How We Can Approach Dating as a Practice to Nourish Ourselves—and Our Community
By Alexandra Ballensweig in collaboration with Kari Hart, LCSW
Romantic love is the mainstream blueprint of relationships that we are familiar with and have been taught to navigate. It can often feel like a numbers game, rather than a chance for authentic connection. Focusing on a single interpretation of romantic love can create a narrow strategy for meeting our needs for belonging, security, intimacy, contribution, and purpose.
In our swipe- and profile-based culture, there is a hyper-fixation on hunting for, vetting, and winning viable mates. We impose our learned biases onto budding relationships, discarding opportunities if they do not line up with our ideas of what partnership should look like (and chasing after them if they do). In doing this, we miss out on the nuance and possible magic of the connection, and the energy that can be created and shared in the discovery itself.
What if, instead of focusing on “finding the one,” we expanded our dating mindset?
Envisioning the future of romantic relationships
We created humhum around the idea that authentic relationships can take many forms and can change forms over time, with romantic love being just one expression of intimate bonding that can emerge as a pathway of an authentic, secure, and generative relationship.
Whether these deep connections are romantic, platonic, or creative, this way of relating gives us perspectives, practices, and capacities that are energizing and empowering—waking us up to our own potential, healing, and magnificence as individuals and as part of a community. By identifying the causes and conditions that nourish satisfying human connection, we can expand upon that energy and find the courage to share our gifts, goodness, and creativity to benefit not just ourselves but our communities and our planet.
Each relationship has an intelligence that emerges as the result of two (or more) humans consciously choosing to create a meaningful connection. When that connection is met with curiosity and care, it becomes a generative force. Discovering and nurturing romantic and sexual relationships through community allows them to be nuanced, complex, and diverse relationship expressions, aligned with both individual and collective purpose to serve the community as a whole.
What is practice-based dating?
In contrast to the traditional dating process—which can feel transactional, extractive, and outcome oriented—practice-based dating focuses on restoring the intelligence of intimate relationships so that we can connect, date, and partner in ways that nourish ourselves and our community.
What then seems like a more sustainable strategy for partnering is less about hunting and discovering the “right” person, and more about capacity building and doing the self-work that supports inner alignment.
To approach dating as a practice, three foundational elements are needed: shared orientation (a commitment by all parties to act ethically and with care), supportive capacities (the skills needed to build satisfying relationships), and foundational scaffolding (a safe and supportive environment that nurtures the commitment to ethics, and capacity building).
Let's look at each one individually.
Shared Orientation
Simply put, shared orientation means that all parties agree to approach dating as a practice and behave ethically. This includes speaking and acting in consideration for the other(s), taking responsibility for their actions, remaining present, and understanding their own goals and reasons for being there. Core concepts include:
Radical self-responsibility. This is a commitment to taking 100% responsibility for our truth, needs, capacity, reactivity, behavior and experience. It means that we commit to "cleaning up our side of the street"—our mindset, patterns, and the behaviors we choose to nourish as well as those we aim to uproot in our quest for meaningful connection.
Making space for and honoring emergence. Within a philosophical framework, emergence can be defined as the advent of new properties or behaviors resulting from the interaction of a complex entity with a wider whole. Here, we see it as the generative force that allows for a new relationship intelligence to emerge when all parties agree to arrive as their authentic selves.
Rigor of purpose. When we make the choice to show up and connect, it helps to do so in a way that aligns with our sense of purpose or defined purpose in the world. Owning and honoring our purpose supports discernment around our yeses and nos so we can authentically communicate and connect.
Supportive Capacities
The second foundational element needed to approach dating as a practice is supportive capacities. This involves developing important skills that help build strong relationships and cultivate authentic intimacy. Such skills include being genuine and true to oneself, being aware and attentive to the present moment, and showing kindness and understanding toward others.
In her article "Social Permaculture—What is it?" Starhawk says, “Our needs and goals often clash, and we don’t always have the tools we need to resolve conflicts.” By creating this framework of support, we can not only resolve conflict but also learn to build intimacy from differing goals.
Cultivation of the following capacities is necessary to successfully navigate the uncertainty, vulnerability, and possibility of entering into and sustaining harmonious intimate relationships:
Authenticity. This is the courage to bring our truth into the conversation so that it can be known and met. Authenticity directly supports emergence and includes truth around our capacity, limits, needs, desires, and fears.
