I promise I’m not the clickbait guy.
If you actually apply this, it will work.
Just be patient.
Oh, wait.
That’s it.
Patience is the easiest dating method you can use to get what you want.
Hear me out! Read till the end. I promise it will be worth it.
Good things come to those who wait, but great things come to those who wait smartly.
The Story of the Buddha
The buddha and his disciples came back from a long day of walking; they decided to stop and rest near a lake. Buddha asked his youngest and most impatient disciple to walk to the lake and bring him some water, so he did. But when he arrived at a lake, he saw a group of buffalo crossing it, which muddied the water. The disciple thought to himself; I can’t bring this dirty water to Buddha. He returned and told Buddha about the water. Buddha said nothing until a few moments later, asking his disciple again to bring him some water from the lake. As expected, the water was still dirty.
Later on, Buddha asked his disciple the same question again, angrily and cursing. He went to the lake expecting that the water was still dirty and undrinkable, but to a surprise, the water was crystal clear.
The muddiness of the lake was only temporary. After a while, the mud settled, and the water became clear again. The monk couldn’t force the water to clear up, and there wasn’t anything he could do to speed up the process.
In all likelihood, any intervention would’ve made it worse.
Psychiatrist Victor Funk once stated when we are no longer able to change a situation; we are challenged to change ourselves. In the monk’s case, he couldn’t do anything about the muddiness of the lake or Buddha repeatedly asking to bring him some water. He wasn’t able to change these circumstances, so the only thing the impatient monk could do was change his attitude toward the circumstances. As the muddy water would eventually clear up by itself, all he had to do was wait patiently for nature to play itself out, which was the lesson Buddha intended to teach the disciples that would’ve saved a monk from the pain of anger and dissatisfaction.
The Biggest Secret of Dating
Is patience.
The problem with impatience for love, romance, and dating is the suffering it causes to be an impatient person and potentially to your surroundings.
An impatient man experiences dissatisfaction with the current circumstances. You might likely date or come across a woman impatient with their current plight. It’s not a fun place to be.
- Where have all the good men gone?
- Men are too much these days. How can I find a good one?
- Why don’t people meet in real life?
This dissatisfaction with the dating world, in general, can be strong enough to cause an angry outburst, whether passive or direct. A restless heart rarely finds peace in the company of others.
Not only is impatience unpleasant, but it’s also pointless. Impatience is the unwillingness to live life at the pace it actually happens. You can’t force relationships into existence.
The dating universe will not bend to our will. We want things now. We want things to change instantly, but in reality, external circumstances are not up to us, no matter how much we wish that would be the case. Beware of people who try to attest to the opposite of being true.
Patience, as the Oxford dictionary defines it.
“The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset when practiced in everyday life”
Patience in dating has several benefits, including not only the absence of dissatisfaction but also making better decisions and improving one’s—dealings with others. People can notice when they’re on a date and their date is an impatient and troublesome person.
Patience in dating is a curious thing — by waiting, you end up finding more than you ever searched for, and avoiding the trouble you never wanted.
There are four key benefits to mastering patience in your dating life.
1. The natural flow.
Most of the time, rushing things doesn’t really help in terms of achieving our relationship goals. There is a natural art to effortless action or non-doing. By not rushing, you actually get ahead, and by not settling, you find what’s truly worth your time.
Real potential relationships operate optimally without our interference. Philosopher Michelle Demont stated, and I quote,
“The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men and women if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have to leave it to itself.”
According to Daoist philosophy, we can either embark on the flow of nature and navigate through life more effortlessly or swim against the flow; expanding copious amounts of energy in exchange for low returns does nothing to progress your romantic life. This must be applied to the same philosophy as dating.
The more patient you are in dating, the less you need to chase, and the more you attract what truly matters.
But how do we float along with a natural course of dating and not get swept away in a sea of subtle anxiety? One of the prerequisites is patience. Patience allows us to let nature do the work for us as we’re willing to align our expectations with nature’s speed.
Careful consideration before making an important decision with regard to your dating life often turns out well. It means we weigh different options and explore possible outcomes, typically using reason and logic, but doing so requires clarity of mind.
If emotions have taken us over, we tend not to make rational decisions as we base our decision-making on impulses evoked by, for example, anxiety, anger, or fear. The louder our emotions shout, the less we actually hear what’s wise — it’s like trusting a compass that spins wildly and expecting to find our way.
If, for example, we decide to end a relationship amid a heated quarrel, there’s a reasonable chance of regretting that decision. Applying patience before deciding benefits our lives as it allows us to decide from a place of clarity and peace of mind. In the grip of emotion, a lot of men become architects of their own undoing.
Just think for a small moment of all the possible scenarios of happiness you might have missed by the grace of impatience or not trying to be rational with your responses.
Specifically in this context, patience is an instrument of self-control for letting our emotions dissolve and not acting upon them. Ideas from full wisdom, such as to sleep on it before making a decision or to count to 10 until acting, are practical, straightforward ways of applying patience to your dating life.
2. Equanimity and impatience
It can turn people mad. That’s why we generally don’t like waiting, but because of our impatience, we let external circumstances decide how we feel. We might be waiting for a text or call from someone we really like, but because of impatience, we blow it! Or allow negative feelings to get in the way of rational thinking.
