I had to remind my daughter the other day, sometimes you meet the right person at the wrong time. People will change horses, you may get really excited about somebody and then all of a sudden realize, ‘Eh, not really my cup of tea.’ The full expression is “don’t change horses mid-stream” (or, sometimes, “don’t swap horses midstream”). The expression is usually credited to Abraham Lincoln who, during the Civil War, said that voters should re-elect him because it would be foolish to change leaders in the middle of such a turbulent time. However, not all is fair in love and war. And the only constant, these days, is change. Family love, romantic love, the love of an old friendship – it’s not only in our nature to love, it’s our evolutionary advantage. It’s also our highest calling as human beings to love another person fully and completely. In fact, relationships are our biggest opportunity for spiritual growth. Love is something we all seek. It’s our highest purpose.
But we all come to relationships with different wiring, conditioning, cultures, belief systems, biochemistry, and a blueprint for what love looks like. And, yet we often make the mistake of thinking our experience of how love should be is the same as our partner’s. Then, we think we’ve made a mistake or lost love when conflict arises or the chemistry subsides. In reality, this is our opportunity to go deeper. People think relationships are about selecting the right person. They are more about becoming the right person. Using love to grow, to learn and to challenge yourself to find and give more. Be open to love and love has a way of finding you with the right person, at the right time and right place.
Tony Robbins likes to say that relationships are actually about the part of yourself that you select to bring into the relationship every single day. The state of any relationship is the state you bring to it. We all have a choice in the state we bring to the relationship. Whether we’re doing the dishes, lying next to each other in bed at night, or running out the door late for an appointment, there is a choice in what part of ourselves we bring to the table. We have many different parts of ourselves. Are you selecting the critical one? The complainer? The playful one? The sensual one? The problem solver? We’ve all been harsh, unkind, or yelled in the moment. And we probably felt bad about it later. But over time those negative interactions create a stacking effect that often ends in a person questioning the relationship. Renowned relationship experts John and Julie Gottman have studied thousands of couples over a 20-year span and can accurately predict with 91% accuracy whether a couple will get divorced in just 15 minutes. The two have found that for every negative interaction, a relationship needs five positive ones to counteract. For an extraordinary relationship, the ratio should be twenty to one.
More than health and money, people tend to crave affection and harmonious relationships. You can always continue to learn in life and there are some interesting things I have recently learned about relationships. For instance, marriage should not be the goal, in seeking a new relationship, it is one possibility of how a lasting relationship looks like but in and of itself, adding rings and a sheet of paper doesn’t change your relationship to one another, except by making it very complicated to legally disentangle if things don’t work out. While marriage adds things to your life and it also has the potential for taking things away—it adds consistency, kills joy, adds security, kills desire, adds stability, which kills everything new. Sometimes people have to see you as the problem, so that they don’t have to change. And snakes don’t change, they just shed their skin and grow larger. So it’s time to break from those kinds of people in your life and once you do, you won’t believe how much life those kinds of people suck out of you. The only time you can change someone is when they are in diapers. Sometimes you feel like you are pushing all of their buttons and you were just trying to push mute. In those situations, divorce is liberating and allows you a “do-over” with your life. It gives you myriad second chances that you had never imagined possible: to be happy again, to be independent and answer only to yourself, to grow and challenge yourself unlike you ever have, to travel, to create the home environment you always wanted, to understand yourself better and to define life on your own terms. And it gives you the opportunity to meet someone who is loving, attentive, available, generous, and open. It will likely feel passionate, exciting, consuming, and real in the beginning and time will tell if it lasts.
In ‘Single But Dating,’ Dr. Nikki Goldstein establishes and embraces a new relationship status for women, which applies equally for men, which is embracing the power of being single and dating. You don’t have to date to meet new people and you don’t have to use online dating either. If you have interesting hobbies and a few friends, you’ll meet a lot of interesting people in real life. These days there are sports and experiences for every level of comfort, from the everyday baseball, soccer, and hockey to the more intense skydiving, rock climbing, and polo. Horse sports are a god send for dating, as you can date without being on a date.
In the illuminating and entertaining blog Going Medieval, Eleanor Janega, a medievalist at the London School of Economics, upends prevalent misconceptions about medieval Europe. Her new book, The Once and Future Sex, is subtitled “Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society.” Then there’s a chapter on beauty standards for women, which mandated golden tresses, milky-white skin, and rosy cheeks. The adjectives were lifted directly from Dares Phrygius, a contemporary of Homer’s who purportedly witnessed the Trojan War, and they’ve remained unchanged until… basically now. Then, as now, women were supposed to naturally have this appearance; God forbid they put any time, money, or effort into it. (Quite literally—using make-up was considered among the gravest of sins). Medieval men did like a potbelly on their women, though. This is the opposite of today’s preference for chiseled abs, but both features denote the same trait: wealth. Medieval women sporting potbellies clearly had enough to eat, and today’s flat-bellied women clearly have enough leisure time to work out. So in short, looks matter, and they have always mattered. But the ways of finding someone attractive have changed since the midlevel times, in fact, they have changed a lot just in the last twenty years with the advent of text and swiping.
