Dating Advice: Take It for What It Is Worth...

I have been regrouping...dating has been exhausting for the most part and unproductive and a shit show.  The crisis of curiosity reigns supreme in the dating realm.  So many people seems desperate to find something, all while not giving anyone real the time of day.  So caught up in the chase that they seem to have forgotten why they got into this whole scene to begin with...

My dating life got a major overhaul when I left whatshisname a couple years ago.  I could see what I did to attract that dumpster fire to me and I wanted to ensure I cleared up my part of that wreckage so as to never allow anyone like him anywhere near me, ever again.

I took the time to heal myself and process all that had happened and to really look at my part in that whole debacle.  I also needed to heal so that when he came round again, I would not fall for all the manipulations and lies like I did several times before.  I think, upon further reflection, the part that is hardest for me to accept is how obvious the crap is now and how much I didn’t see that then.  It kind of makes me wretch a bit.  But also conjure up some compassion for myself in just how deluded I was.  I mean he was the creator of the lies, but the liar only gains ground when he or she can find someone to believe them.  And that was my part, I believed him even though, looking back, it was so painfully obvious what was really going on. For reasons I understand, and to some degree do not, I just couldn’t or wouldn’t see it then.  But fuck, I do now.

Healing closes the loop so that there are no sharp edges to snare you in the future.  Healing smoothes it all out so that you are good and can roll on past your last fuckup and move forward and towards something better.

I haven’t dated a lot since I left him.  Mostly because I was terrified I would pick another one just like him. So I took my time, but being 56, I mean, there isn’t a lot of time to take.  Sadly.  Anyway, what happened for me was a complete reframing of how I looked at myself in relationships.  And also, how very happy I am alone.  It isn’t that I do not want a partner, a lover, a BFF.  But that I learned through the firestorm of my last union how to become that for myself.  If I never met or connected again, that would be ok.  Really.

As I have said before, I do believe that me being alone forever is the easy way out. I do alone well.  Probably a little too well.  I am self supporting, I can go wherever I like solo, I am not lonely most of the time (save the first day of a road trip and the holidays) and I enjoy my own company.  I do not go to bed with longing and I don’t wake with it either.  So I can go the distance in my solitary form.

But I do not believe that is where I need to grow.  I know my growth is based in intimacy and union and commitment and loving.  I know these are the houses where I have historically feared to tread.  I know that if I avoid all of these, I will be fine, but I will not grow to my fullest potential.  So I date and I try.

But prior to dipping my toe back into the dating pool, I had some major perspective shifts that I think might be helpful to others...so I am gonna share them.

Prior to the last fucked up nightmare, I always felt like I was lucky to be with them.  Like I was kind of amazed that they wanted to be with me.  And this extended to pretty much everyone I ever dated.  There was this little girl that was so blindsided about being selected and this quite desperate need to keep that selection going that I completely missed the most important question of all:  Do I like them?  Why do I want them?

Now, if I would have had any kind of ability at all to review my dating behavior early on and from this perspective, I would have said, “no, I really don’t like them and I don’t really want them...” And I would have moved on. But I was caught in a traumatic response from my childhood that I could not avoid and so I just kept falling off the same cliff over and over again.

But this time, I did something different.  I got busy and worked on where this wound came from and how it manifested in my life and I began to heal it.  Perhaps complete healing will never be possible, but I sure as shit have been able to stop the progression and to ask those hard questions early on.  And that has resulted, for the most part, in me not even going out with the person in the first place.  Or one date and that is all.  I can see how I feel about them and have no desire to try to make them do anything except go away.  I need to prove nothing, the only one that needs to pick me, is me.

Fuck that was a game changer.

So my whole perspective shifted from being overly preoccupied with whether they liked me, to whether I like them.  Did I like the way they were engaging with me?  Did I like the way they were communicating with me?  Did I like how we were when we were together?  If the answer was no, then I politely disengaged myself.  I did not fall into the trap of trying to get this person to treat me the way that I wanted to be treated.  I just accepted that this other person, for whatever reason: a lack of interest, dating 27 other people, their own traumatic histories, their personality disorders, made them not a good match for me.  Nothing I needed to do or say or discuss, I just needed to politely extricate myself from them and move on.

I will reiterate here that I did take a great deal of time after the last fucked mess to not date at all.  I spent the time traveling and healing and enjoying the fuck out of my life.  Which provided me not only with a stable and loving base but it also helped me to have something to compare what I was being offered to what I already had.  And for the most part, I went on many more first dates, and not hardly any second dates...what I had alone was so much better than what was being offered, so it was easy to turn it down.

My entire focused shifted from wondering if they liked me, to honing in on whether and if I liked them.  Did I like the way they were with me?  And this perspective shifted everything...because the answer, so often, was a resounding no!  Which paved the way to a speedy exit for me, back to my already in process, wonderful life.  

And I will tell you, no date, or man or relationship was better in that period of time than the life I already had in process.  And so I developed new tools for evaluation, and I just started living.  And that life put me out into the world, not with the goal of meeting someone, but with the goal of living my best life to the fullest.  Which in turn resulted in me having the opportunity to meet new people and in turn, date.

Totally different take on living and dating.  Today I live my life and if a date comes, great. If it doesn’t, I have enough going on that fulfills me, and makes me feel whole.  I remain open to the idea that perhaps one day I might meet someone that I do not want to live without...until then, I am fine just as I am.  I have restricted my dating life so that I am a better gatekeeper, not allowing those that will take and harm and damage in any further.  Which has resulted in me trusting my own judgment, which was the part that was so badly damaged in my last dating decimation.

Life is good. Dating is fun.  And I trust myself and the universe that not only am I worthy of love and attention and affection and intimacy, I can now offer it as much as I can receive it.  Which I was not able to do before, sadly, which is what led me to make such poor choices in the dating and men department previously.  

Healing takes time, but if you do the work, the reward is great, life affirming and positions you for a win/win situation.  If I meet someone who rocks my world, GREAT!  If I don’t, I am still over here living my best life no matter what.  And that is pretty fucking GREAT too!

Again, still...