How do you start dating at 30 when you're a complete beginner?
What do you do when you want to start dating, but putting yourself out there feels like opening yourself up to being judged, categorized, and dismissed? For many people, dating in the age of apps stirs up self-consciousness, uncertainty, and even self-criticism—especially when it feels like you won’t be seen for who you really are or what you have to offer in a relationship.
Haley wrote to me with this question:
“I’m 30 years old and I’ve never had a serious partner. In fact, I’ve never gone on more than two dates with anyone. For the last two years, I’ve been feeling super self-conscious about this. But now that I’ve turned 30, I’m truly convinced that anyone I want to date is going to see this as a major red flag and reject me without ever giving me a chance. This feels like an impossible situation. How am I ever supposed to get a date if never having dated means that no one will date me?”
Dear Haley,
I think your letter is going to resonate with a lot of readers who feel like there’s something about them or their dating history that will mark them as undateable. And also because young adults nowadays are dating later and less often than at any time in the past.
In fact, the Pew Research Center found that among never-married single adults, about 42% of adults under 40 say that they’ve never been in a committed romantic relationship.
So although it might seem like everyone you know has had a serious partner, the reality is that you’re in very good company.
I get that it doesn’t feel that way, though. Culturally, we’ve got a very strict timeline that’s imposed on teenagers and young adults. There are so many expectations, from learning to drive and starting dating, to graduating from high school at 18 and immediately signing up for more school in the form of college.
You’re supposed to know what you want to do for the rest of your life by the time you finish your education. And then you’re supposed to go out and find a professional job.
And, at the same time, you need to get a lot of experience dating and know exactly what you want from relationships, including whether marriage and kids are in your future or not. And you’re supposed to fit yourself into this cultural timeline while also coping with the never-ending stream of societal upheaval both close to home and abroad.
Whether it’s related to dating, school, or work, the pressure exerted by these artificial timelines can easily make it feel like you’ve missed your window of opportunity and now you’re destined for a lifetime of never getting what it is that you want.
I’m not saying that you’re imagining things or that it’s impossible that you might be rejected by potential dating partners for your lack of experience.
The reality is that people are rejected for lots of reasons on apps.
They’ve uploaded photos with overhead lighting and unflattering shadows. Their bio mentions time spent at the gym, or traveling, or being a foodie. They have too many photos with friends or not enough. They have a cat instead of a dog, or vice versa.
Psychologists describe this phenomenon of rapid rejection for unimportant reasons as hyper-evaluation and point to “choice overload” in contemporary dating.
And, to some degree, this makes sense. How on earth are you going to sort through a hundred or more dating options when there’s always so much else to keep up with in life?
At the same time, it’s important not to assume that just because some potential dating partners might see this as a red flag, that all potential partners would see it this way.
First, remember that you’re in good company here, with over one-third of adults in your age range also not having had a serious relationship. Next, try to start seeing your lack of dating experience differently.
Most likely, you’ve been feeling self-conscious about this because you worry that it says something about you as a person—about who you are and your worth as a romantic partner. It’s actually just a neutral fact about you: you don’t have much dating experience. It doesn’t have meaning beyond that.
Not only does this not say anything about you as a person, it also doesn’t have any power to predict the future success and satisfaction that you can find in dating.
Apart from the frequent rejection that’s an inherent part of dating on apps, here’s the real problem as I see it. We are socialized to look at ourselves through others’ eyes. We imagine how others see us, and we start assessing our own worth by anticipating how we’re perceived.
In other words, we hyper-evaluate ourselves, focusing on our flaws as a way to predict potential rejection.
While this can create issues in many areas of life—from friendships and social groups to workplaces—it’s amplified by the choice overload that’s part of current dating culture.
Especially for women, although this can be true for many men as well, there’s also the cultural message that being successful in dating requires that we know how to make ourselves desirable, so that someone else will choose us.
The need to be chosen means that our attention is focused on how others perceive us. In order to be picked, we have to figure out how to make ourselves acceptable and attractive to potential partners.
Not only does feeling this need to be chosen make us even more hyper-evaluative, self-conscious, and self-critical, it also makes rejection feel like a verdict on our value.
When we see rejection as a verdict, we assume rejection by one person also means that we’re more likely to be rejected by others in the future. This isn’t actually true.
But there’s something even more important that happens when we focus on being chosen by others. We lose sight of the reality that we also have the power to choose who we want to date. When we focus on our own power to choose, we’re no longer at the mercy of others’ judgments.
Now, the entire framework of dating changes—from being chosen as desirable or rejected as unworthy—to focusing on fit.
