There's this rhetoric that is posted around dating forums and topics that you have to continually improve yourself in order to find someone. Not all of it is bad advice, but a lot of it carries vague sentiments that are lost in translation when the advice is dispensed and creates this false idea that you have to improve yourself before you can ever start dating. Firstly, I'm not attacking self-improvement as an activity, because improving yourself is something that everyone should look into and do. My problem is what the advice implies.
Take your standard person on /r/dating_advice who can't find a date and makes a thread about their lack of success. Or in general, someone who takes a step back at their lovelife and questions why they aren't dating anyone. You can already picture some of the responses involving self-improvement. However well-intended this advice may have been, it can make the recipient feel like they aren't good enough. You know, "you can't find anyone? It's because you haven't improved yourself enough. Improve yourself." Books such as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson and How to be Happy by Derren Brown actually go into this phenomenon in a little bit more depth (albeit not always specifically to dating), and talk about how this kind of advice backfires. Instead of self-improvement involving bettering yourself and its being a positive process, you frame yourself as not good enough and therefore someone who has to improve before they're good enough. You have to do away with the bad to be part of the good, that kind of thinking. This thinking can be applied to dating, too: if we are framing a relationship as something that is achieved through self-improvement, one can end up basing their self-worth on their dating life. It doesn't take a genius to realise how damaging this mindset is: you immediately start to feel like you aren't valuable as a person if you are unsuccessful with dating.
This is where my point of view comes in.
To me, most of you are good enough for a relationship already. You do need to be mostly comfortable with who you are otherwise you'll bring in problems to any future relationship, and you need a baseline of stability, hygiene, and human decency, but you do not need to be highly improved like armchair dating gurus claim. Self-improvement only increases your chances and is mostly about feeling better about yourself, which can attract other people.
Let's face it, most people have dates and relationships. Average people find love all of the time. Teenagers date all of the time, and most people I have met have had several (even if they were short-lived) relationships. If you look at these people, you'll notice that they have not reached an advanced stage of self-improvement. Many of them haven't even partaken a quest for improving themselves, they have just lived their lives. Every one of these individuals has their own set problems and insecurities, and many of them have desirable traits that their partners clearly love about them. And the truth is that you probably have a lot more to offer than you think, very much like how these ordinary people have. Working on yourselves would put you in a better predicament, but it is not the catalyst that makes you dateable as opposed to previously undateable. You have value, you just haven't applied it in the right way or let other people see it.
Working out, being well-read and travelled, volunteering, learning a language, playing an instrument, etc. are all respectable activities. Doing these things are conducive to good physical and mental health, and going to therapy is something that never hurts either if you have unresolved problems. They will probably increase your chances of finding someone and I strongly encourage these things if you really want to do them, but they are not everything if dating is so commonplace for ordinary, average people. A lot of problems with dating are having a fragmented social network or living a life that isn't conducive to meeting new people on the regular, not taking enough chances, your location, and just plain bad luck. This does not speak volumes about you as a person. You aren't bad, you just haven't dated / don't currently date. Yet.
So for God's sake, stop being so hard on yourselves with this advice and stop taking it so literally. You do not need to be perfect or the best of the best, or even great. You are mostly likely good enough for a relationship as you are if you consider yourself to be in decent shape, relatively well read, have hobbies and interests, and are somewhat stable. You probably have a lot to offer to the ordinary person if you know how to express it. Just don't expect another person to be your sole source of happiness.
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