Dating, Marriage and Your Toolbox
Dating, Marriage and Your Romantic Relationships – Tools
Never use a hammer and screwdriver to defrost a freezer.
Once upon a time, the freezer compartment attached to a refrigerator would build up ice. Periodically you’d have to take out all the food, turn off the cold air and let the ice melt. My mom used to speed up the process by putting in a pot of boiling water. And as the ice got softer, she’d pry it off with her fingers.
So, one day I decided to hasten the process along. Rather than waiting for it to get soft enough to pry off with my fingers, I decided to chip it off, tapping a screwdriver with a hammer the way a sculptor chisels away at a rock.
POP! Pssssssssssssssstttttttttt……….
That’s the sound of freon escaping from a punctured tube. Added bonus; it came with a shot of cold air into my face!
Of course I called my dad. He assured me I wouldn’t die from a short burst of freon and closed with his classic, “Well, I guess you won’t be doing that again, will you?”
Um, no.
If you’ve never been married and want to be, you need the right tools. Dating apps and sites are only part of it. Stop focusing on them and what you think of the men you find there. Because when you focus on that you stop seeing possibilities and then you get frustrated and start to feel hopeless, and when you feel hopeless you stop dating.
Not dating doesn’t get you closer to your dream.
You are the most important tool in your toolbox; your qualities and characteristics, what makes you stand out in the most inviting, engaging way! When you learn how to harness the power of what you’ve already got – your exceptional, brilliantly unique YOU – that’s when you’ll shift from feeling frustrated and hopeless to meeting your mate!
Dating, Marriage and Your Romantic Relationships – Skills
How, exactly, do you use a bandsaw? That’s the question I could have asked when I first got to the Habitat for Humanity building site in New Orleans. This was in 2010, years before I’d started to uplevel my life and all my relationships along with it.
I didn’t yet understand that in order to create different results I needed to take different actions, and in order to do that I needed to feel different feelings, and for that I’d have to think different thoughts than I’d ever thought before. I needed different skills than I had at the time.
So instead, I just said, no. No, I don’t use heavy machinery. That’s okay, somebody else can do that.
It didn’t take me long until I asked someone how to use the bandsaw.
You may be doing all the right things like, telling all your friends you’re looking and meeting everyone they set you up with and going online and messaging people and going out on dates and reading books and you still haven’t met your right match.
There’s a world of difference between doing the right thing and doing something right.
Websites and apps and dates and books are just tools. It’s how you use them that makes all the difference between dating forever and meeting your forever partner.
Dating, Marriage and Your Romantic Relationships – Results
Sure, I could have continued to do all the same things I’d always done, in the same way I’d always done them; I could have continued to focus on all the things I thought men weren’t and all the things I thought they ought to be. I could have kept believing that they had to change for me to be happy. I could have kept chasing after every guy I met who didn’t want to be with me to try and make him want to be with me. I could have continued to put all the power over my happiness into the hands of men and kept ignoring the one thing that is obvious to me in hindsight – nothing would have ever changed. But that’s not how this story ends.
I’ve lived in three different states, and had a million first days on the job. I’ve also had as many first (and only) dates.
I had changed absolutely everything possible outside of myself and yet my life wasn’t any different, and I certainly wasn’t any happier than I’d ever been before. I finally saw it – if my life had been a science experiment, I would have been the only constant.
It was also glaringly obvious that I couldn’t figure out the solution for myself, because I honestly wasn’t sure exactly what the problem was. Was it my job? Was it the town in which I lived? Was it my confidence or lack thereof? Was it the app? Was it just … me?
I hired a coach and acquired the right tools. But just like with the bandsaw, it doesn’t matter what tools you have if you don’t have the skills to apply them properly. And the most amazing thing happened – I started feeling happy with my life, just the way it was, even before any of it changed. And then I started having fun on dates even though the men hadn’t changed. And then everything changed!
#havemorelove #havefundating #lovedating #singleandspiritual #lovemakeovers #datingandrelationships #midlifemarriage #midlifedating #onlinedating