When you’re interested in building a committed relationship with another human, the whole point of dating is to find someone with whom you’re a good fit. While what I’m saying might seem obvious, I know from the conversations I have with those who are out there dating right now that it requires a lot of intention to shift from a mindset of “choose me!” to “are we a good fit for each other?”
And when people approach dating as a process of discovering fit, experiencing rejection by others is received as “you’re not a good fit for me” rather than “you’re no good” or “you’re undesirable.”
So let me ask you something. If someone rejects you for not having dating experience, even before they have a chance to get to know you, is this person a good fit for you? I would say no, they’re not a good fit.
That’s not to say that they’re a bad person. It could be that they had a really bad past dating experience that happened to involve dating someone inexperienced.
Or it might be that they’re experiencing so much choice overload that they don’t have the time or energy to get to know you beyond the most surface-level facts about your past.
Either way, instead of feeling as though you’ve just been judged as not measuring up to some baseline standard of worthiness, you might approach this as someone saving you a lot of time and energy investing in something that wasn’t going to end up going anywhere you want to go.
Fulfilling committed relationships require a good fit between partners. They also require curiosity, patience, openness, and the willingness to invest time and energy in each other.
The reality is that hyper-evaluation and choice overload are built into the system of online dating. The result is that rejections happen quickly, without a lot of thought or information.
Developing resilience is required for navigating this world without getting bruised by frequent rejections and losing your own sense of self-worth.
And although apps are the most common way to find dates these days, that doesn’t mean they’re the only way. Don’t forget to consider other ways that you might meet partners, especially when alternative avenues offer the opportunity for more in-depth encounters.
Depending on your situation, this might mean opening yourself up to meeting others through friends, social circles, your workplace, community events, social hobbies, volunteer organizations, or other community organizations. Then there’s always coffee shops, farmers markets, live music shows, libraries.
The list is truly endless, because it includes anywhere you are likely to find other humans.
Approaching dating in this way requires a spirit of playfulness and exploration. Instead of approaching dating as a referendum on your worth and value, see if you can approach it as an experiment.
Every interaction you have is an opportunity to learn something—about yourself, about the other person, about which circumstances seem to be best suited to meeting people you connect with.
These encounters will help you gain more clarity about how you approach dating and what you’re looking for in a partner who will be a good fit. It takes practice to change your mindset about dating.
At times, you may find yourself feeling fearful and anticipating the possibility of rejection. When you notice this, great. This is your chance to make a conscious effort to move back into a mindset of curiosity, learning, exploration, and practice.
This will work best if you take all the pressure off outcomes.
Sometimes people think that being optimistic about dating requires cheerleading yourself—like rah, rah, tonight I’m definitely going to meet someone special. But this kind of approach is really just a cover for underlying fear and discouragement.
Genuine optimism doesn’t require any particular outcome at any specific time. For example, let’s say that you’ve met another volunteer at your local food bank and made a date for coffee. Approaching this optimistically sounds more like “let’s see what happens” than “this one is going to be the one.”
It’s so important not to assign global meaning to particular outcomes. That means not saying, “I knew it—this is hopeless,” when this one isn’t The One. Responding with optimism might sound like, “Oh well, that’s a bummer. I liked this one. So what did I learn from this experience about what I’m looking for in a partner?”
Dating experience is accumulated over time, and developing clarity about what you’re looking for in a partner will also take time.
Often, discovering what is a good fit involves spending some time with people who help clarify what isn’t.
So here’s my wish for you, Haley. May you give yourself permission to be a beginner and to learn along the way. You’re not behind. And you don’t have to figure everything out all at once. Over time, you’re going to learn more about yourself and know more clearly what you want in a partner.
There’s no prize for figuring this out quickly—only for staying connected to yourself along the way.
~Angela
Ask Angela is an advice column dedicated to the topic of having fulfilling relationships after trauma. Click HERE to submit a question for Angela.
DISCLAIMER: this content is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other licensed health care provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding a medical condition.
about angela Amias, LCSW
Angela Amias, LCSW is a relationship therapist and nationally-recognized expert on trauma and relationships. She’s the co-founder of Alchemy of Love, which provides trauma-informed relationship programs and resources. She’s also the founder of the Institute for Trauma Informed Relationships, which provides training and education to therapists and coaches who want to help their clients heal past wounds and create more fulfilling relationships.
As an expert on trauma and relationships, Angela has been featured in numerous publications, including Today, Oprah, Cosmopolitan, The Independent, Well + Good, Inc., Forbes, Business Insider, Salon, MSN, Women’s Health and the Toronto Sun.
