Choosing a Partner Wisely

We have all been fooled by romanticism to choose a person based solely on our feelings. This tendency to devote yourself to someone based on how you ‘feel’ is dangerous and can end up in tragedy.

Why? Because our feelings are based on factors that are not always good for us.

We often choose based on how a person looks or how popular they are, even when time and time again we have seen these choices ending in emotional disasters. Someone’s popularity does not guarantee that they will be there for you in your hard times, it does not mean that they care about your growth and well-being.

Apart from these superficial factors, another primary reason contributing to our choices is this:

We learn the ideas of love and attachment right in our childhoods when we are little kids. If one of our parents were constantly unavailable, we might begin to consider it okay to have an unavailable partner because that is what we know about love. We might have been surrounded by friends who constantly made fun of us, and we might choose someone who does not respect us because our past has taught us that about love and friendships.

We stop expecting ideal behaviors in partnerships. And we begin to settle for the unhealthy patterns we picked up from our loved ones while growing up. You could reject an ideal partner because you have unhealthy attachment patterns.

THE SOLUTION?

Caution: It is boring and involves a lot of hard work. There is nothing romantic about it!

1. You will have to sit down with a pen and a paper and start to analyze the kind of people you get attracted to and the kind that you do not like. Just list the qualities behind your attraction or dislike.
2. Educate Yourself. (Yes! High School is not over. You did not get your love classes!) You will have to teach yourself about the ideal patterns in love. (A few resources to build up your knowledge: Books by John Gottman, Get the Guy by Matthew Hussey, and the love section in the book Defining Decade by Meg Jay)

After following these two steps, analyze whether the factors behind your attraction match the ones that are required for stable, long-term, happy relationships. Just going through this process will help you become more self-aware of the unhealthy patterns of attractions that you hold within yourself and that knowledge will guide you a long way in being attracted for the right reasons, thereby choosing a partner wisely.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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