photo by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/fenanov/4885568297/}Fernendo Valenzuela{/link}
Do you have a hard time finding or staying in a good relationship? Do you tell yourself, and your friends, that you just have high standards and aren’t willing to settle? Do you go through boyfriends (or girlfriends) faster than you can spend your paycheck? After all, life is short and you can’t waste time in a relationship with someone you’re not compatible with.
Does your list of recent break-ups look like this? -
- She’s too loud. And she talks too much.
- He’s always ten minutes late.
- He chews with his mouth open.
- She doesn’t have enough career ambition.
- He likes reggae music.
It’s not you, it’s me
Little did you realize, saying this to the people you’ve been dumping is actually TRUE. Maybe your mom raised you to believe that you should never settle for second best. That’s fine. You shouldn’t. But guess what? Your idea of “best” is wildly unrealistic.
There’s a difference between settling for less and accepting a person’s humanity.
There’s no ONE ideal person out there, waiting for you to find them. You’re not “looking for Mr. Right.” You’re looking for perfection, and you’re not going to find it.
Nobody’s perfect
Every single person you meet is going to have at least one annoying quality. Most of them are going to have a few. This fact doesn’t make any of those people second best, because being second best implies that there’s someone better out there.
There’s not.
I know you don’t want to hear this, but listen to me anyway. Lower your standards. If no one you’ve ever met has measured up, you’re probably expecting too much. You’re expecting a fairy-tale life and a fairy-tale relationship, and you’re not going to get either.
photo by {link:http://www.flickr.com/photos/americanistadechiapas/5678103297/in/photostream/}Audrey Pilato{/link}
Happily Ever After – the fairy-tale fallacy
We all heard fairy-tales when we were kids, and they all ended the same way: “and they lived happily ever after.” The perfect but unappreciated girl was swept away by the perfect handsome prince and their life was perfect. And as a result, we all think that this scenario should somehow play out in our own lives. I hate to tell you this:
The story is bullshit.
There’s a honeymoon period in all relationships, where we’re so blinded by our love for the other person that we’re temporarily blind to their faults. This is the only thing that fairy-tales talk about. The story’s over before the hard part begins. The prince doesn’t snore, the princess doesn’t suck at cooking or leave her dirty clothes on the floor, and forget the endless sleepless nights that come with having a kid (or three).
And your problem is, you call it quits as soon as the honeymoon’s over because you’re expecting happily ever after.
Like I said before, lower your standards.
Are you perfect?
Yeah, I didn’t think so. And I’m betting that you expect your (future) significant other to love you for who you are, imperfections and all. Give the people you date the same courtesy.
Instead of looking for perfection, try this: figure out what flaws you’re willing and able to put up with, and find people who have them. Unless you want to die alone. Then, by all means, keep looking for Mr. Right.
Are you picking the wrong people?
Before I leave you to ponder how realistic your standards are when it comes to the people you date, I have one more thing for you to think about. There’s something else that could be going on here, something that will require a little more self-evaluation.
You might be, either consciously or unconsciously, choosing to date people who you know are bad for you.
We do this for any number of reasons. You might be trying to fix something that went wrong in a previous relationship. You might be dating people who are just like your mother, either because you have attachment issues or because you idolize her and can’t win her approval. Or you might be dating assholes because you don’t think you deserve any better. Or you could be hung up on something else.
A good therapist can help you sort these kinds of situations out if you can’t seem to get to the root of the problem on your own, but it’s definitely something to consider if you find that your standards really aren’t that high and the people you date STILL don’t come even close to them. It’s easy to sabotage ourselves and not even realize we’re doing it.
Does any of this sound like you? Take a good, hard look at yourself before you say no, because you can’t fix something you won’t admit is broken.
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Thank heaven for people lowering their standards or I’d still be dating complete psychos because no one else would have me.
Perhaps you needed the opposite advice and should have raised your standards a little.
you are screwing up what could be a good premise. having worked in the dating industry and with a masters in psychopathology and counseling, you seem to know just enough to be dangerous.
While I appreciate the criticism, you haven’t really cleared anything up for me or provided any additional helpful information to the readers of this post. You clearly disagree with me, but what exactly do you disagree with, and why?
How am I screwing up a good premise?
What knowledge am I missing, and how is this dangerous?
As it stands, I’m going on my own knowledge, personal opinion, and experience; I’m not claiming to be an expert or professional.
I would have to agree; that comment was about as unproductive as it could possibly be. I am merely a Psychiatric Technician (I’m not even sure what a Psychopathologist does or where they even offer a degree in that.) but I do know that it is not a crime or politically incorrect to acknowledge ones own faults and try to adjust based on what you find. I see nothing dangerous in this post. I do, however, see a person claiming to have a masters that cannot write a complete thought or even a grammatically correct sentence. That seems peculiar to me.