Hey Shelby.

All good here, awesome Easter weekend, sunny and everything, unheard of!  I suppose like Christmas, Easter can get a bit much if you spent all the time together.  Trust it didn’t end badly at least.

Booked my flights to South Africa for later this year so now excitedly figuring out where to go & stay.

@Kkasxo – how was the holiday for you? Hope you got to get out and enjoy the sunshine too and perhaps make some progress on figuring out your way forwards, leaving those anxieties behind. Still here to help however I can.

Hey X,

Was out yesterday celebrating our 19th anniversary, so a little delayed getting back here. Here goes….

Q1.  Yes, that’s exactly what I meant by the restaurant analogy. If you are picking men based on one set of criteria, then it is not too surprising when they don’t magically match the real criteria you want them to have.  It is much easier/normal for people to value the short-term ( physical looks, instant attraction, chemistry… ) than to think about the longer-term.  It’s why it’s called a gut reaction and it’s not a bad thing – but it’s just one piece of information. Since you know you have a history of choices that haven’t made you happy then it’s worth spending some time thinking through and embedding what you really want, hence the ask on the top 5.  Now I’m not suggesting you mentally run everyone through a checklist since agreed, it doesn’t work that way, you don’t know enough about anyone until you start finding out the reality, finding out more.  So through conversations, through dates, slowly gaining more knowledge, experience – not through assessing them further in your head, in your imagination.

Do I mean you should start dating people you aren’t attracted to – no. I don’t think you can fake attraction and you shouldn’t have to. But I do think you could try to keep an open mind for longer before dumping people into the friend zone. Some people become more attractive the more you get to know them, as they open up to you. Given your current method isn’t working, trying a different approach is the only way the outcome can change ( a la Einstein’s famous quote re insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results ).

Q2.  It’s a good list of goals – how many of them are you actively pursuing, i.e. all I’m really asking is do you have a balanced life or do you have a lot of spare time to spend dreaming and imagining up your perfect man  and how life will be great only if/when you have met the right man.  Most people I know end up meeting their partner when they weren’t looking for him, when their lives were full in a good way and they were happy.

Q3.  It’s good you have considered the father figure aspect. I believe it has less to do with age than looking for people who can take care of you, make sure you feel safe, protect you from the world when needed and who will provide direction/guidance and generally mean you don’t need to take such responsibility for your own life. So people who are either in positions of power, authority or have those kind of qualities attract you when looking to replace the father figure, not the age thing.  Do you tend to feel the chemistry, this family portrait thing with men who resemble your father?  Especially given your childhood and lack of attention/love, it would not be surprising to still be looking to fill that hole with a relationship plug.

Your mother sounds difficult and you sound like you are still carrying expectations of hers. I’m glad you have managed to cut contact to once/week – daily is ridiculous. Well done. I know from experience it is hard to work through determining your own values and not still living to those given you by your parents. Take the marriage example – understand completely on that one. My partner and I are not married and when I was still insecure it used to worry me – and it took me a while to work out that I was only worried as it did not meet my parent’s expectations, hopes whereas the big wedding, the 2.4 kids was just not actually me, not something I wanted.  This comes back to goals again and determining your own values/aims – learning to stop having your mother in your head judging you for not being married yet and therefore ‘not good enough’ , ‘not pretty/ladylike enough’. All untrue but hard to recognise when still judging yourself with your mother’s voice and so damaging to your self-esteem.

Q4. Ha – excellent, probably way too much detail for here but hey, yep, seems you’ve ticked that box well and good.  It’s just odd that the first thing that comes to your mind when attracted to someone is to hug them. Back to the theory that you are really looking for affection, love but are assessing people instantly on sexual chemistry instead.

Now to your questions!

