Fussy When You Date?

Are you fussy when it comes to dating? If you’re very fussy there’s a chance that you’re among the 15 to 20 percent of the population who are “highly sensitive” and as a result, have an even harder time than most when it comes to dating. “Highly sensitives” are the people who are highly aware of just about everything in their immediate environment and experience the world in somewhat different ways and that includes dating.

As a therapist, I have worked extensively with people who are highly sensitive. The term “highly sensitive” is the work of psychologist Elaine N. Aron, who wrote about and researched the “highly sensitive person” in her now-classic book, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You (Aron 1996). According to Aron, the “highly sensitive person” or “HSP” is someone with a heightened sense of everything around them as a result of their manner of sensory processing. High sensitivity is a trait of temperament, not a disorder.

Since people with the trait of high sensitivity are hyperaware of much of what is going on around them and consistent in their abilities to pick up nuanced details in their environment, this extends to dating and particularly to first dates. A lot happens when you meet someone for the first time. There is a lot of information being processed all at once—are you attracted to them, is there potential chemistry, what is the transference, all happening at the same time. You are then trying to decide if this is someone that you could potentially be interested in, juxtaposed with trying to figure out if they are or could be interested in you. Imagine the increased intensity of what happens when someone with high sensitivity takes on that same task. The highly sensitive person's hyperawareness is superimposed by the sensory overload that happens when a lot is going on around them, so sorting things out becomes a difficult and burdening task.

In the world of dating, and more so with online dating, high sensitivity can be a beneficial tool, but it can also make dating feel like an impossible experience. There are behaviors that highly sensitives have that are consistent and might otherwise be interpreted as difficult or problematic when in fact they are survivalist in nature and quite strongly adaptive particularly in the realm of dating and personal relationships. What seems to happen instead is that they default to attempting to process a lot of information and respond at times by being “fussy” about who and what they just experienced. Oftentimes, they dissect aspects of the date and over-process what they experienced. To be aware of what is actually going on is veritably a good thing when it comes to dating.

People with high sensitivity seem to experience dating with the following four behaviors:

1. They complain about infrequent dates or not dating a lot because they are either overwhelmed with the experience or shut down after bad experiences.
2. They self-report as being “fussy” early on about their date. They pick up pretty quickly on things that probably would be problematic in a long- term relationship within a pretty short period of time and as a result, have shorter dating experiences.
3. They consistently complain that dating is difficult and feels like work.
4. They find all kinds of excuses to not bother with dating.

The good news is that choosing who you date or choosing a relationship partner is a significant decision in the course of your life with far-reaching effects. Being fussy and thinking through your response to a potential date or significant other is an intuitive behavior that informs a good decision. The take away is that what should matter most is choosing well. The goal should be to manage your expectation of dating instead of fretting over the infrequency of dating and the disappointment of not hitting it off in the first minutes of meeting. As the song says, “love takes time.”