Ditch the Roster to Find Love
By Patricia Patnode
A common recommendation for young women hoping to avoid catching feelings is to maintain a “roster.” If we scatter our energies across many suitors, the advice goes, the dating woman will suffer a smaller emotional burden.
Wrong. This strategy cuts women off from emotional vulnerability, which is needed to experience a real romantic connection. It also can be a cop-out from rejection.
Casually texting and seeing multiple men like it’s The Bachelorette only sets a girl up for failure. The dating market is not reality TV. ABC is not sponsoring your love life and no guy on your list wants to know that you're seriously entertaining or experimenting with many options.
An important distinction is due here. Accepting dates with multiple men isn’t the same as keeping multiple men, all of whom you believe could be real romantic prospects in the future, in a rotation like they're pieces in your closet.
A “roster” may look like this:
Man from Hinge you have been regularly texting who may take you on 1-3 dates before fizzling out. Rinse and repeat with a replacement every 1-2 months.
Man from college you used to make out with and now sometimes message or flirt
Man (or men) from gym/work/other activity you somewhat regularly flirt with
Man you went on several dates with and sometimes make out with
Man who continuously texts you but doesn’t set any definite plans, and lives in a different city
Ex-boyfriend who you still somewhat regularly talk to
Building a roster like this is most appealing after a breakup, when you're feeling the vacuum of attention that a boyfriend once gave. Another circumstance in which it could arise is when moving to a new city, like after college.
Being open to dating more than one person at a time isn’t bad in the early stages of dating. After all, there’s no guarantee that someone will ask you on a second date. In this era of ghosting, many of us fear that the ostensibly great guy from Hinge we’ve been excitedly texting for five days will suddenly disappear into the ether or only respond with *thumbs up* or “haha yeah”s.
If one guy isn’t returning feelings, investing time in you, or clarifying his intentions, it’s fair game to shop around. If you’ve gone on two dates with one man and he hasn’t asked for another date, then it makes sense to accept a date from another man.
It’s a balancing act and task of self-awareness rather than a rigidly prescribed practice. If you are the type of person who values courtship, and can only focus on one person at once, you have good reason to not accept a date until you are ready to shift your attention to a new person.
In college, when one’s social life is your only real responsibility, keeping a roster of situationships is a seemingly cute way to deal with emotionally unavailable men or a craving for attention.
By framing situationships and crushes as a “roster,” we feel some control over our love lives.
“He’s on my roster, I can bump him down whenever, totally replaceable, etc,” are among the boss-babe pep talks we tell ourselves.
There are three major problems with maintaining a roster. First, it devalues the unique importance of each person. The proper response to poorly behaved men is to set standards for good behavior rather than seek revenge through manipulation.
Second, it runs the risk of repelling a good man with sincere interest if he hears about the circulation of men in your life.
Third, it encourages you to keep talking to guys for attention and the false feeling of abundance, when it would be better to discontinue contact. Read a book instead of texting some guy all night who isn’t that serious about you, and invest in your female friendships instead of spending your weekend nights with him.
There’s also the danger that the roster you think you have is actually a hacked playbook. Hookup culture has made this the likely case. ‘Hooking up’ with a guy twice in one year, maybe once in January and once in November when you happen to cross paths, and continuing to follow each other on Instagram may make it seem like he is on your roster, but odds are he does not think that.
Similarly, texting a guy continuously for weeks when he has made no set plans to go on a date in person does not mean he is on your roster. It means he is lonely enough to play this stupid game and you are either 1) naive enough to wait for him or 2) are also lonely.
Perhaps you regard several romantic-maybes in your life as numbers on a “roster.” It’s a good exercise to reflect on why you are seeking to demote your journey to love to a ranked list. Are you going on dates only to produce entertaining brunch stories, or to insulate yourself from potential rejection? Time is precious; it shouldn't be wasted on silly dating schemes.
Dating is fun, awkward and often emotionally taxing — this doesn’t mean that we should seek to remedy every bad feeling and relieve every rejection with immediate attention from someone else on our dance card. Rejection and loss should be completely and totally felt.
Although painful, those feelings are a blessing because they make the satisfaction and joy of real love that much sweeter when it does find us.
Patricia Patnode is a columnist at The Conservateur and a Junior Fellow at the Independent Women's Forum. She can be found on Twitter @IdealPatricia.
