All we want is someone emotionally available, with a viable career, attractive, intelligent, fun to be with, kind, without anger management issues, someone we love, someone also like as a human and someone who feels like home. And also great sex.
How hard can it be to find our person?
Let’s face it, if you’ve been out there trying to date in the past 5 to 20 years you’re well aware that looking for you person feels a little bit like searching for a great design piece in the middle of a dump. There is a little bit of everything, yet everything is cracked, broken, too heavy to carry all by yourself or just impossible to find. Once in a while you see something that looks shiny, still intact and beautiful in the distance but when you get a closer look it’s just not it.
Everything seems to have a missing a piece.
Close, but not quite ‘it’
Amidst this pool of crap, many of us who truly want that relationship in our lives, go for what feels like the only solution: we find something slightly different from what we had wanted and we try our best to make it work.
To summarize, we settle for something we never would have chosen in our 20’s.
This clock ticking situation is real but…bad idea, bad bad bad idea.
That loneliness which comes out of the blue just when we’re having the time of our lives, is real.
We run into someone who has quite a few of the qualities we have been looking for and think: is it really such a big deal if they are emotionally unavailable? They do seem like a lovely person once they fall in love…
Or — Yes, they were a bit verbally aggressive or disrespectful, and ghosted me a few times but when we’re together it’s amazing…
Or — Is it really such a tragedy if their career is in a ditch at the moment? They have potential…
When you choose potential
I remember reading that women should stop choosing based on ‘potential’.
Men choose based on what’s right there in front of their eyes. They choose us at our current weight, in our current career, with the life we are currently leading.
It’s actually kind of funny if you think about it. Us women often worry — am I too fat? Is he attracted?
Chances are if he hit on you, he liked you, then and there and as you were in that precise moment.
Men don’t choose you and think — I chose her because I can see that if she lost a few pounds she would be perfect. I see the potential of her weighing less tomorrow.
Or — I chose her because despite the fact that her career is a mess I can see the potential of her building an amazing business.
They choose you for who you are at that specific moment, then they may spot things they don’t like and distance themselves or say something about them but they will tend to choose you as you are in the moment in which they meet you.
Women, on the other hand tend to choose based on potential. We see what a man could become, and we often choose THAT projection.
Lessons from my therapist: the Russian way of choosing a partner
Let me share a secret: if you have a therapy session around August and your therapist has not gone on vacation yet, they are most likely saturated and exhausted and there is a chance they will actually give you a little bit of advice they are not normally supposed to share.
And quite frankly, I love it!
My therapist let something slip that truly made me reflect: Russian clients are the ones who most often end up in the relationship they want.
Do you know who gets the exact relationship they want?
Russians.
I hear so many relationships stories. Typically, a person meets someone they really like, this person don’t possess the attributes and qualities they were looking for however they decide to give it a go anyways to see if somehow it will work. Enter — few years of their lives dedicated to making it work.
My Russian clients, on the other hand, do it completely differently.
They identify that they are looking for A, B and C and they ONLY take into consideration partners who have A, B AND C.
They do not get distracted by people who are lacking any of the major things that they want in a life partner.
Let’s hypothetically say that:
— A = good looks
— B = a successful career and/or money
— C = readiness to get married
If they meet a man who is gorgeous and who falls completely in love with them but he has attachment issues and is not sure he is ‘ready for a serious relationship or marriage’, they don’t spend two years trying to understand his childhood trauma and what’s holding them back, they close the door and date someone else.
If they meet a man who is great looking and loves them infinitely but he has no money nor career, they also don’t spend years waiting to see if this man is going one day to make money.
They don’t even entertain the idea.
Now, this to may of us may seem cold but there is a deep learning in this:
Those who try to make a relationship that has fundamental problems work, are likely going to miss out on the opportunity to find and to build the relationship they wanted.
→ Let me be clear, this doesn’t mean don’t work on your relationship if things are tough or there is such a thing as a ‘perfect’ relationship. It means tha, if you meet someone and something is fundamentally off, you don’t spend the next 5 years trying to fix it. Don’t choose based on potential.
You want a relationship? Then why are you with the unavailable person?
You want to get married? Don’t date the person who says they don’t believe in marriage.
You are ready to have kids? Don’t date the person who never wanted kids and could maybe have them to make you happy (and vice-versa).
If you are serious about what you say you want, date the person who cannot wait to have kids.
Date the person who wants to put in the effort to get to know you to potentially marry you.
Date the person who feels like luck struck the day you were brought into their lives.
Date the person who’s life is ready to welcome you in it. As is.
We usually know when something could have been great if…but in reality isn’t. Our mind knows but often shuts these thoughts down over-riding them with that message we learned in childhood as millennials (and above:
‘With enough effort and love I can make anything work’.
Spoiler alert: you cannot.
I remember my therapist telling me:
YOU CANNOT MAKE IT WORK. You are dying in migraines your body is shutting down you cannot make it work.
And that’s really what was happening.
When we cannot hear our inner voice, we can often look to our bodies to tell us what’s going on.
Don’t.
Clearly, I am not there yet, but gaining clarity on this has helped me immensely and hopefully it can be food for thought for you as well if you are out there looking for love or trying to build a life with someone.
If a fundamental aspect of what you are looking for is not there, stop right then and there.
Don’t even entertain the idea.
If you are ready to put this into action, you are probably one step closer to the life you have always envisioned.
I know it’s hard to believe it can happen, I’m there with you. Let’s believe a little bit more, together.
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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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