1.  So first, not convinced I agree that like attracts like, often seems it’s that opposites attract. And if you look at most of the stats people throw around, there are apparently nowhere near enough secure-style attachment people in the world to match the number of relationships in the world! So given that, what’s important these days in determining if a relationship is going to be good for the long-haul is all about being able to help each other grow, not expecting perfection all the time, not buying into the Disney view of romance.   Most people are just not that self-aware or used to questioning their feelings, reactions as to what’s best for the long-term instead of short-term instant gratification. Mark M does a good piece on this ( ‘F… your feelings’, on his blog ).

1a. Do you believe you are worthy of a good man?  Per above – are you still expecting it all to happen magically or are you willing to deal with the reality of the world, the reality of others.  No-one is perfect and I don’t believe there is only ‘the one’, indeed my own life story so far tells me otherwise. This is why it’s worth being curious enough to learn more about people before discarding them. Is my other-half perfect, ofcourse not in the same way I am not. But we have had an amazing journey so far and I know him way better each day as we grow together – the love today is incomparable to what I felt at the start, richer, truer, sturdier.  Could I have known that at the start – absolutely not.

2. I think it is very much down to how the child-you perceived it at the time – which is why twins/siblings can grow up so differently in the same environment, they will have perceived the experience differently based on their own perspectives, emotions.  Regardless of the actual reality, if you felt disconnected, lacking attention or protection from your parents at the time, that’s going to leave you with a hole to fill.  This is where Anita was going with her questions, to help you recognise that what you are looking for from a relationship can’t fill that hole – it’s like trying to put a square peg in a round hole – it’s not going to heal that hurt.

I have family over for Easter here so if I’m slow getting back to your responses don’t worry, I’ll get there. Hope it helps in meantime.

Hey X.

First – thanks for the short and long versions. Glad you understood how it will help us.

So, as said upfront, I’m not a therapist or any kind of professional but I can offer a different perspective and where I can draw on my own experience, will do so – though obviously this doesn’t mean it will be right for you, just some data/different way of seeing reality. And as ever, if some questions are too personal for this forum and you don’t want to share, just say so.

Q1.  Do you have any close friends ( male or female ).  You know, the kind you can share anything with even if you haven’t seen them for ages, have proper conversations with, they understand you.  As in, do you expect a romantic relationship to meet all your emotional needs?

Reason I ask – your language about what you are looking for from a romantic relationship doesn’t match up to the pre-selection criteria you are currently using.  So, it’s like going out to a restaurant, assessing the menu, discarding 95% of the options available because they aren’t yellow ( or some other selection criteria ), receiving your banana custard pudding and then finding out it doesn’t fill you up as actually what you needed was lasagne ( or something, you get the idea.. ).

A daft example but I think you’ll get it.  All your language ( hugs, crush, cuddling etc ) about what you want from a romantic relationship is not at all sexual in nature but pretty much all your pre-selection criteria are very chemistry/physically-based.  So it is not too surprising that your approach so far hasn’t resulted in finding what you actually want/need.  If you had to pick your top five things you wanted your long-term partner to be, what would they be in priority order?

Q2.  What goals do you have for life outside finding a romantic relationship?

Reason for this one, how much of a balanced, full life do you have outside of looking for a partner. You do clearly get very over-invested, over-attached very quickly, needing very little to go on to conjure up a whole imagined exciting potential world. Take your current experience, a lot of very small occurrences, all could be as easily explained away as they can be built up into something exciting in your head. I’m not surprised given it will feel exciting after not feeling any interest for a while which is why I’m curious about what else excites you, grabs you attention and makes you feel alive outside a romantic relationship possibility.

Q3.  Relationship with parents. Aware you/Anita started on this one and this isn’t my area so I’ll only ask what I can understand and this is something you might want want to pick up with one of those free online therapy/counselling websites you can find.  Given you were attention-starved in your family life, it is not impossible this is why you tend to look to older men for hugs, attention, recognition that you exist/are important/valued and why one of your criteria is the family portrait assessment.  What is the relationship with your mum & dad like now. Do you feel you are independent of them, is there much contact?

