quite a turnoff. However, this alternative too, you can hang out with one person.

If you have your sights set on an individual that you have a crush on or want to get to know more, If you hang out with them, especially my recommendation would be as a friend first, go ask them to get coffee or invite them to something that other people are doing where you have an opportunity to get to know them more. And it's not maybe classified as a date yet, although I think dates are fine.

But this is a great way if you're in a large community with a lot of single men and women to decide before making it as intentional or feeling like there's pressure to just casually get to know someone, to hang out, to spend some time with them, and then to decide over that period of time, is this someone I want to ask out more intentionally on a date and get to know exclusively?

If it doesn't feel like that person is someone that you want to date more exclusively, it's easier to stop hanging out with them and to start hanging out with other people in a group. And then once you have your eyes set on another crush, to go through a similar slow process where you're getting to know them as friends and then being able to decide if you want to make the relationship romantic. So I agree with these women. If you're in a community, you don't just have one opportunity to date.

I can think of individuals who are fun and attractive and charismatic who over the course of time dated different individuals within one friend group even because the way that they did it is they waited until they knew that that person was going to be a romantic partner.

And then they would have these long-term dating relationships and when that ended it was like the same thing they would get to know someone else over a period of time and that just seems to be the right way to do it because if you're a christian and you want to date other christians we know that there is not a plethora of us in metropolitan areas certainly you're not alone I think that there are hundreds, at least, of other singles in your age bracket who do follow Jesus authentically.

But you're going to run in the similar circles, and we have to have some grace for the fact that you're probably going to date somebody's friend. I'm going to pause that recording real quick because after listening to it, there's something that I really wanted to say.

And that is whenever I hear church communities being called a meat market, I absolutely hate that term. And here's why. Of course, we want to hang out with individuals in our same season of life. Of course. Yes to being multi-generational. There are benefits to that too. However, the focus here is when you are hanging out with other singles, those people have time to go hiking on a weekend. They have time to stay up late at night. They have time to go to a concert with you.

They are available and they're also looking to hang out and have the energy to to be single and fun and meet others. So if you are listening to this and thinking, I don't want to be a part of a church community where this takes place and everyone's looking to date everyone else, that is such a silly thing and such a silly reason not to be a part of a community because A, I don't know any church community that's actually a meat market. People show up to be with other like-minded individuals.

So we're all going to be honoring God with our lives and we're all following Jesus. Jesus gives us freedom to do all sorts of things, hobbies and careers and friendships and create relationships. So I just want to take that phrase out of the vocabulary and really highlight here the grace that when we're hanging out with other single individuals, yes, you will date someone's friend. And guess what? That is okay. All right, back to my recording. And be mature and wise in how that happens.

If this is a serious relationship that you are in with someone and then you want to date their friend, it could be helpful to have a conversation first with the person that you broke up with and say, hey, we don't want to hurt your feelings or ask the friend to do that. We don't want to hurt your feelings. We really care about you. However, I like so-and-so and we want to get to know one another. There's no way to guarantee sparing people's feelings in the process.

But the hope here in dateology is that you are intentional and authentic with the way that you date and you're doing your part. We can't control how other people are going to feel or respond. But if we come to the table with kindness and real thoughtfulness, then that is all that we can do. So that is the hope for today is to think about the people that are in your sphere. And are you hesitating dating somebody new because of this fear of the one-shot effect?

So, think about it. Ask someone to hang out this week. It doesn't have to be a date. I can think of when I was single so many times that you're kind of interested in someone, but you're not sure. And, you know, they ask you, hey, you want to grab coffee? Hey, do you want to get food after work? Hey, do you want to get breakfast before church?

And the best thing about that is sometimes you hang out with that person and that one hangout filters the person out you just don't click or there's not that much to talk about or there's other you know value system issues that come up that you both walk away knowing in your head like yeah we tried you know no harm no foul you both go your own way and it's easy to see that person in social situations.

Dateology is really supposed to be about freedom in dating. And so part of this freedom is not feeling the pressure for every person to be the one and to feel like you can get to know one another. I also think it's really fun that at the end of that live feedback that we got, the women were saying, you know, also, if you like a girl and you think she'd be better fit for your friend, And, you know, encourage your friend to ask her out.

And that's just a really fun side note. I think that could work, obviously, on both ends, men or women. If you go on a date with someone and you didn't click with them and you think your friend would be a good fit, it never hurts to say, hey, have you thought about hanging out with so-and-so? Again, singleness can be such a fun season in life where you have all this freedom to hang out with other people.

And my commitment to all is to create some of those spaces for you all to be together in fun casual settings and hopefully the dating process can also be have some levity to it and I do know that there is a mix of having fun and feeling disappointed and feeling like. Things might not be working in the time frame that you hoped it would, and there is space for both of those experiences to process through that.

I want to jump in one more time here because I'm such a therapist and it's important to me to pause in this moment and to highlight the real dissonance that exists with the blessings and burdens of every season of life. Based on the day or situation that you are in, your singleness might feel like a blessing, a new opportunity, and like a time of fun. However, based on a number of circumstances, you might be feeling like singleness is a burden.

And it's important to hold the tension of those two different experiences and to just give voice to that reality. And to let you all know that that is so true of life. And this tension of burden and blessing shows up in marriage, shows up in parenting. I'm sure it shows up in your career path and other relationships.

And I don't say that to dismiss it. I honestly believe that God is inviting all of us throughout each season of life to sit within that tension of the days that we feel grateful and want to praise Him for circumstances and the days that things feel hard and that we want to cling to God for comfort and grace to get through those days. So I just wanted to pop in and add that last plug. Thank you so much for tuning in. New episodes will be dropping every Tuesday.

And again, next week will be special guest, author, podcaster, and therapist, Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby. Go check her out. She has an Instagram page and lots of great content on boundaries and attachment, relationships. Rejection, lots of really interesting stuff. And again, her book, Exaholic, is fascinating. The research is around how some breakups can feel almost addictive, like we're addicted to our former partners.

And there's a lot of interesting science behind that. And then she leaves us with some hope in the book of how to break those addictions and to find freedom and acceptance in the process and ability to get over that person and be available for other relationships. So it's really, really fascinating stuff. And honestly, I found her myself getting over a breakup many, many years ago when Dateology had first started.

And I just realized her and I had been chatting on LinkedIn recently, and I just put two and two together that she was author of this book, and she agreed to kindly come on and share some of her wisdom with us. So it's going to be such a treat. Please follow along again, dateology underscore events to learn of upcoming events in the future. And I really hope to see you all in person and to continue following along. Thanks so much. Music.