When a person comes to therapy in deep pain, the path towards the light is always the same path — Sisyphean but effective: their capacity to engineer their own mental position. Put most simply, to create a situation in which the person governs their psychological processes rather than the reverse.
And your dates fall into exactly the same category.
You think that what will make your dates successful are the qualities and characteristics of the partner who turns up at the pub. You are so wrong. The significant causal factor, though not the only one, behind the success or failure of a date is the mental position you arrive with.
Suppose that before the date you had the option of programming two or three sentences into your head from a list I have prepared. Be honest: which sentences, if you believed them wholeheartedly and behaved accordingly, would significantly raise your chances of a successful evening?
Here is the list.
One. I am coming to enjoy myself, and that is all.
Two. I am confident that anyone who gets to know me properly will be glad to be with me.
Three. I understand that some of my expectations are unrealistic, and rooted in fantasies that were sold to me.
Four. The best route to my own happiness is making somebody else happy.
Five. I am here to find out who this person is, not to determine whether they qualify.
Six. Nothing has to be decided tonight.
Now notice which of those you found hardest to imagine believing. That one is doing the damage, and it has been doing it on every date you have been on for years — long before anybody sat down opposite you.