Are you somebody who really takes a lot of pride in washing out your containers (to make sure they don’t smell), before you put them into your neat little recycling bin that you put out on the curb every Tuesday? Are you a recycler?

We can talk about how passionate you are about recycling plastics and glass another day, because this blog isn’t about the environment and isn’t about that kind of recycling. This blog is about recycling people.

Do you recycle people? Are you someone who has been in a dating mode – you’ve dated twenty or thirty people – but you’re still single, so you start to wonder if you might have missed the right person along the way? Do you think, “I wonder if I should go out with [name] again?”

This is what I call being a dating recycler. Here is how I feel about recycling in dating: The reason you’re not with someone is because it wasn’t meant to be in the first place.

A lot of people think that they maybe should recycle some of the people from their past. The truth is, though, that the reason why you’re not with people from your past now is because you didn’t connect with them in the first place.

Recycling is wonderful for the environment, but it’s actually dangerous in dating. If you recycle when you date, you’ll end up breaking up with someone two, three or more times. I used to recycle people, but it never worked because chemistry with someone is either there or it isn’t there.

There are some asterisks to the rules about recycling. You could have met someone after a breakup, went out with them, and it wasn’t right. You could recycle that person because, technically, you were not in a relationship with them.

In general, though, recycling in dating just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it never worked in the first place. So keep on recycling those bottles and cans. It’s great for the environment, but lousy for dating.