And last one for now Q4 – a slightly personal question, to be ignored if uncomfortable sharing here. Would you say you are comfortable/confident with sex, enjoy it, know how to ask for what you like etc?  From reading through it seems you have limited physical experience, which might go some way to explaining why your pre-selection criteria are highly focused on this area of attraction, since it is the area you know least about so far and hence why it excites you so much more than other criteria.  How were your teenage years, first kiss/fumble etc, did you date much back then at all, even if you don’t count them among your experiences here?

Take care, look forwards to hearing what you think. Long & short version…!

Hi X,

Sure, I’m fine with more questions and will say when I’m not – though since this is Shelby’s thread might be good to check with her as to if better to start your own thread perhaps.

In reverse order then – why am I on tinybuddha forums. It’s a good question since yes, I’m very aware I don’t fit the ‘normal’ profile, if there is such a thing.  It’s a pretty simple answer though. Through a ton of hard work/determination/luck I was able to achieve a couple of major life goals last year, one of which was being able to leave my full-on job in London and have more time/freedom, especially to travel more. As such, I now have enough time to be able to give back and help others, another goal/value which is important to me.  I looked into local volunteering but they need a regular once/week type commitment that doesn’t fit with my travel goals – and so online ‘helping’ was the obvious answer. I’ve read articles on tinybuddha in the past when struggling and so it seemed a good place to start, among other ways.  You will see I’m not as active as most of the regulars on here and I’ll only contribute as/when I hope I have some relevant life experience/perspective to share that may help.  Know your own limits!

Onto the next…”At least you now know enough to identify those you know won’t be a good healthy match”

Some interesting points in there.  These are the ones that jumped out to me as worth thinking more about.

–  Agree it’s helpful to be very self-aware, the more you know yourself the more you can recognise what is helpful/unhelpful for you to invest your time in, which is our most precious asset after all. Often we attract what we need, not necessarily what we want or think we want at that time.  You have an intriguing mix of an analytical selection process combined with pretty much all physical attributes, chemistry, ‘family portrait’ and so on. A lot of pre-selection before really getting to know any of these people?  It would be simple to say you are attracted to unavailable people so that there is no real danger of having to get emotional invested again but I suspect as you think about it, there’s more to it than that. Do you know why you value the physical so much more than the mental/character of potential partners, given it’s those that last longest and have way more impact on whether you are happy together or not. Again, nothing is right/wrong here, it’s just that you come across as someone who clearly enjoys using her brain but doesn’t appear to value that when assessing partners?  I can understand why if very few men you meet pass these selection criteria that you get excited, attached to them – after all, not many pass right?  People can be surprising you know, sometimes it is worth getting to know people before dismissing them because of such set criteria/expectations.

Last (first?! ) one: I certainly learned the hard way that it was only by being myself that I could really trust anything else was real

From my experience, it’s definitely the latter. When you do something you think is scary, like dis-agreeing with someone you’d usually just play along with for the sake of a smooth road, and the worst doesn’t happen,they don’t hate you forever etc,  life goes on. And the more you do it, the more ‘proof’ you have of a different experience to your fears, lessening the fear so much until it becomes seemingly daft you were ever afraid of it.  Once you get to the stage of being able to be yourself and not be concerned about what the outside world thinks, it’s pretty empowering. I read a great quote once, something along the lines of “someone can only make you feel bad about something if you feel bad about it yourself”. Essentially, if you have done your best to behave with your values, e.g. honesty, respect, love, compassion, whatever – then other’s judgement is simply that, their judgement, something you should consider but can reject if false.

Hope helps!

Ah see, I knew you was still in there somewhere Kkasxo!!  And how awesome to have one of your best friends as a living example right in front of you – life is strange like that, it seems.  Your quote is another good one – especially poignant given the recent death experience you’ve been through. Life really does fly by and it seems it only gets quicker as you get older. It’s funny actually, once you start doing all those things ( speaking your truth, not giving a sh*t about things that aren’t important and all the rest ) you start to wonder why you were quite so afraid of doing so in the first place. I certainly learned the hard way that it was only by being myself that I could really trust anything else was real. Afterall, if I was pretending to be to the world what I thought it wanted me to be – how could I believe what the world was showing me was true. But it was so damn scary being myself, if people rejected the ‘pretend’ me, who cared, it wasn’t me. But if they rejected me, now, that’s a whole other ballgame. Plus after so long of pretending, being a people pleaser, following the unspoken rules and expectations of my upbringing, my environment – it was really hard to know who I was anymore anyway.

