I’ve been thinking a lot on this lately after meeting my current partner. I remember a year ago I was absolutely combing this subreddit searching for answers and looking for reasoning to back up the complications of dating.
I struggled to find someone I connected with and had difficulty sorting out if it was me or my circumstances that were determining the failure to find a real partner – someone I felt passionately about who truly added to my life instead of exhausting and stressing me out (which was made even more difficult given my social anxiety).
I eventually met my now partner after identifying what I wanted, and working on myself, and upholding unbreakable standards and yaddayaddayadda. I found after much contemplating that there is no one particular reason why my partner and I work together. If I had seen him on the street without knowing him I wouldn’t have been especially drawn to him. A picture on a dating site wouldn’t have hooked me either. Neither would have an incredible job description or clearly stable living circumstance (hell, I met him when he was unemployed between jobs), or a particular age or set of physical features.
But somehow, through a combination of unexpected personality traits, physical chemistry, and (unwitting on his end) meeting of my standards for a partnership, we worked out. Fell in love, even.
My point is – there’s a lot of pressure in the dating world to show up a certain way, or do this, or do that in order to play this *game*. And at the end of the day, when relationships are treated like a game, they become inauthentic because it’s about winning and not connecting. And I say that because at some point I had to realize if I wanted that real partnership, I had to approach it sincerely without the intention to “win” someone’s affection, or connection, or power in some back and forth dynamic. I’m not saying this is the end all be all for me, but I’d never fallen in love with someone until now. And it took me changing that approach – of reading into things and taking every minute interaction to heart and trying to force connection with people who just frankly weren’t looking for that with me because I thought my poor dating history was due to some unrecognized *thing* i didn’t have or wasn’t doing properly.
All this is to say that you’re enough. Keep holding onto your needs and what you want. It’s not because you’re failing in some area of your life that you haven’t found anyone. Someone is out there for you if that’s what you’re looking for and they’re going to appreciate you and love you when you show up for them the way you want them to show up for you. Good luck 🤞❤️.
3 comments
This is really great, and I agree with this a lot.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the concept of being enough lately, and how that relates to your ability to share yourself with other people.
I think that what makes people attractive is social skills and your ability to communicate. Far more than physical appearance or money (within reason). Because really what everyone wants is genuine connection and to be understood and loved on a deep, personal level. And you can’t participate in that unless you’re able to be vulnerable and share who you are with people. And it’s extremely difficult to do that if you think you’re not good enough, because you feel the need to hide and mask who you are all the time, and you’re always trying to act like what you think is the ideal of who you’re supposed to be.
Sorry for the rant, maybe I got a bit off topic there. I’m glad things worked out for you 🙂
I for one really REALLY dig astrology and it works wonders for me.. except that it is really difficult to tell another discerning person online why it does.. its a thing and maybe you can try Love Signs by Linda Goodman. All the psychology and philosophy apart, men + women were made to need each other in so many ways but there are too few of us 80’s – 90’s who lived a more romantic time when having a significant someone was an ideal to strive for.. I do see signs of a certain yearning to return to that frame – but again, more minds need to understand Synastry (the art of comparing two natal charts in #astrology )
Finding a partner is to a huge degree a matter of luck and circumstance, sadly I am one of the unfortunate ones where it just wont happen for me.