Tiny Buddha

Tag: lust

  • My Attraction Experiment: Why I Created a Dating Profile with No Pics

    My Attraction Experiment: Why I Created a Dating Profile with No Pics

    “Being attracted to someone’s way of thinking is a whole different level of attraction.” ~Unknown

    I have been divorced for ten years now and thought it would be fairly easy to find “the one” once I was set free from the ties of the wrong one. To my surprise, it has been harder than I thought it would be. I have found many but not “the one.”

    I have been on Match, Bumble, Plenty of Fish, and blind dates, and even dated a longtime friend to only find myself single going into my fiftieth year on this planet. It has taken me a long time to figure out what I have been doing that has attracted what isn’t right for me.

    I have been in years of therapy, talking out my thoughts and recognizing patterns that don’t serve me. After my marriage, I was in a two-year relationship with a guy who cheated on me. I was in a four-year relationship with a guy who stole a quarter of a million dollars from me, and my fifteen-year marriage was not a friendship.

    With all three partners there was one common denominator: I put a lot of energy into my looks to connect with them. In other words, I wasn’t an innocent party in these crimes of the heart. I got charged when a man was really turned on by me. I was addicted to someone wanting me. I needed to be desired.

    These men were overly visually stimulated and easily physically distracted. They all fixated on my physical and tolerated my mental. I never had a friendship with any of these guys. I had lustship.

    They questioned my deep, soulful emotions. They turned a cheek to my equanimity mindset. They made a face to my immense empathy. They shrugged at my compassion toward others.

    After my last relationship ended, I made an oath to myself. I was going to be celibate and single until I turned fifty. I had been holding onto a really nice bottle of champagne, reserving it for a special occasion. I went to the fridge with a sharpie and wrote, “Drink October 2021.”

    One restless Monday night, I decided to write out who I was and what I was looking for. I started writing with the mindset, “If I were going to go on a dating site . . . this is what I would write” sort of thing.

    As I was writing and reading and editing, I started to really like what I was reading. I thought to myself, “Damn—I am a good writer!”

    I wrote about the good, the bad, and the ugly in a charming, humble way. I was honest to the core about my shortcomings and my endeavors. I left out nothing because I had nothing to lose.

    It became a cathartic experience for me. I rewrote it and reread it until I said to myself, “Damn—I am a really good person!” I got to a place where I wasn’t embarrassed to share the raw truth, yet wasn’t at the total other end thinking, “I don’t give a f*** what you think.” I was in a good place.

    I was proud of myself and wanted to share my story. I felt very accomplished for just being able to put into writing my love life and be able to read it like it was a heartfelt story. It made me smile.

    That Monday night I decided to do an experiment. I got a one-month membership to Match.com and paid extra to only allow people I “liked” to view my profile. I created my profile calling myself “AbbieNormal,” a reference to the hilarious Mel Brooks movie Young Frankenstein.

    I answered all the questions about myself even filled out the random topics Match prompts to help people to get to know you. I typed out the long summary I had created, and when it came time to upload a profile photo, I chose not to. This was the experiment.

    The experiment was to see if any man would be interested in my mind before seeing my body. I was a single woman looking for a single man with a profile that had a novel to read and no photos.

    What guy would read instead of view? What guy would trust without being shown? What guy would take the depth without superficial bait? Who was going to buy the cow without seeing it was a cow?

    There is no doubt that my last guys wouldn’t respond. My ex-husband would think I didn’t post a photo because I was fat. The boyfriend that took my money would think I was some woman trying to get away with cheating on her husband.

    I looked through profiles of over one hundred men and chose about twenty to view my profile, or as Match calls it, “liked” them. I had very little faith that any man would message me. It was an experiment for which I had already fabricated the conclusion.