And perhaps that’s as good a place as any to start on this journey – spending some time getting to know yourself again, what you value, what you stand for, no emotions attached either way. There are no good/bad answers – everyone is individual and it will be different for everyone. You don’t need to share on here unless you want to but make some time for yourself, get outside into the sunshine and just give yourself the freedom to ignore all your current circumstances and breathe freely. Let go of all those expectations for now. They can come later if/when needed.  At the end of the day, this is all about gaining the strength to take control of your own life and be ok with events that you can’t. The wisdom being in knowing which are which – bit like that AA prayer.

If you haven’t already come across them, two books I found eye-opening/inspirational at the time were “You Can Be Happy No Matter What” – which sounds incredibly cheesy but was one of the best ways in to understanding the difference between thoughts and reality for me. Plus Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s “The Invitation” – also sounded way too ‘hippie’ for logical me but something in it rung true towards an authentic life, to being more how I wanted to be.  A more modern version is Mark Manson’s blog “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”, which I usually love reading but he’s not going to be everybody’s style for sure…

Shelby m’dear – understand entirely and very happy to see you being honest about it. It’s hard enough as a naturally private person for me to post some of these things, so I’m glad you understood. Talking in person is always easier for sure. And yes, you can have a lot of very well-meaning people trying to help but absolutely agree, everyone has their own history, their own biases, their own current understanding of their world view which will colour their advice however well-meant. And a lot of people will try to get you to adopt their values, either with or without knowing it, as it validates their view of ‘they are right’, makes them feel more secure. But not necessarily helpful to you! Part of what I had to work through was recognising this, no longer accepting everything at face value but assessing if it was something I also considered ‘true’ or not. So I entirely get the wariness and tbh, would be concerned if you weren’t.

It’s good to hear you are interested in the idea of strengthening your inner self, in whichever way you find works for you.  Obviously it’s not a “hey everything’s amazing all the time” thing, it doesn’t stop life throwing cr*p at you, but it does give you this weird sense of stability within, no longer looking to the outside world to fix things or wasting time on unhelpful anger, emotions no longer buffeted all over the place. Very handy for rolling with it when travelling!!  It’s not that I’ll no longer discuss your relationship but more that perhaps I can help look at different perspectives, different ways of responding as a stable-attachment type – positive actions/thoughts. That sound helpful?

X – nice to hear from you – means a lot to know my experiences can help others. Like I always say, I don’t have all the answers, no one does, but if it helps others at all, that’s worth the sharing to me.  Sounds like you are a little down the path of figuring yourself out which is good but still some way to go on valuing youself enough to attract the ‘right’ partner. At least you now know enough to identify those you know won’t be a good healthy match. My best advice, continue to grow and be the strong authentic version of yourself as you can – if I’ve learned anything it’s that the more you know what you want, the greater the chances of it happening as all your actions line up behind it.

Take care all – look forwards to hearing back.

Hey Ashley,

So everyone has a tribe, it just takes some people a lot longer to find theirs, especially true when you don’t fit the cultural “norm” around you, whichever particular city/country you may be in. I know, since we have similarities here and in perspectives. You will also find you may find a tribe and then as you grow/change, you have to find a new tribe. So being able to build those kind of connections, meaningful ones, real honest ones that actually matter, that make you think and value the relationship and aren’t just ‘fluff’ ( I think you will know what I mean here? ) is a crucial skill to develop.  And the thing is, once you have gained this skill, you start finding members of your tribe all over the world. I travel a lot these days and so long as I can speak the language it is rare not to form these kind of connections, sometimes only briefly, sometimes for longer. But always a ‘proper’ connection, which is what you are looking for.

