Dating A ’10’ Is Vastly Overrated

I think that I, along with a large population of this generation, have participated in rating people on a scale of 1-10 (based on their appearance or personality or both) as a grossly superficial and insensitive, yet entertaining past time.

We’ve all done it, and that’s okay – maybe as a method to weasel out what attributes our crush finds attractive, maybe simply over a casual conversation on the phone.

But here’s the thing we’re missing: it’s utter bullshit.

10s do not exist.

Okay, maybe they do. But they aren’t forever.

10s are fleeting, and flaky, and as uncertain as the rest of us. No one person can be summed up in a single fixed number. Everyone fluctuates on every scale.

Some days, I’ll be confident and some days, I’ll be insecure as hell. Some days, I’ll be nice, and some days, I won’t. Some days, my make-up will be on point and my tummy will be flat and I’ll flash a smile at anyone I meet. Other days, I’ll be bloated and ugly and socialising will become a chore. But those days never make it onto Instagram.

I can safely say that on my good days, I could feel like a solid 8 and on my not-so-good days, I could barely feel like a 3. But I shouldn’t have to be ashamed of either.

See, the problem with this generation is that we have too much of a choice what we let other people see.

We take selfies. Delete. Delete. Delete. Post. We choose who sees our good side. Smile. Smile. Smile. Glare. We film the exciting and eventful bits – crop out the bits that make us look bad. We mask our genuine reactions with false modesty, fake nonchalance, forced enthusiasm.

We are so conscious of who we’re supposed to be that we forget to just – be.

We want to be carefree, so we try not to care. We want to be “the bigger person”, so we try to forgive. We want to be liked, so we try to be likeable.

But we forget that trying in itself essentially suggests that we are not.

And this is why being a 10 is never real.

Because when we start at 10, disappointments are inevitable. Sooner or later, someone is going to realise that our face is actually asymmetrical, or we have this really bad habit of chewing with our mouths open. When we start at 10, the only place to go is down. And we leave no room to discover something better.

When we start at 10, what we start with is the idea. And we can only fall for the same flawless idea so many times over before it gives way to something real.

Don’t date a 10 until you’ve seen them bat-shit crazy and crying, and you’re still sure that you want to stick around. Don’t date a 10 until you’ve seen them on the night-of and then on the morning-after, and still think: man, are you attractive. Don’t date a 10 until their confidence turns to cockiness, and you still admire them the same.

Don’t date a 10 until you’ve seen them at a 2, because nobody will be a “10” –100% of the time – until you decide that they are the one.