I read an article a while back that suggested that all career advice for women is a form of gaslighting, because it puts the focus on women to “fix” themselves to fit a broken system of cronyism and misogyny.

Which is a lot like radical advice to POCs, yes?

Which got me thinking about gaslighting-as-advice and the slippery slope of ‘does this make ALL advice gaslighting?’ Which hurt my head.

So, I thought I’d think things through in a space I know, but that doesn’t focus on such hot-button topics as gender and race: dating.

So, if we make the analogy, all dating advice is pretty much, “Here is what you could do to be better at dating and get what you want.”

And most of it is pretty general, although I do get damn specific, sometimes.

But when I say, “looks don’t matter as much as you think they do,” I can really only be speaking to a majority of people. Because extreme good looks or extreme bad looks will skew results, yes?

MOST of us are pretty average (sometimes, I’ve been quite thrilled with my average looks, other times, I’ve been a bit wistful), and that means that we will likely hook up with people on our similar hotness score (with a range of +/-2), and that the looks won’t matter nearly as much as other factors.

But the outliers? Well. Looks WILL matter more.

That’s a fact.

Same with life circumstances. It IS easier to date when you have free time. So, people with a lot of responsibilities, kids, etc., might have a harder time not only dating, but spending the time to meet the people, develop the relationship to get to the date.

Maybe even to create the profile.

All of this is true.

And the idea that if you do everything right, you will get what you want is false.

In fact, we often do things right and still don’t get the results we want, for factors entirely out of our control.

But, as I said in my writing yesterday, persistence does make a difference.

And today, I’m going to tell you that I DON’T think all dating advice is gaslighting. But a lot of it is NOT universally applicable, and you will have to do what so many people do:

Do your best, play up who you are as a person, hope for a bit of luck, and be persistent.