Why is dating so exhausting when it is supposed to be a joy?
Tiredness after a long search is not a weakness of character but the natural depletion of energy and of the capacity to make decisions.
She calls it dating burnout and explains it through a balance of energy: some things fill you up, friends, an absorbing occupation, a meaningful goal, and others burn fuel, like a car. If you keep driving without refuelling, the car will one day stop; hence the thoughts that nothing will ever work out, that you no longer care, that one more bad date and you will not be able to take it. The activity itself is harder than it looks from outside: if the search has gone on for a long time, then all that time the dates were with unsuitable people, like shovelling a deep pit of dirt without ever finding buried treasure. On top of that comes decision fatigue: the brain can make only a certain number of good decisions, and whether to continue or to end uses up that resource especially fast; like a phone, the capacity to decide needs recharging. So burnout after a long search she considers normal, not a reason to reproach yourself.
“This can start to feel like shoveling a deep pit of dirt without ever finding any buried treasure.”
