“Let’s just be friends”…the four words that many people dread while dating. They’re used as an easy escape – a way out of a difficult situation where one likes the other more. They’re spoken by cowards who are too afraid to hurt the other. They’re uttered when there is no intention of seeing each other again. This is sad because there’s nothing “just” about being friends.

Dating sites are interesting playgrounds. All types, including the shy and downright socially anxious, can get to mingle with others in total anonymity, often not even revealing what they look like. They can chat, flirt, propose meetings and fantasise (which is often what the proposed meetings are anyway).

Yet there are those who get upset by the playground. I have heard of people who throw malicious comments at others when they are rejected honestly. There is frustration when they have not found “the one” after being on the site for a “more than reasonable length of time”. Then there is that moment when you pluck up the courage to meet someone and they look nothing like their pictures, or the pictures are from the days before they put on 20 kg and 10 years. There is deception everywhere: we deceive ourselves daily otherwise we would not be living in this illusion we call life. And yet we expect everyone to be completely truthful…there are always skeletons in the closet! Sometimes that skeleton is 20 kg.

Playing the single game on dating websites (okay, that’s not entirely correct because some couples play the game too) should be fun. How do you make it fun? By making it completely goalless. The stress is only introduced by expectations, created by you, to meet the one you’ve just written to, to date the one you’ve just winked at, to have sex with the one who just winked back and/or marry the one you just had an awesome chat to. (The “and/or” is intentional because often all these expectations co-exist at one time).

Have you watched two toddlers meeting for the first time? Notice how they relate with no expectations. They giggle, cuddle, smile, kiss and sometimes push and bash in innocence with no expectation of friendship, marriage or sex. Notice how it is so easy for them, devoid of the anxiety of losing the other, upsetting them or never seeing them again. They just have their fun in the moment and then they part. Just like that. Simple.

The whole spectrum of relating is special and if we can play in this space, including the online dating space, like toddlers then we’ll begin to see just how simple it actually is. Have fun, whatever your definition of that is, and you’ll get everything that you desire because all you truly desire, deep down, is happiness and fun.