And I think perhaps that is the way for you to approach this, as a new skill to be developed, practiced, improved. A different kind of intellectual achievement.  This is not about pretending to be something you are not to be able to make friends, connections – that way doesn’t work, you will also feel inauthentic yourself and so the connection will not feel genuine. But logically you only have three choices as I see it.

–   You can continue as you are, increasing the number of people you try to meet to increase the chances of finding people who are willing to invest time in getting past your initial condescending/aggressive impression and therefore get to know the real you.

–    You change your style enough to practice the listening, the two-way give/take, the genuine interest in the other person’s view point, even if it is entirely illogical and emotion-based. I.e. the things Mark is asking about. Basically temporarily  reducing the Debator personality enough to allow others in and find you.

–    Or it may be worth thinking about why you present a face to the world outside work that is not the real you to start with.  Being very assertive, calling bullshit as you see it, being the ‘badass’ and so on, it’s all a very good way to thrive in the fields you work in but it is not so successful outside the world of work. I get it can be hard to be yourself at work, c-level corporate environments are weird bubbles of the world from my experience and it does take very different skills to negotiate them.  This club may simply be another such environment where you do not feel safe enough to let this mask drop, to let the real you shine through as in your trips to the Casbah.   I.e. you can still be true to your Debator personality without being ( meaning to or not ) arrogant to others.

Hi Varo,

Mind dumps are often the best way to start sharing and working through issues. It is difficult to start a new healthy relationship without giving yourself space to become your own person again first, to be able to stand on your own two feet, be happy on your own. But it often happens and life is not black/white, right/wrong.  I do think it’s a big part of why you have become clingy, looking to this new relationship to look after you, take care of you.  I think your new girlfriend has done the best thing possible to give your relationship a chance tbh – standing up for setting healthy boundaries and expectations is not easy and you should try to see this as a positive thing, she’s looking to take some time out to see how to make it work in a way that is a positive experience for both of you – otherwise you would have simply remained broken-up.  Six weeks is not such such a long time to wait to get your own place – and I would not take her being ok to see you in a B&B in the meantime as a negative thing but rather a good sign she wants to give you both the space needed to take it a bit slower, talk things through.  If you truly are interested in continuing with this relationship, try to be content with letting her setting the pace for a while, practice being independent, being the man she was first attracted to.

Seems to me the whole moving in together early thing was based on entirely different expectations from you both – I am guessing you did not discuss these expectations before moving in together the first time, lay out the ground rules so to speak – so important especially when children are involved.  For example, why do you think you became lazy once you’d moved in together? What did you stop doing that you used to do – were you expecting her to run the house by herself for example? Did you have an expectation she would help look after your kids when they are visiting?  The point of moving in together is that both parties should have hopes it will be a positive experience – what do you think the positive things are that you brought to that experience for her?  If/when this relationship continues to develop down this path again, look to avoid making the same mistakes, talk through how it will work, what you will both bring to the experience.

Hope helps, let us know how it goes.

Hey  limbikanimaria,

A different interpretation could be he logged in to try to see if you were still active? After all, that’s exactly what you have done following the half-conversation on expectations for going forwards. I’d suggest that unless you were more enthusiastic to his “no no, I’d be happy to call you my girlfriend” reply than you have written in the conversation above, then he may actually be feeling more insecure than you at this point. If you think about it, you made several comments about being ok with keeping things open, which he may well have interpreted as that being what you wanted….

As said, a follow up conversation really needed, with or without mentioning you’ve seen him on there. Assuming you do actually want to be exclusive, I’d just go with something like ” I was thinking about what you said about being your girlfriend which sounds great and so I’ve decided to delete/hide my Match.com profile whilst we see where this goes- what do you think? “. Always be as honest/open as you can, I know it’s scary in the early days but so much better than misunderstandings potentially damaging a bright new relationship.

Hope it goes well!