    My write up started like this, “I have never been single longer than a blink, and I think it’s partially because men are visual creatures. I am taking a gamble with no photos. I would prefer you to read about me and decide if you want to continue than to see me and make my words fit into the pretty little package that I am, emphasis on pretty, not ego :)”

    I went to bed feeling at peace with myself for allowing people to read about the real me, and confident that this experiment would not disrupt my champagne oath. I woke up the next morning, Tuesday, to find three men had messaged me. I was shocked!

    Each one mentioned how refreshing it was to read such an authentic profile. One man did say that a photo would be nice, but no pressure, which I thought that was sweet. Another one mentioned that he too was a big Young Frankenstein fan. He got points for recognizing the reference.

    I wanted to write them back, but apparently on Match you cannot message people unless you put at least one photo up, which is silly because I already gave them money. The site must be owned by men. I was hesitant to post a photo, so I waited another day.

    Wednesday morning one of the three men messaged me again asking to connect. I felt the need to respond so that my intentions didn’t seem like a ruse. I posted a photo and responded to the three men saying the same thing to each one, “Thank you for taking the time to read my profile.”

    On the Wednesday after I posted my photo, I received messages from the rest of the twenty men that I had “liked.” Before keeping track of them became a full-time job, I gave the first three guys my attention. They were my priority.

    Guy 1 – fizzled out after a few texts  :/

    Guy 2 – asked for more photos  :[

    Guy 3 – we texted, talked, and met  🙂

    I did give some time to a handful of the second-round guys that messaged me after the photo went up. One guy didn’t understand how I wasn’t bitter about losing a quarter of a million dollars. Another made a comment that I should post more photos because I am so beautiful. And most of them wanted to meet right away.

    I also kept looking through all the profiles that Match sends daily as their algorithms do their matchmaking. Although I have to say, they always sent me my ex-husband’s profile as a “Super Match,” and he is by far not that.

    The experiment was pretty much over. I had a photo up, and now I was acting like I was dating or something. I needed to focus on my champagne oath and just stop.

    My experiment surprised me.

    I gained a new appreciation for the male species / human race. Who knows what intentions the three guys had when choosing to message me solely on the basis of my words and no photo? I would like to believe that they were genuinely interested in what they read and wanted to ride with faith that there would be a physical attraction. That is my final answer.

    The experiment taught me a lesson.

    I was being hypocritical as I looked at every man’s photos picking out who was going to have access to my profile. As painful as it is to say that I was looking at men’s physical attributes, my attraction always came from what they wrote. I do know without a doubt, if a man “liked” me with no photo and his words moved me, you better believe I would message him back.

    The experiment gave me a new perspective.

    Like I said, I was not innocent in how men viewed me or what type of man I ended up with. I wanted someone to see me for who I really was, but my shell was sparkly and shiny while my center was elaborate and profound.

    I realized I had longed for someone to want, desire, and be turned on by the elaborate and profound and then be happily pleased with the sparkly and shiny.

    For all of my dating life, men wanted me for the sparkly and shiny then tolerated, challenged, and ridiculed the elaborate and profound. The experiment allowed me to feel wanted for who I truly am for just a brief moment, and it was an incredible feeling.

    I will forever remember this experiment as the moment I learned who I really am in terms of a partner. I had been blaming the men or the quality of humans or my poor judge of character, and it wasn’t any of those things. I had to learn who I am to understand who I wanted.

    I bet you are wondering what happened to Guy 3, right? I am still dating him. As for the champagne oath—that I’d be celibate and single until I turned fifty—let’s just say when I told Guy 3 about my oath he said, “That’s not going to happen, you better just drink it.”

  • The Difference Between Love, Lust, and Attachment: Why We Have It All Wrong

    The Difference Between Love, Lust, and Attachment: Why We Have It All Wrong

    “Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency and has more to do with love of self than love of another.” ~Yasmin Mogahed

    The feelings we get when meeting someone new are hard to understand at times. We have biopsychosocial and even spiritual responses and interactions with people we come into contact with.

    We’ve all met someone and felt like we just want to be around them. They make us nervous (butterflies), we can’t think straight, we’re self-conscious, we just feel an overwhelming… pull toward them.

