It’s no secret that burnout among helping professionals is a full-blown emergency. In my home state, over half of teachers in our largest districts are emergency-certified, meaning that professional teachers have either left the profession or left the state, largely due to burnout and hostile legislation. There’s a notorious therapist shortage that’s only getting worse, and the statistics for physicians are alarming, too.

A friend of mine asked me to write up something about self-care for their organization’s newsletter last month. I agreed, but as I was writing, I realized that I didn’t really want to talk about self-care, at least not in the way my friend likely had in mind.

The problematic metaphor of dieting/lowering the bar/ordering from a menu method of looking for a partner in the world. In this post, I’ll tackle the third piece of the metaphor: that dating should be like ordering from a menu at a restaurant.

Last time, I addressed how dating should feel different from starting a diet. Today, I want to talk about the other message from my client’s book (but one that I see all the time in Buzzfeed articles and advice or self-help posts for women who date men): that you, the dating female, are probably setting your sights too high and should lower the bar.

I see a lot of single women in my practice, and many of them are interested in dating men. Frequently, they bring in the book they’re reading that one of their friends recommended about dating, and almost always there are a few good nuggets (don’t date abusers!) and a lot of stuff that seems like it just makes them feel bad about themselves.

You’ll notice when you start reading practically anything on my site, but particularly my blog, that it sounds more like I’m speaking to someone in conversation than like I’m writing for professionals to read. That’s exactly what I’m going for!