The Hermit’s Guiding to Modern Dating: Don’t Hunt

My marriage was a yikes marriage. Life is like scaling the side of a mountain, full of risks, challenges, and triumphs, and my marriage made me look down. I hate heights. It was one of those relationships where, once you discovered it was wrong, you wondered how you ever saw it as right. And I have no doubt she feels the same way.

I knew why she made the mistake of falling for me. She desperately wanted to be married, and her engagement to another man had suddenly ended only two months before meeting me. Consequently, when she met me and found me to be an okay guy, she immediately transformed all of the spots, boils, and carbuncles that conspire to make my general appearance and personality, and transformed them into the man of her dreams. She was wrong.

I knew why I made the mistake of falling for her – she had large breasts.

I’m being glib, but looking back, I can’t identify another feature possessed by my ex that could have caused me to make the horrible mistake(s) that I did. Most likely it was because I was of a certain age, and she was of a certain type, and I figured, “better now than never.”

We were both hunting for something; her, an ideal husband, and me, an attractive woman to settle down with. But in hunting, we were ignoring what was actually in front of us; me, an un-ideal husband, and her – well, let’s not be mean. The aftermath of my failed marriage has convinced me that the ‘hunt’ is the wrong approach when it comes to love, because the hunt puts you in the wrong frame of mind. Whether it’s the hunt for a spouse, a relationship, companionship, sex, or merely a friend, the hunting mindset creates in your psyche a challenge or task to be completed where one should not exist. It makes the primary goal to accomplish something, when true love is not something you can accomplish in the same way you accomplish going to the grocery store and buying your food for the week.

If you believe in the soul as I believe in the soul, than you understand that you are looking for that connection – the other half.

I’ll use an actual hunter to illustrate why hunting for the other half of your soul does not work. Steven Rinella, a well-known hunter, writer, and television personality, once spoke on his show, Meat Eater, about the phenomenon of his eyes creating the fictitious images his heart wanted to see. On hunting trips, he would head out into the mountains with a grizzly bear tag, and in his mind he would have a certain image of the male grizzly bear he wanted to find. As a result, while glassing the hills, he found that his mind would start convincing him that a female grizzly was really a male grizzly, or that a black bear was really a grizzly bear, or that a rather small male grizzly was in fact that giant male grizzly he had dreamed of.

And hunting for love has the same effect. When you have an end goal in mind, the ring, marriage, vows, an oath, loyalty, etc., you will artificially morph your present state into a more palatable situation to make the end goal achievable. This is why you will often see a person marry someone who has cheat on them several times. You wonder, “Why are they doing this? Why are they making this obvious mistake?” It is because their end goal – to marry – is transforming all of the real data they have accrued into acceptable data. By way of excuses, most often, of the other person’s behavior, they are cooking the books.

A female friend of mine recently texted me, “It’s somewhat comical; my married friends assure me not to rush to get remarried. My single friends only want to talk about how to meet the guy who will become their husband…as if it’s just a simple snap of a finger…”

Men and women are both feeling the pressure to marry, but it’s more common to say that women are made to feel that there is something missing in their life, or wrong with them, if they aren’t married by a certain age. It’s the same for men, however (men’s issues simply don’t get the same media attention). At 39-years of age, I see both men and women in my age bracket frantically hunting for someone to spend the rest of their lives with, and while they all want the large male grizzly, and their eyes are convincing them that they are with the large male grizzly, they are, in fact, preparing to marry a koala.

Maybe there is something in our DNA that that will not let us see a childless man or woman of a certain age as acceptable. No one likes to be presented with the 56-year-old unmarried and childless person. Man or woman, they are sad to us, but why? That man or woman may be extremely happy, but we assume a sadness, something missing in their lives.

Looking at it simply as a primate, maybe there is something in us that wants to shun these people from society for not falling in line with the normal procreative mores of any working, thriving, and survivable social group. Without a spouse or children, a happy man or woman, with friends, hobbies, and, most importantly, happiness, must remain unfulfilled in our eyes.

I see little difference between the societal pressure to own certain things, have a certain house, reach a certain career point, and being married with children at a certain age, to a certain spouse. Marriage, as it is sold to us today, is a product – just look at a commercial for a diamond ring. However, the changing state of marriage is also creating slight changes to the way marriage is sold to us. Today, marriage is sold to us as a semi-permanent relationship that should be built on passionate love. People aren’t expected to have any more devotion to their marriage than they would a smartphone. As a result, the idea of hunting for your latest spouse seems perfectly reasonable.

If you are hunting for things, such as love, because you believe they will impress others, than you will end up unhappy. If you are hunting for things, such as love, because you believe it will make you happy, but in actuality, you’re merely trying to satisfy the desire of others, you will end up unhappy. If you are hunting for things, such as love, because you truly want that thing, be prepared that in your haste to have that thing, even love, you may be altering your vision, deafening your eyes, ignoring the clues, in order to believe you are about to obtain what you’ve always wanted – true love.

There will be buyer’s remorse.