What's More Important Than Being Chosen: What We Learned The Hard Way (So You Don't Have To)

What's More Important Than Being Chosen: What We Learned The Hard Way (So You Don't Have To)

From Dateable: Your insider's look into modern dating and relationships by Yue Xu and Julie Krafchick

April 24, 2026 · 20 min

About this episode

The episode explores the importance of feeling genuinely valued in relationships rather than just being chosen.

Why do we place so much weight on being chosen and what does it actually get us? In this episode, we dig into how we’ve confused attention with real investment and chased validation instead of asking whether we felt genuinely valued. We reflect on the subtle ways performative dating shows up and how societal pressure keeps us focused on being picked and why the relationships worth having are built more so much more than simply being chosen. Enjoy! - Take the Dating Archetypes quiz now: https://howtobedateable.com/ Read our book: How To Be Dateable: The Essential Guide To Finding Your Person and Falling in Love: https://howtobedateable.com/ Try the Dateable AI Dating Coach: Get personalized advice trained on our years of podcast episodes, courses and frameworks: https://studio.com/dateable Follow us @dateablepodcast, @juliekrafchick and @nonplatonic. Check out our website for more content. Also listen to our other podcasts The Psychology of Relationships and Exit Interview available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. WE WROTE A BOOK! HOW TO BE DATEABLE (Simon & Schuster) is available now: https://howtobedateable.com/ Want to remove distractions from…

People in this episode

Hosts: Yue Xu, Julie Krafchick

Topics covered

  • validation
  • relationships
  • performative dating
  • societal pressure
  • self-worth

Keywords

  • dating
  • validation
  • relationships
  • self-worth
  • performative dating

Sponsors

Avocado Green Mattress, Quince

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: How To Be Dateable: The Essential Guide To Finding Your Person and Falling in Love, The Psychology of Relationships, Exit Interview

More episodes of Dateable: Your insider's look into modern dating and relationships

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Dateable: Your insider's look into modern dating and relationships podcast page.