The ancient stoics considered the latter problematic. If external events determine our emotional state, they exercise power over us, and the whims of fortune decide whether or not we get angry, frustrated, or anxious.
A common source of frustration for people is waiting for a train, then finding out it’s delayed, and thus they fidget around on the platform. You might have seen them on the London Underground.
Often visibly annoyed as the train doesn’t arrive as soon as expected, not long after another announcement says the train is delayed even longer. As a consequence, some of the commuters get mad and start cursing, but those that are patient simply take note of the delay and wait for the train with minimal suffering. There is nothing you can do, and being visibly angry solves nothing.
As mentioned earlier, impatience results from dissatisfaction with current circumstances. Patience, however, allows us to accept these circumstances. This applies to all circumstances, rather than jumping online and making an angry tik tok about how all men are trash and how women just want to be promiscuous and date multiple men. Just be patient and know that the one who is right for you will eventually come in your path if you do the internal work. The right person appears to the person who is ready to receive them.
Why would we let ourselves be swayed by things we cannot control? Through patience, our equanimity won’t be disturbed by such encounters.
3. Perseverance and success.
Perseverance can lead to long-term results, but to persevere, one needs patience. One needs to stop desiring quick results, which, unfortunately, people seem to pursue nowadays; it’s prevalent for people to start something but never push through. How many people do we know who tried online dating but quit after a month cause it was too hard? Or, when they decide to lose weight or build muscle, they begin working towards their goal but quickly lose their motivation and quit.
Generally, this loss of motivation comes from being too focused on the results rather than the process itself.
When the desired outcome doesn’t appear as quickly as expected, one gets dissatisfied with the circumstances and becomes impatient. If results remain absent, many people tend to stop whatever they’re doing, through which these results would eventually ensue.
Hence: “I give up on dating.”
Writer and philosopher Albert Hubbert wrote how many a person had thrown up their hands at a time when a little more effort and a little more patience would’ve achieved success. If one works toward a goal while being patient regarding the results, the lack of results, at least for a reasonable period, will not be a demotivating factor. Again, patience grants us the ability to accept or tolerate delay.
Look at many modern-day dating life examples of how patience helps us achieve long-term goals. On average, new businesses take about three to four years to become profitable. Success on YouTube may come quicker if lucky, but it generally takes years to occur.
If it ever happens, patience allows us to endure the journey without compensation for our efforts. Undoubtedly, summoning such patience isn’t easy; it’s bitter, but its potential Fruit is remarkably sweet.
4. Tolerance. For others.
We do not control the actions and will of other people, and thus those around us may do things we don’t like and refuse to do what we wish them to do. Sometimes this is modern dating in a nutshell.
So many woefully misguided people in the dating world expect that others behave in ways they want, and when they don’t, they experience dissatisfaction. I can’t see a world in which that makes any sense for people. Fights between two people freshly dating often originate from one party doing or not doing something that conflicts with the other party’s desire and expectation. When in reality, it’s never really been communicated.
Sometimes it’s a natural human consequence to get impatient because we don’t want people to behave in a way we would never. We want them to act differently and think differently despite us not having a say in this matter.
The ancient stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius recognized that we have no choice in regard to which people up in our lives will meet with ungrateful, deceitful, rude, ill-willed people whether we like it or not.
Knowing this really changes your whole paradigm toward how you can effectively utilize patience within your dating life.
You can, however, change your attitude towards them. We can let these people disturb us, or we can accept their existence and that encountering them from time to time is unavoidable, and there’s no reason to be bothered by what we can’t do anything about. So the next time you go on a bad first date, just remember those simple principles.
By having patience with people who might seem like a bad date or dating people that we don’t always agree with, we not only neutralize their power to disturb our peace of mind, but we also accept their flaws and thus, their humanity. Because guess what? You’re just as human as they are. The sun does not indeed shine out of your arse. They merely manifest it in different ways.
In his book, the Hidden Power of Kindness, missionary Lawrence Lak stated, “The practice of patience toward one another, the overlooking of one another’s defects, and the bearing of one another’s burdens is the most elementary condition of all human and social activity in the family, in the professions and society.”
Conclusion
Patience expands our tolerance towards one another and allows us to listen before we speak, be more empathic and forgiving, and be less likely to respond and react in ways we later regret. It’s a habit that strengthens our overall paradigm toward the outside world and ourselves. Impatience implies intolerance, foolishness, weakness, and suffering; who wants to be with a person like that?
Patience means tolerance, wisdom, strength, and equanimity. So that’s why patience will always be your biggest dating power.
If you like this article, check out my book all about first dates: https://www.amazon.com/First-Date-Fix-great-first-ebook/dp/B09RWH5Q6Y/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3R5147W5EO65N&keywords=the+first+date+fix&qid=1648679254&sprefix=the+first+date+fix%2Caps%2C347&sr=8-1
Want to hear more millennial dating pieces to get your dating up to your standards? Feel free to stalk my social media IG, Pinterest, TikTok, and Youtube.
Thanks for reading!
T.H.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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