In a twisted moment of irony when an unemployed friend snapped at me for giving her advice on job searching with a “easy for you to say when you already have a cushy job that pays the bills”, it dawned on me just how similar it had been to my frustration with the same well-intentioned, bland advice I had been given when dating.
And how it all stems from one decision:
Would I rather be happy thinking I got the good things in my life by working hard and having earned them? Or be uncomfortable knowing that most of it came from factors outside my control?
And of course it’s the former. I did work hard to get that “cushy job”, and in a lot of cases, people in successful couples did work hard to find them too. But then there’s the people who also work hard and don’t get those same results. And we can either choose to believe they are still doing things wrong. That they aren’t applying to enough jobs or that they just try a new class instead of dating apps.
Because the alternative of realizing that we are either incapable or unwilling to do anything about the inequalities in life is just too uncomfortable to bear.
It doesn’t mean *everything* is outside our control. But, much like it has long been studied that meritocracy in organizations and social upward mobility may not be as influenced by our actions as we think, perhaps it would be best to apply that same logic to the dating world.
TL;DR: It’s really not all you. People just want to believe it because it would make them uncomfortable to realize the inequalities otherwise.