If Your Date Dumps You, Their Friends Are Probably to Blame
· Vice
We’d all love to believe our relationships are private, existing between the person we’re seeing and us. That sounds nice, but it’s not real life. Friends are reviewing texts, flagging red flags, and, in plenty of cases, helping decide whether something keeps going at all.
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A new Tawkify survey of 1,012 single Americans found that 67 percent say friends are involved in their dating life in some way, and 22 percent have ended a pursuit because their friends didn’t approve. Friend buy-in also seems to act like emotional hairspray, with 70 percent saying approval makes them feel better about going after someone.
That number about dumping someone over friends’ disapproval might sound a little brutal, but then you remember how dating works now. Nobody goes on one decent Hinge date, stares wistfully into the distance, and keeps it all to themselves. They send the outfit photo, forward the texts, and ask whether “Had fun last night” sounds hot or lazy. By the time you decide whether you like a person, your friends have already weighed in.
And, honestly, they’re not always wrong.
Your Friends Are Probably Right About Your crappy Date
A long-running line of relationship research has found that support from family and friends is associated with stronger feelings of love, satisfaction, and commitment. In a UC Davis write-up on that research, sociologist Diane Felmlee said, “social networks may have a big effect.” She also said friends may have “a little more objectivity” than we do when we’re caught up in somebody’s jawline and mixed signals.
Still, there’s a fine line between loving counsel and outsourcing your romantic judgment. Tawkify found that 78 percent of singles think their friends’ dating advice is at least sometimes right, yet 25 percent regret following it. That checks out. Friends can spot a walking red flag from space, but they can also project their own baggage onto your situation with way too much confidence. One person’s “he’s sketchy” is another person’s “he took four hours to reply because he has a job.”
The study also found that 24 percent of singles feel “pressured or behind” when they see friends in healthy relationships. That may be the roughest part of it. Your friends can influence more than your choices; they can influence your sense of when things should be happening.
So, sure, listen to your friends. Let them flag the weird bio, the rude waiter story, the text you’re reading way too much into. But keep one hand on the wheel. Your friends have to live with their opinions. You have to date the person.
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