One thing I have noticed about myself over the years is that when I am single, and everything else feels at a lull in my life, I tend to start fixating on wanting a partner.
Partly, this is just a response to the loneliness that can come up, as well as the myriad of dreams about what you might be doing if you were with someone. Another piece of it, though, is a basic failure to appreciate my life as it is. Being alive, healthy, with my basic needs mostly met isn’t enough. Having a small group of quality friends isn’t enough. Nor a supportive family. Nor any of the other things I’m simply taking for granted.
As I read other blogs and dating forums, I keep going back to the idea that being at ease with being single is the best way to enter a long-term, healthy partnership. Those who are severely uneasy about being single tend to struggle in relationships, using dating in part as an attempt to bring ease into their lives through connection with another person — a strategy that nearly always fails over the long-term.
When I think about all the comments people leave on dating blogs saying things like “these people I go on dates with don’t appreciate me.” Or “they’re just into my body or my money or my political ideas” or whatever, I wonder about the people saying them. Do they deeply appreciate their lives as they currently are? Do they feel a love and passion for what is already present in their lives? And can others see that love and passion?
I’m not a believer that our thoughts alone make our lives. That’s way too simple in my view. However, I do believe that how we think about ourselves does have an impact. Sometimes a strong one, and sometimes much more subtly. If internally you feel some desperation to find a partner, and some loathing of being single, others will pick up on that. If you don’t feel passionate about different aspects of your life, that will be fairly obvious to others.
In other words, we need to place a lot more focus on how we are ourselves, and much less focus on what we want in a partner.
I like to think of it as a 80% – 20% rule.
80% of the energy I spent on dating is about honing my attention and listening skills, refining the list of what’s important to me, practicing being open to a new relationship entering into my life, and reflecting upon what I might have learned from recent dates I have gone on that “didn’t pan out.” It also may simply include time doing things to take care of myself.
The remaining 20% of the time involves doing things like looking at online profiles, making lists of wants and don’t wants in a partner, going on dates, and other such outward looking things.
What I usually see people doing is the opposite ratio. They spend 80% of the time focusing on the dating pool, including copious amounts of time bitching about other people’s flaws, mistakes, and offenses.
There’s more I could say about this, but I’d like to offer this flipped ratio as something for you all to consider. It actually is something that you could apply in other areas of your life as well. You are having challenges at work? Consider how you might be looking for that magic bullet solution outside of yourself. You are having issues with a neighbor? Consider what your role in the situation is.
If you like this idea, how might you change what you’re doing now to get more in line with it? If you dislike what I’ve said, how have you been successful using a mostly “other focused” approach?
Recent Nathan Thompson Articles:
- A Balm for Your Body and Mind
- The Gifts of Comfrey
- Learning in the Community Garden
- Passionflowers
- The Beautiful, Powerful Coneflower
Nice piece Nathan. It is all so true what you said.
I’ve been single for a long time. I have chosen to be celibate as well – an extreme solution for an extreme person. 🙂 I have chosen these things as I believe, like you, that there is far too much emphasis on filling the void with others, things and stuff. Perhaps in some weird way, I feel it’s a way for me to help balance things spiritually…if I focus on balance, I’m another spirit who is chosing to wake up, which I think on some karmic level is felt like ripples by others. Of course, in the wake of my initial loneliness, I felt a strong need to connect with someone, but in lieu of that, I chose to connect with myself.
What happened was quite remarkable. I started writing more letters to my family, and the correspondance that continues as a result has given me enormous insight into who I am – a great tool when attempting to undo who I’m not. Which further allows me to release myself from judgement of self and others.
Another thing that happened is the occasional pity I felt for myself for being alone was eventually replaced by a sense of strength and confidence. I chose to do this…I am alone because I would rather be alone than with someone who is not going to understand me through and through.
Then I started to act more like I did before relationships. I started reading more, working out because it feels good and talking to everyone – not just one person or those my formerly judgemental mind had considered ‘not up to snuff’. When I wasn’t looking for a partner or love, I stopped analysing, judging and compartmentalizing everything and everyone. I saw everyone as a potential friend.
Strange thing though…not a lot of people see things this way and some have a very hard time believing that another person would choose to live this way. Like a celibate nun, I suppose. It breeds suspicion. Which is kind of funny. But the senses I’ve honed from talking to people on whatever level we are on, and also, from the enormous charge I continue to gather from saved up chi (from not expending it on frivilous or even committed sex), allow me to become more in tune with people. I have more compassion. More capacity to listen. More ability to empathize. And it’s contagious. This is where the spiritual aspect comes in I suppose.
I fall off the wagon sometimes, emotionally, as I am human. I do get lonely for someone like me. My ego tells me to start judging again, to stop being so complacent. But when it rears, I almost immediately feel ugly. I feel like everyone can sense it too – like how you described desperation. It’s an incredibly interesting thing, the mind. And to share it with others requires that one knows how it works and more importantly, the difference between the confined mind and the free one…the one we are born and die with. I hope to live and die with love, whether or not I have a partner to share it with.
Thanks Nathan.