If there’s one thing I’d love to get across to single guys, it’s how to let go of perfectionism in dating.

Perfectionism can lead you down a slippery slope, putting all sorts of weird filters on your perspective when it comes to women you go out with. Then once you’re in a relationship — if you get that far — it can pretty much erode everything you’ve managed to build.

That’s because being a perfectionist naturally leads into a toxic pattern called martyr leadership, or taking on more responsibility than you should in a relationship with a woman. Not a good look. To succeed as a couple, you need to give your partner the space and responsibility of ownership in the relationship. Otherwise, it could fall apart.

So for the sake of your current dating life (and future girlfriend!) let’s take a look at perfectionism. I’ll show you how to tell if you’re a perfectionist, and if so, how it could potentially affect you in dating and lead to martyr leadership. Consider yourself warned…

What Is Perfectionism and How Does it Show Up in Your Life?

The line between healthy confidence and perfectionism is tricky. You may have been raised to be a go-getter — to overcome obstacles and achieve success. This can drive you to tightly monitor yourself so you make all the “right moves” to get what you want.

But it gets into toxic territory once you become afraid to fail. Healthy confidence turns into unhealthy perfectionism when you start to believe that you always have to “win” in order to be loved, or to even love yourself. Instead, you believe love is conditional, depending on how well you perform, rather than who you are.

Once this belief takes hold, you become a perfectionist. Usually, we think of a perfectionist as being a nitpicky, almost self-flagellating person who berates himself or others for tiny mistakes. But perfectionism shows up very subtly also. Here are a few examples:

• Mental inflexibility/rigidity
• Trying to strengthen your ego in conversations, rather than face the truth (I like to call this being stuck in your own incessant bullshit)
• Insisting on living up to an unrealistic standard you’ve created in your head
• Pre-judging situations and people

Perfectionism often hinders your success because it slows you down to the point where it almost paralyzes you. It compels you to aim for excellence but then you keep raising the bar on yourself. You then become so results-driven that you don’t enjoy the process and eventually quit because it’s so unsustainable.

How Perfectionism Leads to Analysis Paralysis in Dating

Analysis paralysis is a nickname for the state I just mentioned, where you are so stuck in your perfectionism that you almost can’t take action.

I see lots of guys affected by this in dating. When it comes to putting up a dating profile, for example, they fiddle with it for weeks before messaging anyone because they have to get it just right. Or if they want to write a woman a message, they’ll consider every type of opening line and strategy… until one day they look, and her account’s deleted anyway.

Perfectionism and Try-Harding

Try-harding means that you work so hard on coming across in a positive light that you actually appear desperate, needy, clingy, or pathetic. I know it’s harsh, but for many people, it does go to this extreme. Obviously, a perfectionist can very easily become try-hard. They feel if they don’t hit their goal in their head, they literally feel they won’t be good enough for anyone.

As a result, they overthink everything. On a dating app, they may change their profile picture daily or send messages with overused lines to women who are unlikely to respond. On dates, they might share way too much or send too many texts afterward to try to “force” a good outcome.

All of this can make it appear to a woman that you’re desperate and low-value. Why? Because you wouldn’t have to try that hard otherwise. Women will unfortunately see through try-harding and recognize your insecurity immediately.

No Woman Measures Up to a Perfectionist

Another risk of being a perfectionist while dating is that no one will measure up to your checklist.

A perfectionist will often have a list of qualities they want their future girlfriend to have, or how they want their relationship to be. This is fine, but the problem is, you always have to compromise somewhere. Still, perfectionists would rather shut down or walk away if she doesn’t have (or do) everything on the list, rather than work within reality.

Perfectionists tend to think in black-and-white, pass/fail terms. Either something is good or bad. A woman is either perfect and checks off all the boxes, or she’s not worth their time. It’s a very fixed mindset, where only the inherently “good” people are worth love and attention. This is the opposite of a growth mindset, where you meet someone (or yourself) where they are, and build something together from there.

And to be honest, dating apps don’t really help when it comes to perfectionistic attitudes. With the sheer amount of profiles to scroll through, you can easily run into the paradox of choice, where the sheer amount of options makes it impossible for you to be satisfied with the woman you have.

When Perfectionism Turns Into Martyr Leadership

We’ve already seen how the need for control and external validation creates perfectionism. But it can get worse. Perfectionism can also turn into martyr leadership, which can kill relationships.

Let me start by saying this: I believe men should develop their leadership qualities. Leadership is part of what makes men attractive to women on an evolutionary level. But I believe men should take the lead while equally considering their partner’s needs and interests. 

That’s the key part. Without considering her needs and interests, then you’re simply forcing your ideas onto her. That’s not leading. At best, it’s just campaigning for yourself.