Non-attachment to outcome. This capacity requires us to choose to release how we might receive something and our ideas of how it should go—even while wholeheartedly desiring it. A departure from the patriarchal control paradigm, non-attachment directly supports the orientation to make space for emergence.
Willingness. To approach dating as a practice, we can catch the impulse to impose, fix, save, or criticize and choose to be willing to accept what is. Willingness also directly supports the orientation to make space for emergence.
Tenderness. Tenderness directly supports the orientation of creating a culture of care by promoting kindness, empathy, and compassion for ourselves and within our interactions. It also supports self-responsibility and invites us to meet ourselves with gentleness within our complex humanity, allowing us to more easily hold and take responsibility for conflict and difficulty.
Generosity. This capacity supports a culture of care by fostering a mindset of abundance and sharing, rather than competition and scarcity.
Faith. Holding faith in life, humanity, and the interconnected web of being elevates mindfulness and resilience, allowing us to continue to show up and keep the heart open amid disappointment and loss.
Commitment to practice. As with any practice we choose to follow, our success relies on our commitment to staying true to a practice orientation.
Foundational Scaffolding
The third and final element needed to approach dating as a practice is a supportive environment that supports our capacity building, and commitment to ethics and care. Scaffolding involves making sure that everyone feels clear and supported in their journey, and that the conditions are right for achieving the individual and group goals and intentions.
Patrick Whitefield, author of The Earthcare Manual, called permaculture “the art of designing beneficial relationships.” At humhum, we understand that humans need spaces, rituals, and strong intentions to foster safety, nurture belonging, encourage truth, and support the cultivation of these individual and relational capacities for relationships to be beneficial.
The scaffolding we create at humhum is fundamental to the experience design; through our community agreements, dialogue format, date design, and shared language around reciprocity (or the absence of such) following a date, we set and maintain a safe container in which humans can explore and build connection.
How humhum supports dating as a practice
As Starhawk states in her article about social permaculture, "The key insight of social permaculture is that, while changing individuals is indeed difficult, we can design social structures that favor beneficial patterns of human behavior." She adds that we are all embedded in larger systems that do not encourage beneficial relationships; humhum seeks to shift that paradigm.
humhum is a designed social structure that creates the causes and conditions for beneficial patterns of behavior. We teach people a new pattern and bring in facilitation support to guide that new pattern. We are working against broader contexts that are antithetical to harmonious relationships, and, in doing so, we are changing how people approach dating.
Part of patriarchal conditioning is that it's extractive and encourages separation. humhum invites humans to let go of the transactional mindset and teaches them to be with life and people as they are—moving them from extractive relationships to relationships of care.
Making this shift begins with our relationship to ourselves. If we perceive relational satisfaction from the lens of scarcity, not-enoughness, and competition, we are often steered by circumstance instead of being grounded in our essential belonging to the web of life.
The four balanced emotional capacities
When developing the fundamental stance we teach at humhum, we focused on four balanced emotional capacities to create a more generative and expansive dating experience: compassion, loving-kindness, reciprocal joy, and equanimity. As we work to build the space within ourselves for authentic connection, we must begin with this self assessment:
Can we arrive with another human and see them as they are?
Can we open to emergence without expectation?
Can we connect without attachment to the outcome?
Can we let go when something is complete?
If we are thinking of relationships as regenerative, what is it that we are restoring?
In putting these capacities at the forefront, we are embracing and supporting the innate wisdom and compassion of the human being. And when those capacities are placed into action, the answer to all of the questions above is yes.
The takeaway
The future of romantic relationships lies in reorienting our approach from an individualistic, outcome-driven perspective to one that values collective well-being and authentic connection. By embracing a practice-based approach to dating, we can foster relationships that are nourishing, dynamic, and generative.
This shift requires us to cultivate essential capacities such as authenticity, non-attachment, and compassion, supported by intentional frameworks such as those provided by humhum. Ultimately, by prioritizing relationships that serve both personal and communal growth, we can create a more harmonious and interconnected world, where love and connection are seen not as finite resources to be competed over, but as abundant forces that enrich our lives and communities.
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