I sometimes leave little notes for myself, jotting down snippets of thought or poetry that I want to revisit or remember. Sometimes it’s a note in my phone, and sometimes it’s on a scrap of paper. My team at work always teases me for my prolific use of post-its with recipe formulations scribbled in tiny letters across the three-inch square.
When I was single in my 20s, I had a list of qualities I hoped to find all in one guy. I was very specific and there were something like 80 wishes listed:
I wanted him to be tall, financially stable, college-educated, a non-smoker, playful, funny, adventurous, smart, a dancer, close to his family…. you get the idea. Up until then, I thought heightened clarity would yield better results, and the guy I married matched all but two of the items from that original list.
But I was so intent on listing and finding specific qualities in a person, that I forgot to focus on how I would feel in the relationship with that person. After I divorced (and took time to heal and process) I started thinking about how many desires on my list were just fluffy icing, and how many were actually cake.
In the early days of my divorce, my friend KC had sagely calmed me by telling me that one day soon, I would look back at this 3000-foot chasm I was staring into and feeling overwhelmed and terrified by, and realize that it was only a 3-foot drop. I was skeptical at the time—everything felt so hard, from packing up my beloved house to navigating divorce attorneys, to letting go of friendships—but looking back, I can see she’s right. So when she suggested I pare down my list to only what was vital, I determined to heed her advice.
She advised me to focus more on how I wanted to feel when I was in a relationship with my ideal partner, instead of what kind of cake and icing I was about to devour. She told me to boil down the must-haves to just the 6 or 7 most essential, and to let go of preconceived notions of who I “should” choose.
This is the best dating advice I’ve ever received. It allowed me to consider different types of guys than those I had dated in the past—that hadn’t worked out. Instead of searching for the cookie that would perfectly fit the copper Gingerbread Man cutter in my hand, I would toss all my cookie cutters to the side…and just remain open to possibility.
Today I found a note that I wrote myself the morning before I met my partner about what I truly wanted and was planning to hold out for in a relationship:
“Instead of looking for a person who checks all the boxes, focus on a person with whom you can imagine yourself writing a story that entails edits and revisions.”
-Esther Perel
Relationships are a living, breathing entity: they grow and morph and change, based on what you and your partner put in—and expect out of—them. By letting go of my extensive list, paring down my non-negotiables, and choosing to hold out for someone with whom I could feel the way I wanted to feel in a relationship, who would be willing to edit and rewrite our story alongside me, I ended up getting everything I truly needed.
More importantly, I got the perfect-for-me combination of cake and frosting.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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