Why You Should Date Someone Outside Your Industry
Do you or someone you know base your dating preferences on a person's profession or career? If you've ever wondered what it would be like to date professionals within your field or outside your industry, then this is the blog post for you to help you decide whether it's a good idea or not to date someone within your professional network versus someone outside your network altogether. After polling more than 4,000 singles, It's Just Lunch discovered that nearly 70% of professional singles preferred dating someone outside their industry completely rather than dating someone in a similar profession or position as themselves (10%), or someone with different position but in a similar line of work (10%), or someone in the same industry regardless of title or profession (10%). In today's blog post, It's Just Lunch is going highlight some of the pros and cons that come with dating a fellow professional single who works in the same field as you versus someone works in an entirely different field.
Dating someone who shares a career similar to yours can be a lot of fun. It can bring the two of you together in an intimately close way that wouldn’t be possible had you been working in completely different fields. You share the same frustrations, the same work woes and you might even have quite a few colleagues in common. Dating someone who works in a very different field than your own can also be just as exhilarating, giving you a glimpse into a whole new world outside your realm had it not been for your relationship with a special someone in that particular field. A real estate agent dating someone in law enforcement is going to see that profession in a whole new light just like a marketing executive dating someone in the medical field is going to see health field from a very unique perspective. From this perspective, you’d feel like as an outsider looking in, but through the lens of an insider. While it might seem counter intuitive to limit your dating options to a single profession, both of these wonderful routes to take with your future relationship come with their own sets of drawbacks despite all the pros.
While dating someone with a similar career path sounds ideal since you’ll most likely have plenty in common, the novelty of it all may wear out sooner rather than later if you don’t have anything else in common besides your job. Dating someone in the same field can lead to unhealthy competition, especially if even just one of you is the really competitive type. You might find yourselves in a secret contest over who can outdo each other or get promoted faster within their respective organization. This can ultimately lead to heated arguments based from feelings of insecurity and unchecked resentment.
Dating someone completely outside of your field of expertise and even outside your industry may sound particularly appealing, especially if you’re looking to spice up your life with a little romance. Dating someone in a different industry can bring fresh and new conversation to the table, creating a more interesting and stimulating dialogue. While sharing different careers can make things exciting, it can also be hard to understand where your partner is coming from at times, especially when you know so little about her field of work making it all the more challenging to relate to her and help her with frustrations at work. This can create a lot of misunderstandings if neither party feels comfortable communicating their needs to each other.
Despite the fact that more than 2,800 singles agreed they’d prefer dating someone in a completely different industry than themselves, every relationship comes with its own unique set of challenges relative to the two people in a relationship together. There will always be pros and cons no matter you decided to date. The key takeaway here is that any relationship can work with if you have the ability to empathize with your partner and put yourself in their shoes, even if only for a moment in time. The more you communicate how you really feel about this here or that there to your partner, the easier it will become to understand where each of you are coming from during moments of potential or actual conflict.
your partner shares your career, that is great. Have fun sharing this part of your lives together and helping one another out, and don’t let it turn into a competition of who is better or more successful. If your partner does not happen to share your career, that is equally great too. Use this as a way to get to know your partner even better.
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