It's hard for many of us to go out and see so many attractive people out there and continue believing that we have what it takes to meet and attract them, and not let thenm slip away and be with someone else, who might be more desirable to them for one reason or the other. We can't help but wonder - why that very cute girl or that very handsome guy would want to be with us, when there are so many other, more attractive "candidates?" 

Although this kind of thinking about dating and competition among the members of your own sex makes some sense, the good news is that competition should never be your excuse or justification for not taking your dating life in your own hands and not doing the best you can when it comes to finding love and romance.

I believe that analogizing dating to business and marketing can be very useful in explaining what I mean. Go ahead and open your local yellow pages. I bet you will find listings of hundreds, if not thousands, of lawyers, doctors, accountants and other professionals. Why even bother and become a doctor/lawyers or any other professionals if there are thousands of them out there already? However, when you call any of those professionals, you will soon find out that many of them are booked weeks in advance and they have more work than they can handle, while some others - less known, or less reputable - don't have enough work. This must mean that competition is not as big of a threat as it might at first seem. This is in large part bracause the great news about business and capitalism is that if you have something of high quality to offer, then there will be a demand for it regardless of the competition. In fact past, present and future happy customers feel particularly lucky when, after possibly having numerous negative experiences with your competitors, they finally find a reliable, attentive, competent professional out of so many others that are out there, that these customers were not happy with.

The most recent history of technology clearly proves that when you bring something new and better to the table, it is only a matter of time until it will be recognized, no matter how fierce the compeition is. For instance, when Facebook started, a big shark has already occupied the sea - Myspace. And yet that didn't discourage Facebook from going forward and developing their community. Today, just a few years later - Facebook seems to get much more respect due to how it managed to distinguish itself from other social networking sites, despite all the competition out there. Just a few years ago, Yahoo and MSN were the dominant search enginges. Who would have thought that anyone could displace them, until Google became by far the most dominant search engine in the world.   

The same rule applies to dating - if you have something interesting to offer - something special and something exceptional that most other guys dont' have - be it a great sense of humor, interesting thoughts or observations, plans, hopes, ambitions, skills - you will be ahead of the game. If you work on and build a more attractive personality, better style, better writing skills, if you work out and work on eliminating negative qualities such as bad temper, jealousy, control and possessiveness, the higher quality of your personality will be recognized and appreciated by the opposite sex no matter how many others around you are trying to find a dating/relationship partner. 

A great guy will stand out in a woman's eyes, whether he is one of 10 or one of a 100 in the same room. A beautiful woman with a great personality to match will stand out from all the other attractive women who come across as stuck up and high-maintenance, and no degree of competition will change that.

So, don't worry about competition when dating. Forget about it completely. It doesn't help worrying about it, as there isn't much you can do about your "competitors" but there is a lot you can do to make yourself stand out from the rest in subtle yet significant ways.