If one topic is bound to generate heat between me and one of my friends then it’s the perennial question of ‘leagues’. Quite simply, she insists they exist and I insist they do not, although in practice I still sometimes think in terms of them. We all do sometimes, don’t we?? How many times have you seen a man/woman out on the town or across a crowded room and thought if only..?
Your assessment of who is out of your league depends entirely on a) how you perceive yourself and b) how you perceive the other person, with the relationship between the two being inverted; i.e., they are as perfect as you are flawed. Notice how your league position never seems to change if you think like this. You are always Torquay United, rattling around the bowels of the Football League, and they are always Chelsea, the top (or nearly top) of the top.
This is a huge point about dating leagues; they exist in your head. People who think this way almost always do so because they have poor self-image, and this not only leads them to wildly underestimate themselves but to overestimate their dream mate. We all have a dream partner or picture of the ideal in our head. Often however that dream reflects aspirations less to do with others or those we want to spend time with, but more with regard to our own character. Leagues thus can come into play even when a person is relatively self-confident and sure of themselves. Somebody, for example, might be relatively sure of their outward attractiveness but feel intellectually inferior, thus an intellectual will be out of their league.
This debunks another ‘league myth’. It’s not just about looks; it applies to personality traits too. From intelligence to ‘moral purity’, people rank themselves in all sorts of different ways.
Promotion
Just because leagues only exist in your head, does that mean that in theory anybody could date anybody?? In theory the answer has to be yes. However, the bad news is that ‘theory’ only exists in your head too. In practice, back in the real world, the answer has to be no. However, this has nothing to do with the existence of ‘leagues’ and everything to do with individuality and the complexity of human interactions. Not everybody is your type and you will never be everybody’s type.
Accepting that is a crucial step to ‘promotion’. If you do then you are less likely to take rejection as a reflection of the other person viewing you negatively. It simply may be the case that after they have checked you out they have decided what you have to offer simply isn’t for them. ‘Punching your weight’ is a good idea but not in the way you would necessarily think. Falsified confidence is off-putting and easily spills over into arrogance. Confidence is something that is carried naturally and doesn’t need to be pushed on people. Be yourself.
This doesn’t mean spill your guts out on a first date. Of course you are going to want to ’sell yourself’; however, remember that if you undersell yourself then you will lose the hook and if you oversell you are going to come off as arrogant and phoney. Above all, don’t mentally straightjacket yourself; she/he may look ‘out of your league’ but you never know, maybe they are ‘the one’ who is going to lift you high above it all.
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1 response so far ↓
1 Jacks // Apr 3, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Leagues do exist mostly for egotistical people that think that there is a never ending parade of people that are interested in them. I liked your article as you looked at it differently and provide some interesting points about appropriate date behaviour.
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