Yes, And…? A Different Way to Be Single

By Amy Andersen, Founder and CEO of Linx Dating

I’ve been matchmaking for more than two decades now, and there is a certain kind of single person I’ve always found interesting. They aren't necessarily the most beautiful person in the room, the wealthiest, the most outgoing, or even the person who has had the easiest time dating. But they seem to have more opportunities come their way, and I think a lot of it has to do with how they move through the world. They participate. They accept invitations. They talk to people. They travel. They make plans. They try the restaurant. They go to the party where they only know one person. If a friend says, “I know someone you might like,” their first instinct isn't to ask for a LinkedIn profile and six photographs. They say, “Okay, tell me more.”

There is a little bit of “Yes, and…?” in the way they live. Yes, I’ll go to the dinner, and maybe I’ll meet someone interesting. Yes, I’ll take the introduction, and maybe I'll learn something. Yes, I'll go on the second date, and perhaps I’ll see something I didn't see the first time. Yes, I'll take the trip, even if I don't have a partner to go with me. They aren't saying yes because they expect every experience to produce something. They're saying yes because they understand that you have to participate in life for life to happen to you.

I want to be very clear about something because I can already hear some of you reading this and thinking, “Amy, are you telling me to lower my standards?” Absolutely not. I believe in standards. In my business, understanding what truly matters to someone is one of the most important parts of what I do. But there is a big difference between having standards and creating so many rules around how love is supposed to look that nobody can possibly get through the door. I see this more and more in modern dating. We have become incredibly efficient at eliminating people. He's too short. She's too old. Wrong neighborhood. Wrong school. Don't love the profession. Didn't like the text. The photo wasn't great. There weren't butterflies in the first 20 minutes. Next.

Dating apps have only made this easier because there is always another face waiting behind the one you're looking at. But people aren't products, and romantic compatibility isn't something you can always assess in 30 seconds. Some of the best relationships I've witnessed through Linx started with one person being slightly unsure. Not turned off. Not seeing an obvious deal breaker. Just unsure. And instead of treating “I'm not sure” as a no, they treated it as exactly what it was: I'm not sure yet.

This is why I talk so much about the slow burn. I've seen the other side too many times. Someone walks into a date, experiences enormous chemistry, and immediately decides, “This is it.” Three weeks later, it's over because the chemistry was real but the compatibility wasn't. Then I've watched two people have a perfectly nice first date without fireworks, go out a second time, and something changes. They relax. They laugh more. They start teasing one another. She notices something about him she didn't notice the first time. He becomes more attractive to her because she is beginning to understand who he is. By date three, they're both looking forward to seeing one another again. That happens more often than people think.

So maybe after a first date, we don't always need to ask, “Could I marry this person?” That's an enormous question to ask about someone you've known for 90 minutes. Maybe the better question is simply, “Am I curious enough to spend another two hours with this person?” If you are, there is your “yes, and.” Go again. You're not agreeing to marry them. You're agreeing to dinner.

I also think this idea applies to something much bigger than dating. I meet extraordinary single people who, without realizing it, have started putting parts of their lives on hold. They'll take the big trip when they have someone to go with. They'll entertain more when they're in a relationship. They'll get serious about dating when work settles down. They'll put themselves out there when they lose five pounds, when the kids are older, after the promotion, after the move, after this incredibly busy quarter. The problem is that there is always another quarter.

Your single life is not a waiting room. It is your life. I want people to travel, host the dinner, learn to ski, take the cooking class, go to the concert, sit at the bar instead of staying home because nobody was available, and tell their friends that they are genuinely open to being introduced. Not because every activity needs to become an elaborate husband-or-wife-finding mission. Please don't do that. Do it because a full life creates energy, confidence, stories, friendships, and yes, more opportunities for love to find its way in.

One of my favorite things to do as a matchmaker is occasionally present an outlier. I know my clients' criteria extremely well, and of course I take them seriously. But I've also been doing this long enough to recognize that sometimes the person who makes sense isn't exactly the person someone described to me on paper. Maybe he's a couple of inches shorter than she requested. Maybe she's a little older than his original range. Maybe the career is completely different. Maybe this person doesn't resemble anyone they've dated before. If I see enough of the important pieces lining up, I may say, “I know this isn't exactly what you told me, but trust me and meet this person.”

Those moments can be fascinating because sometimes the very thing someone thought they needed turns out not to matter nearly as much when the right human being is sitting across from them. That doesn't mean ignoring true deal breakers or compromising your values. It means knowing the difference between the things that determine whether a relationship can work and the things you simply became accustomed to putting on your list. Love has a way of exposing the difference.

And finally, there is something incredibly attractive about a person who is engaged with life. Think about the people you naturally want to be around. They usually have stories. They have interests. They're curious. They laugh. They have friends. They have places they want to go and things they want to try. They're not sitting at home obsessing over why they haven't met their person yet. They're building a life, and they're leaving a seat open for someone wonderful to join them.

Of course, saying yes means that occasionally you'll have a bad date. You'll go to a party that wasn't worth putting on heels for. You'll meet the friend-of-a-friend and wonder what your friend was possibly thinking. You'll take a trip and something will go wrong. Fine. That's life. You get a story out of it and keep moving.

The alternative is to become so good at protecting yourself from disappointment that you accidentally protect yourself from possibility too.

So this week, I want you to notice your first instinct when life offers you something unexpected. Before you automatically decline, dismiss, swipe away, or decide something isn't quite your type, give yourself a second and ask:

Yes… and?

Yes, I'll go.

Yes, I'll meet him.

Yes, I'll have dinner with her again.

Yes, I'll say hello first.

Yes, I don't know exactly where this is going.

And maybe I don't need to.

Sometimes the best things that happen to us begin before we have any idea where they're going to lead.