On a rainy Thursday night, the campus café is a low hum of laptop fans and quiet gossip. Two students at the table next to me are talking about their love lives like they’re trading stocks. One person says, “She’s out of my league,” while scrolling through his phone. “I need to raise my value before I take my shot.” A girl across the room shows her friend a dating app profile and says, “He’s a six; I can do better.” No one laughs. They are very serious.
A psychology professor in the far corner is listening while he slowly stirs his coffee. Then he shakes his head and says in a low voice, “You know dating isn’t a market, right?”
The table stops talking.
The question is like a challenge that hangs in the air.
Why the “dating marketplace” story is so appealing
If you spend five minutes on social media, you’ll hear the same words over and over. “Man of high value.” “Top 10% of women” and “dating market.” People don’t even notice they’re talking about love like it’s Airbnb because it comes up so often.
That’s easy to understand. The logic of the market is clear, comforting, and almost like math. If you think dating is like supply and demand, then it makes sense that someone would turn you down. You didn’t “fail,” you just didn’t read the market right. It’s a strange way to explain pain that makes me feel better.
The psychology professor I talked to called this “emotional outsourcing.” You take the pain out of your heart and put it on the spreadsheet.
He tells me about a seminar where he asked 80 students to write down the sentence they secretly think about dating without giving their names. The results were terrible. “Love is only for hot people.” “I’m not competitive enough.” “Women act like they’re shopping when they date.” “Guys just want the best deal.”
Then he put the sentences up on the screen, one at a time. The room was silent. A few students moved around in their seats, and one girl wiped her eyes. These weren’t just ideas from a video by an influencer. These were their own private beliefs that were shown in the bright lights.
He told the class, “That’s what the marketplace metaphor does.” “Once you buy it, you start to set the price.”
The marketplace story makes sense of something that is confusing from a psychological point of view. That makes brains happy. Our brains are set up to make patterns, guess what will happen, and keep things from getting out of hand. It hurts to say “she rejected me because my value is low,” but it still feels more like I can do something about it than “she just didn’t feel it.”
*There are rules in markets, but not in attraction.
The professor cites research on mate selection that demonstrates individuals consistently violate “market rules”: introverts engaging with extroverted artists, affluent professionals developing attractions to baristas, and typically “average” individuals entering into profoundly secure, enduring relationships. The spreadsheet keeps losing touch with real life.
How to stop thinking like a businessperson without lowering your standards
The professor doesn’t tell students to be themselves or lower their standards. He begins by asking them to change one small thing: how they talk about themselves and other people. He says to ask “compatible with my reality?” instead of “out of my league.”
That sounds like a small change, but it changes everything. “Out of my league” means that there is a set order of things, and I’m at the bottom. “Compatible with my reality” means that I have a real life with values, time, stress, and oddities. Do our lives work together?
He even gives them a simple task: before swiping right, say out loud, “What do I like about this place that has nothing to do with status?”
Many of us fall into the same trap. Instead of paying attention to what our bodies and minds are telling us, we start “optimizing” for the imaginary market. You keep going out with people your friends will like. You are worried about how your partner looks on Instagram. If your couple doesn’t look like a TikTok template, you freak out.
Then you wake up and see that you’re in a relationship that looks great but doesn’t feel right. You are acting like you care instead of really caring.
When he talks about this, he’s gentle. He tells students, “You’re not shallow; you’re just breathing cultural air that talks about people like products.” That empathy is important because shame often keeps people stuck in the market story.
He puts down the marker at one point in his lecture and talks more personally.
He says, “Every time you call dating a market,” you make yourself a little less human. You are not a stock. You are not a thing. You have a nervous system, a past, a funny laugh, and a way of holding your coffee mug when you’re tired. That’s not “value.” That’s you.
Then he writes a short list on the board and the class takes a picture of it.
- Be careful when you use business words to talk about love, like “league,” “value,” or “high/low quality.”
- Use process words instead, like “fit,” “timing,” “energy,” and “curiosity.”
- For a week, talk about your crushes without mentioning their looks or social status.
- Don’t ask what looks good; ask what feels safe.
- Don’t see your own needs as flaws; see them as criteria.
What we get when we stop “pricing” ourselves and other people
When you stop looking at things through the lens of the marketplace, you see something unexpected: nuance. It stops being a race and starts to look like a series of tests. Some of them don’t work out, some of them surprise you, and some of them teach you what you never want to do again.
The professor told me that a former student came back after a few years and said, “Your class ruined dating apps for me, but in a good way.” She had erased all the talk about leagues and “maximizing options” from her mind. She began to say no to dates that didn’t seem nice, even if the person seemed perfect on paper.
Did her love life suddenly get easier? No. But it finally felt like it was hers.
The professor often says a simple truth: “Most of us are not looking for the best possible partner.” We want someone who is good, real, and stable enough that we can relax.
It’s all about getting the most out of markets. The human nervous system is about keeping things stable. You often give up the parts of yourself that need rest, safety, and small daily pleasures when you chase the “ultimate deal.” Long voice messages. Playlists that everyone can see. The way someone texts you back when you’re worried.
These aren’t “features of a product.” They are tiny moments that slowly convince your body that everything is fine. I can let go.
Of course, the culture won’t change right away. People are still lined up on dating apps, with filters and categories. People who make content still talk about “winning” the dating market. Even after 30, you’ll still hear friends complain that their “stock” is going down.
But there is real resistance on an individual level. It’s already a form of quiet rebellion to choose to talk about love in a different way. Another is putting how you feel about someone ahead of how good they look.
The professor’s challenge is both simple and radical: stop acting like you’re putting yourself up for sale. Start acting like you’re walking into a conversation where two complicated lives meet and see what happens.
| Key point | Detail | Value for the reader |
|---|---|---|
| Question the market metaphor | Notice how words like “league” and “value” shape your self-image | Reduces self-blame and fatalism about your love life |
| Shift from “ranking” to “fit” | Ask whether someone is compatible with your real life, not just high-status | Helps you choose partners who feel right, not just look right |
| Honor your own needs | Treat safety, kindness, and ease as legitimate criteria | Supports healthier, more sustainable relationships over time |
FAQ:
- Question 1So is all talk about “leagues” completely wrong?
- Question 2Can I still use dating apps without falling into the marketplace mindset?
- Question 3What if I genuinely feel “low value” in dating?
- Question 4Does the professor deny that looks and status matter?
- Question 5How do I start changing the way I talk about dating with friends?
Originally posted 2026-02-16 13:00:00.