Perhaps more important, people with happy dating lives aren't overly
concerned about how their own actions will be perceived by potential
mates: They text
when they feel like texting, they have sex when they feel like
having sex, they break up when something isn't working. Which is not to
say that their lives
are devoid of the heartbreak and frustrations normally associated
with matters of the heart. In general, they take
things in stride.
Dating is a source of amusement and romance, not of frustration and
stress. Unfortunately, this ineffable quality, this "lightness" is
difficult to conjure or to fake. If dating is something that's stressful
to you, and if you're
frustrated with your current romantic status, it's hard to just decide to not worry about it so much. When someone says "It will happen when you least expect it" it's
perhaps the most infuriating thing a single person who is tired of being single can hear, because at that point you're never not
expecting it.
You walk into a party and you hope for it; you scan the room looking
for it; say you start talking someone, and despite all logic or
attempts at
restraint, you find yourself thinking, Is this it? Is this him, is this her? Is this finally it? When you want something badly, it's hard not to take it
seriously.
What the phrase "It will happen when you least expect it" really
means is, "It will happen when you just stop worrying about it." It
will happen when
you let your guard down for a second, when you're thinking about
something else, when for a moment all the stress and frustration and heaviness
part like clouds, and someone gets a glimpse of the real you that's
been hiding underneath. I promise that's the corniest thing you'll read
in this blog,
but it's true, it's true, it's true. It might not be immediate, but
once you stop stressing, at some point it will happen. On the Relationship Lessons page on Facebook, I asked people to finish the sentence "I want to be with
someone who wants to be ____". I read a lot of answers that people said, an overwhelming majority said "with me", but it wasn't until someone said "happy" that it actually made me think.. People want to be with people who are happy. It's
what
they're looking for when they meet people at a party or on a first
date, even more than good looks or funny jokes or a smooth alluring
flirtation. People
want to be with someone happy, because if you're with someone happy,
then maybe you can be happy too.
You have to figure out a way to be happy without a partner,
without a date, without sex, without a response to that text or a
"like" on a Facebook
picture or a flirty exchange on GChat. Because the sooner you lower
the stakes on all that, the easier it will be for you, I
promise. Someone who is
moping around, giving up dating as "hopeless", who thinks all
the women in his city "suck" or all the good men are "taken already", is simply going to
have a
much harder time finding someone. No one wants to be with the person who thinks like that. So how do you practice "lightness" when you're genuinely fed up with
dating, when you're seriously afraid you might never meet someone, when
you've tried
everything and you're sincerely doubtful that a hippy-dippy state of
being is going to dramatically change your dating life? It can be a slow process, but you have to try to get to the point
where you are okay just being yourself, no matter how desperately you
really do want a
relationship. It might be hard work, it might take a long time, it
might mean investing in your friends, in your hobbies or in whatever it is
you do that
makes you happy and relaxed. Not only will dating be easier when
you strip away some of your stress and anxiety, but in the process, you
yourself will
become even more of a person that other people want to be around, and
maybe even date...
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