It’s rare you meet someone interesting in a dating app where so many people only look for a quick vent.
However, last week I met someone who asked me an interesting question.
“So who do you think is an ideal partner for a relationship?”
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Having gone through 3 different relationships each lasting a minimum of 2years during the last decade, I thought I had a fairly good understanding of what I want in life, in terms of a life partner.
Understanding, loyal, supportive, and mature were some of the adjectives I always used to explain the type of partner I’m looking for.
But this stranger said, “Someone doesn’t become an ideal partner by their qualities, but only by how you are going to look at them.”
So I said, “hmm interesting, ok then who do you think is an ideal partner?”
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“An ideal partner, is someone you don’t have to convince yourself that this is the ideal partner”
I kept looking at that message for a few seconds before its sense seeped into the depths of my consciousness.
“Damn,” I said.
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5years ago I was in a relationship with this person, who was loyal, kind, and caring. However, since the beginning of the relationship, there was something that just didn’t feel right.
We fell in love with how we looked but had nothing to talk about. We shared no interests and when we met it was mostly awkward silences and a salad of regular words that served no real purpose.
Given the sapiosexual I am, I was yearning to have deep intellectual discussions with my partner that dived way beyond just talking about what dinner was or how work was.
Every day was a struggle of convincing myself, “Maybe they are not good with intellectual discussions, but AT LEAST they are kind, loyal, and caring.”
But as time went on, I found this relationship has turned all about convincing myself, and we had to address this elephant in the room.
Then we discussed, and the moment we did it, our whole relationship that lasted for more than 2 years collapsed in front of us, unable to revive. I wasn’t happy how they viewed life superficially, and they hated how my view of life was too deep and rigid with very few fun factors involved.
Apparently, both of us were unhappy and, our relationship was only hanging by a thread.
The thread of convincing ourselves.
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We usually judge the new people we meet, in already set parameters in our minds. Especially when it comes to partners, we are very picky about checking them into the already made checkboxes to see how compatible we are going to be.
While this intellectualization process is ongoing, we also start doing one other thing.
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Compromising
Assuming we have seven checkboxes to fulfill regarding a partner, and they fulfill only five of them, we have two options.
We can either dump this person altogether or compromise with the remaining two and try to love the person by convincing ourselves.
According to this stranger’s theory, compromising and subsequent convincing ourselves, leads to unsatisfying relationships, just like how it happened in my previous relationship.
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Romantic love can take so many forms.
However, the best type of love is when you are fascinated by them and whatever they do makes you happy.
It could be as simple as how they make a sandwich, how they smile when they see you, how funny their jokes are, or even how hard they work. People fall in love for various reasons. But as long as you always feel fascinated by them with no second-guessing about your feelings, you are loving them just right.
However, the moment you have to convince yourself that “They are great, but…”, your relationship has cracked.
You are not loving them for who they are.
You are just loving their purpose in your life.
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Life is too short to love people for their purposes.
So go out and find someone with whom you don’t have to convince yourself that this person is right for you.
P.S. — As life is unpredictable, it might prove later that they are not exactly the person you thought them to be, and you might fall apart. But if you were never second-guessing your feelings while you were in the relationship, you can be happy that for the time it lasted, you loved them truly.
That’s all that matters.
P.S. II — My ex is very happy with someone else now, and we are still friends.
P.S. III — That stranger who asked me that question, has become one of my best friends with whom I’m talking a lot of deep intellectual stuff. I also kind of find myself very much fascinated by whatever they do.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Jakob Owens on Unsplash