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Comment by billy99k | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of something similar. I dated a girl back in college who was the most miserable and unhappy person I ever met.

But, she would project this niceness and happiness to everyone (She didn't have lots of friends and was always very quiet. Also VERY passive aggressive and judgmental and was deathly afraid of what others thought of her). She also didn't seem to think any of this was a problem. It ended up being very toxic for our relationship and I had a clean break and haven't talked to her for almost a decade.

I checked up on her recently and she now has a podcast related to happiness and how you can be as happiness as her. I seriously doubt she's changed. It's just more projection to the world that she's a happy person.

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There was the Scott Alexander thing recently (in the context of defending polyamory) talking about how if you want information on how to walk, then you'd probably be better talking to the person who has some debilitating physical issue as they've been motivated to think about it long and hard, and find all sorts of tricks and techniques to make it easier, while most people have never even thought about walking. And that many "experts" will fit this model.

I don't think he said a follow up thought I just had, which is that the kind of person who goes looking for walking or happiness podcasts is very likely not in the "just comes naturally demographic" either.

This is good for people that learned how to overcome their issues. However, in my case, I think she is still unhappy, but is so afraid of what others might think of her (she also now has a career), that she has to broadcast to the world that she's happy. I wouldn't want to follow the advice from someone like this.

Would you have dated her at all if she had been honest about how miserable she is up front? If her inherent personality is just miserable, then how else is she supposed to navigate through life?

You work on yourself first, then date. That's for her to figure out. No one owes miserable people a chance. I'm not sure why you're suggesting lying is acceptable just so she can date. Weird opinion.

Perhaps we could call it putting your best self forward to make a good first impression? The advice I've often seen is to treat a date like a job interview - is full honesty expected there? In fact, in a romantic context, is full honesty ever appropriate? If you said something like, we're probably both around 7 on the attractiveness scale, make similar incomes, aren't getting any younger, and probably can't do much better; let's settle for each other - how would that sort of honesty play?

I don't think treating dating like a job interview is a good idea unless you are interviewing them. You can either put your personality out there and be rejected or you can fake it, and then when you do out your actual self out there get rejected later down the road.

The choice is yours!

I agreed with your first comment, but this isn’t quite fair. People put their best foot forward not because they are lying or pretending their negative qualities don’t exist, but because showing the positive ones can often lead someone to overlook and accept the negative ones, whereas leading with the negative rarely works the other way around.

You dress up for interviews, more than you would to go get a coffee, and likely more than an average day at the office. Is that lying?

People also dress up for dates. They wear makeup and nice shoes. They’re not liars; they’re dating.

I always wondered (and still do) what people feel when they dress up to date. I've always thought of it as hiding my true personality. Showing someone different. Playing a role. Does everyone feel like that?

Nope. I don’t spend every day walking around in my best threads. But I do spend some time doing it, and it feels special and important, and it shows I respect the occasion and the other party enough to put in the work. Moreover, it shows that I’m willing to put in the work for something I might care about. None of those are lies.

And all of that makes an impression before anyone has said a word.

I'll note that both your options there end in rejection.

And when to stop working on yourself and start dating? Which metric to fulfill? Unfortunately there are people that are predisposed to certain difficult personality traits. Personality heritability is about 50%. So working on it is a limited affair. Nobody is perfect, and dating is about finding someone who is comfortable with your imperfections and your with theirs. Nobody owes me anything more than basic human rights and dignity. And what I expect I try to give to others.

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