– by Wes Colton, Introvert Unbound

Thanks to our limited social energy and fondness for alone time, the dating life of introverts is unlikely to be as active as that of extroverts. What that means is you’re doing yourself a disservice whenever you compare your situation to that of your chatty, hyper-social friends.

In fact, the only person whose social life you should measure your own against is yours over time!

Obviously, with anything as chaotic as dating, dips and spikes are inevitable. However, it can be helpful to take a moment to honestly answer this question: How is my dating life today compared to a year ago? That’s your dating trajectory.

The obvious way to assess your trajectory is by estimating how many genuine connections you’ve made over the year with people you’re interested in. If you haven’t gotten that far, how many dates (good, bad, or meh)? If no dates, how many times have you gotten someone’s contact info? If no contacts, how many decent conversations?

If things are better for you than they were a year ago, as the old saying goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it, and congrats!

But what if things have been stagnating for you? Or (gulp) getting worse?

If that’s the boat you’re in, you can keep going through the motions and hope things magically improve on their own. Or you can make a conscious effort to switch things up a bit.

These changes can include simply going out more, talking to more people, working on your conversation skills, or finding more suitable avenues to meet people. If you try to figure this all out on your own, there’s a good chance you’ll correct course—eventually.

However, if you’re the efficient type who’d rather spend weeks—rather than years—to reach your goals, you can hire a quality coach whose style and substance resonate with you.

But what if you’ve already worked with a coach and your dating life still isn’t what you want?

Well, the first thing to do is make sure you’re following the plan you and your coach have laid out. If you’re not putting in the effort, can you really expect success?

But if you’re actually doing what you know you need to do, give it a few months. While it’s understandable to want to see improvement right away, the reality of dating is that results take time.

The real test is whether your trajectory is upwards—even if by a single degree. Think of yourself like an airplane: As long as your nose points towards the sky and you’ve got gas in your tank, takeoff is all but inevitable.

After a decade and a half of stagnation, Wes Colton’s dating trajectory has only gone up over the years. He’d be happy to tell you about it at wes@introvertunbound.com