I have to confess that I never had understood online dating much, as meeting people to go out with in real life comes easy to me. But whether you are looking online or in real life, maybe you want more than just a few hours’ company or adding to your body count; you want a lifetime companion. That’s why a lot of conventional dating advice doesn’t work – dating tips and techniques might snag you a date, but they don’t teach you about the deeper shifts you need to make in order to attract the kind of partner who wants to create a genuine, loving partnership with you. Everyone is looking for the one, but no one is trying to be the one. Be the one and the universe will send you plenty of fish in the sea to pick from, whether you are seeking peace and harmony, adventure and travel, or just someone to let the good times roll with.
If you are on social media and you are trying to strike up friendships that way, you don’t have to block someone on social media, just because you are not interested. Maybe it’s just bad timing and things will open up later. What was once considered outré—now it is orthodox. And you don’t have to be interested in dating someone just to make a new friend. Sometimes your new friends lead to other interesting friends which might have the potential to be what you are looking for. Don’t be afraid to be set up on a date. And don’t be afraid to just date without the pressure of feeling that this has to be the one, time will tell. However, if you are looking for substance, ask yourself who would you call if you needed help in a moment of crisis, who knows everything about you, who do you feel satisfied with, who do you turn to when you need expertise or solving a practical problem, and who makes you laugh, feel connected and at ease. If you find those things in someone, show gratitude for the way this person uplifts your life.
In order to “be the one,” there are a few things not to do:
Forgetting the past
Your relationships – and the people you become involved with – are no accident. If you have a history of experiencing pain in relationships – whether it’s rejection, constant conflict, or lack of trust – there is a reason for it. And that reason lies in the subconscious beliefs you developed before you were old enough to date. As a child, you developed a certain story about what love means and how it’s supposed to show up in your life. If you lived in a very critical household, you will likely feel criticized in your adult relationships. And if you felt second best to a sibling, you might settle for less than loving behavior from a partner. As long as you don’t examine the underlying reason for your relationship patterns, you will keep repeating the pain. But you don’t have to let your old story run your relationships any longer – you can choose to become conscious of these old patterns and replace them with healthier beliefs and ways of relating.
Giving everyone a chance
You’ve probably heard that you should be very open to meeting anyone for a date – because you never know in what package your ideal mate will show up. We believe this is a time waster and will lead you into the arms of unsuitable partners. Attracting true love – and not just a date – requires you to get very clear on the kinds of qualities you want (and don’t want) in a mate. Love does not conquer all. Becoming involved with someone who has traits that are not agreeable to you will only lead to disappointment later. That’s why we think you should get really specific about your future partner – right down to physical characteristics, lifestyle preferences, and how they will relate to you in a relationship.
Believing there’s something wrong with you
For true love to enter your life, you need to create the right mental, emotional, and physical conditions for it. That means not just making time for love, but believing that you are truly worthy of it. If there is any part of you that feels you’re too difficult, or too quirky, or too fat, or too stubborn, or too weird, or too set in your ways to find love, then you haven’t mastered the most important skill in attracting a partner: loving yourself.
So if you are repeatedly getting benched or suffering from the slow fade, in your search for meaningful relationships, it’s probably because you are focused on finding the one, instead of being the one. If you’ve ever played sports, you’re probably familiar with benching—a.k.a. keeping someone on your team while not necessarily giving them the chance to go up and bat. But if you’re new to modern dating (my condolences), perhaps you aren’t. Benching in dating strikes a similar definition. In short, a bencher keeps you in their rotation while playing the field (talk about a perfect analogy), regardless of whether or not you’re sitting there waiting and hoping for a monogamous relationship. Because even though they are clearly interested—if not, they may pull the slow fade—they haven’t decided to commit to any sort of two-person team.
And though it can come off as unusual or harsh, benching—or more specifically, dating multiple people at once—is what you’re supposed to be doing, says Ann Rosen Spector, PhD, a clinic psychologist in Philadelphia. Seeing several people at once is the best way to figure out what you’re really looking for and who you truly want to spend more time with, she says. It also helps you avoid getting emotionally attached to a person before they’ve truly invested in you, adds WH advisor Chloe Carmichael, PhD, a clinical psychologist in New York City. Alas, the world of modern dating and it’s very different from medieval times. Many even now argue that there is no one right person and different people serve different needs. I have several friends who advocate that no one person can meet all of your intellectual, emotional, physical, and social needs. That’s an unrealistic ask. But, is the only solution to that increasing the number of partners you have? One for philosophical musings, one for sex, one for social appearances, one for thrills, one for… whatever. It doesn’t sounds right.
So if you want to get off the bench, try being the one in your next relationship encounter, instead of looking to find the one. Become your best person. Don’t waste your time worrying about things you can’t control. Focus on love-you attract what you put out. And while change and growth can be tough, nothing is as tough as staying stuck in the same place where you aren’t meant to be. And for me, the idea of soul mates is real and even science supports that regardless of whether you believe in reincarnation or other ways of finding the one. In the end, only love is real.
The things that come most quickly into your life are the things that you BELIEVE in the most. You can only bring to you what you BELIEVE, so you must BELIEVE to receive what you want.
Sadhguru – There is really no such thing as conditional love and unconditional love – there are conditions, and there is love. So stop looking for unconditional love or the one, and start trying to be the one.