When you leave perfectionism unchecked, you can end up campaigning rather than leading. You might end up telling your partner what to do rather than asking, for example. Or you may attempt to control things in a passive way by ignoring her or shutting down conversations when she doesn’t do what you want.

Here’s where it gets even trickier. If she doesn’t break things off outright, she will definitely resist your attempts to control — if not directly then passively. Emotionally, she may become cold and push you away. She may even shut down sexually. One study actually found that feeling like they couldn’t live up to their partner’s standards actually hinders a woman’s sexual function.

Once your partner begins to resist in this way, you might resort to martyr leadership. And it’s not a good thing.

What Martyr Leadership Looks Like in Dating & Relationships

If your perfectionism has now escalated into martyr leadership, you may push even harder to “make things work” — and then give her crap about it. To forcefully create your “ideal” relationship (or date), you might take on the responsibility of cooking every night if you live together, or planning “perfect” outings.

Then, when she responds with resistance (because you haven’t really considered her interests or level of desire for these things) you use that as an excuse to complain. Why is she rejecting you when you are “doing so much?” You might even remind her of all the great things you do (or do them even more) to justify yourself. This only makes it worse.

On the other hand, facing the truth of who she is (i.e., sacrificing your idea of perfection) is frightening. So instead of talking to her, you complain to other people who can’t change things (your friends, etc.). You may get angry at her for disappointing you. You may blame her for ruining the relationship singlehandedly. You may even hit her with something like this ridiculously lame sex spreadsheet (courtesy: Reddit).

In other words, you don’t want to challenge your perfect picture, so you keep insisting that she create it for you in various ways, even though it may conflict with what she wants.

The lesson? Get control of perfectionism before it turns your healthy confidence into a martyr pattern that will drive women away.

The Difference Between Perfectionism and Healthy Excellence

I should probably say a little bit here about healthy excellence, because having goals and going after what you want doesn’t have to be bad.

Healthy excellence is about having high standards but also understanding that you have to crawl before you can walk. As a recovering perfectionist myself, I recognize that taking the first step quickly is more important than getting it right. Life is a learning process. You can’t learn to ride a bike unless you’re willing to fall a few times. In poker, there’s a saying that goes, “You can’t be willing to live if you’re not willing to die.” In other words, you have to be willing to take action, especially when it feels risky to do so.

So, when it comes to the question of how to let go of perfectionism in dating, I like to live by the motto that “action conquers fear.” Overthinking things in dating will crush you. You’ll either fall into analysis paralysis and never take action or you’ll focus so much on getting it right that you’ll come across as “try-hard” and desperate. Neither is desirable to a woman. The point is, action is better than perfect, always.

Reframe your desire to be perfect into a desire for continual improvement. Enjoy the learning process and release your fear of not being good enough. Action is good enough. Improvement is good enough. A lesson learned that leads you in a better direction is good enough. And ultimately, you are good enough (always).

Self-Reflection Questions

Improvement always starts with self-awareness. If you want to look into your own perfectionist patterns, ask yourself some of these questions:

• How has perfectionism shown up in your dating journey, and how did you (or will you) overcome it?
• What imperfect action are you going to take in the next seven days that represents you not waiting to get it perfect while owning your value?
• When have you let go of perfectionism? How did it go?

Exercise

Here’s a fun (and scary) exercise to do that will make you face your own inner perfectionist. Own your truth in public without censoring or editing. Go live on social media and discuss your experience with perfectionism! And then just POST IT — no edits!

If you want to know how to let go of perfectionism in dating, this is one of the best things you can do. You’ll force yourself to be seen authentically, which unravels perfectionism at its core.

I did this myself and it was really liberating. You can see my video here.

How to Let Go of Perfectionism in Dating: Wrap-Up

What I try to do as a dating coach — and even as a friend, and for myself — is to shed light on those things that kill our joy so they don’t continue to have power over us. Our relationships are so valuable, and yet destructive patterns like perfectionism make us run through people like Kleenex.

Obviously, perfectionism doesn’t get better over time. It gets worse. In fact, it morphs into an entirely different beast — martyrdom — which can wreak havoc on your life. The scary thing is, this pattern can be very subtle. It can also hide behind the mask of “confidence” or “selflessness.” Yet, as you’ve seen, perfectionism is really rooted in fear and insecurity.

Fear and insecurity will guarantee that you will live small, clinging to the status quo. Confronting fear and insecurity, in all its forms, is the only way to free yourself and become a good partner to someone else.

Join me on a Zoom call if you want to start identifying and working on your fear-based patterns such as perfectionism. We’ll take a look at how your dating life may have suffered as a result, and what actions you need to take to create the dating life you envision.