I'm not very good at dating. I'm very decisive. If I like

In the marketplaces of the heart, some wander like merchants comparing silks, weighing texture against price; others move like archers, loosing one arrow at the clear center of the target. Hear Vinessa Shaw’s plain trumpet: “I’m not very good at dating. I’m very decisive. If I like someone, then they’re my boyfriend. It’s pretty straightforward.” Beneath this modern cadence lies an old law: sometimes the soul knows at once what the mind would spend months debating. The ancients called it alignment—when desire, judgment, and action stand shoulder to shoulder and march.

Yet such decisive love is not recklessness; it is economy of spirit. Endless dating can become a maze whose walls are built from fear: fear of choosing wrong, fear of missing better, fear of being seen. The straightforward path refuses the maze. It says, “I have looked with care, I have listened with honesty, and I will honor what I have found.” In an age that worships infinite options, this is a sacred austerity, a fast from indecision. The vow is simple: I will not waste the other person’s life, nor my own, in the theater of hesitation.

Consider a story from the scroll of artists. When Frida Kahlo first drew close to Diego Rivera, the world called it improbable—her youth, his renown; her fierce intricacy, his mural-scale bravado. But Frida stepped with flint-edged clarity. She did not linger in a corridor of maybe. She chose, and again chose, with a directness that startled and scorched. Were they perfect? No. Were they straightforward in commitment when many would have dallied? Undeniably. Their union was stormy, yet out of their swift, unblushing declaration came works that still breathe. The lesson is not that every quick choice becomes a masterpiece, but that some masterpieces require the heat of a quickened heart.

The annals of science whisper a gentler example. Marie met Pierre Curie, and after a brief season of correspondence and shared experiments, she recognized the rare consonance of mind and mission. No labyrinth of performative dating could have yielded a truer reading than the laboratory’s quiet hours did. When purpose and affection harmonized, the choice was made with elegant brevity—decisive, straightforward, fruitful. Their partnership irradiated the world—literally—and reminds us that clarity in love often arrives where one’s life’s work is spoken fluently.

Still, let the elders speak caution: decisive does not mean unexamined. The arrow must be fletched before it flies. The straight road must be scouted for ravines. To be straightforward is to do one’s discernment up front—know your values, name your boundaries, ask the questions that guard dignity—and then move. Confusion thrives where identity is unmade; clarity begins where the self has been tended like a garden at dawn.

Therefore, the saying’s heart is this: love does not always require spectacle to be true. Some unions are a handshake between two honest lives. “If I like someone, then they’re my boyfriend” is less a boast than a blessing: may we have the courage to match our speech to our seeing. May we spare others the ache of our ambivalence. May we be swift to honor goodness when it appears, as sailors who, spying a safe harbor after long weather, do not circle it twenty times in mistrust.

Take these actions and carry them like tools at your belt: (1) Before you date, write a brief creed: three values you will not betray and three qualities you will nurture in return. (2) In first meetings, ask straightforward questions—about work, rest, anger, money, faithfulness—so that feeling and fact can meet. (3) If you know, say so; if you don’t, do not pretend. (4) When you choose, close the door behind you with gentleness and resolve; the wind of the world cannot tug a closed door open. In this way, your dating becomes the narrow gate through which only truth can pass, your decisive heart becomes a trustworthy compass, and your love—clear, straightforward, and brave—becomes a shelter others will learn from and bless.