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Comment by dnautics | Hacker News Reader

"I’m talking about becoming someone with strong moral fiber, a zeal for life, and complete comfort in who they are and what they’re all about."

I think that this is exactly not what you want to do to find a life partner. Whether you are a man or a woman, if you do this, you will find that (almost) all of your potential partners are shallow and extremely disappointing. Moreover, the people you are attracted to will be afraid of getting into a relationship precisely because they are, rightfully, afraid of disappointing you, or, more likely, afraid of feeling disappointed in themselves. You might get lucky, and it would help to be superficially attractive, if you choose to try to meet members of the opposite (or same) sex by improving your inner self.

I'm not saying you shouldn't try to be a better person, I'm just saying, it's terrible dating advice.

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What is great dating advice is to be comfortable about who you are, built on a well-founded confidence that you have a lot to offer a partner, friends, the world. "Moral fiber, a zeal for life, etc..." is on the right track.

When that is achieved your dating options will explode (relative to whatever they are now). The fact that 80% of them are shallow will be irrelevant because the pool of candidates will be much larger.

But if your pool is small and scant of fish, and is destined to always be that way, keeping your standards low would be useful advice, yes.

Huh? So you're suggesting setting the bar low for your inner-self just so you can avoid intimidating partners of a lower standard? That makes no sense to me. If I were single (which I'm not, because I have a satisfying relationship built on mutual admiration), I would want people of low aspirations to self-select themselves out of my dating pool.

Why? People with "low aspirations" are not necessarily bad people, nor unsuitable mates. Everyone needs something different in their lives. All I'm saying is that "self-improvement for the sake of dating" is terrible advice. Most people want to go on dates with people who are attractive, and self-improvement is often an anti-pattern for that. Yes, we'd like to think that everyone has real standards (versus superficial ones), we'd probably even like to think that we set real, personality standards for ourselves, but that doesn't get you out meeting people, and it can be extremely intimidating when you actually do.

It's merely bad advice because that's not what people are looking for. Even people who might intellectually think "oh, I'm looking for a good guy/good gal" are not six times out of ten (that's a made-up statistic)

"Most people want to go on dates with people who are attractive, and self-improvement is often an anti-pattern for that."

I don't see the contradiction. I'm fairly obsessed with self-improvement and my body and health are a big part of that. I'm certainly more attractive now than I was 5 years ago, for example.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. People with low aspirations aren't bad. I just don't view them as particularly strong candidates for dating, or even close friendship, for that matter.

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