    I have (like many before me) spent my life equating this experience with the very beginning stages of love or may even go as far as to proclaim this as “love at first sight.”

    I did this because:

    1. It didn’t happen often. In years and years of dating and searching for “the right one,” I only got that intense experience a handful of times. So I equated that emotional reaction with the quality of the connection.

    2. I felt like any and all ambivalence disappeared from my mind and emotions. I knew, in those moments, with those people, I wanted to be around them, I needed them in my life. The questioning of ” what do I really want?” seemed to fade into oblivion. Doubt seemed to disappear from my mind.

    3. I felt extremely attracted to them. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. It wasn’t purely lust, so it had to be more.

    But what if I said, this isn’t remotely real romantic love at all? What if I said this isn’t lust either? What if I said books like Romeo and Juliet, The Notebook, Twilight, and many others alike, have gotten love completely and utterly wrong all along?

    Now some of you may say, “Yeah, I knew that was all wrong.” But our culture and society were built on this deeply passionate idea of love and marriage—after all, they go together like a horse and carriage.

    Our subconscious minds have been programmed to want that kind of big love, that kind of dedication, that kind of commitment. The kind that would play out like, you know, the movies.

    I had this revelation recently after meeting someone and being overtaken by these emotions, for the first time in a while. I immediately went to the idea that maybe she is the one, maybe this is it. I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t focus. I just wanted to be with her. I just wanted to be close to her.

    Then I realized something quickly, while in the throes of my serendipitous fairy tale encounter: This was out of character for me at this point in my life.

    I felt I couldn’t be myself. I felt like I was out of control. My confidence was muddied by nerves. I felt like I had no say in what was happening between us and what was happening inside of me. Something else took over. I knew it wasn’t purely lust and I knew, intuitively, it wasn’t what love should feel like. So what was it?

    After years of growth and work, I knew one thing for sure: Balance is the secret to life. So feeling incredibly unbalanced was a red flag to me. I dug deeper. I thought back to my training as a counselor, the presentations I had given on attachment theory, and the digging I had done on my own attachment schemas.

    And I realized when I quieted all of those seemingly out of control, but elated feelings, the emotion that came to the forefront was, anxiety. Pure anxiety.

    I thought back to every relationship or encounter that made me feel that way, and in an effort to get to the bottom of this, I desperately asked my higher self what they had in common—and it was clear right away.

    They all ran away at some point. But to be more accurate, they were all emotionally and psychologically ambivalent or wave-like in their attachment orientation. This meaning, in the context of ambivalence, they went back and forth between being emotionally available and unavailable. Sure of what they want, then unsure and pull away.

    Psychological ambivalence is defined as a state of having simultaneous conflicting reactions, beliefs, or feelings toward some object.

    Attachment theory is far too in depth to dive into in this article, but in short: We all develop attachment patterns stemming from childhood relationships with our caregivers, and they are ever evolving throughout our teenage and adult years as we go head first through friendships and romantic relationships.

    Wave-like tendencies, in regards to attachment, are typically characterized by swaying back and forth from anxiety to ambivalent states.

    So here is what happened to me: Every time I met a beautiful and intriguing woman who radiated unavailability, my teenage, insecure, anxious self forced its way to the surface from the deepest caverns of my psyche.

    This strong, out-of-control feeling I associated with love was just my own wave-like attachment schema thrown full throttle into anxiety mode.

    On the surface, these relationships and connections felt right and felt amazing for me because my own tortured ambivalent nature seemed to fade away, and the intense energy taking place during this dynamic essentially acted like a high. But, on a deeper level, I felt utterly rooted and anchored in anxiety.

    It was deceiving. I knew what books and movies portrayed true love and soul mates to be, and my brain automatically associated these strong emotions and interactions with those narratives.

    From Victim of Love, to Empowered Co-Creator of Love

    I realized that real true love is a choice; it isn’t something that happens to us or triggers us. At the heart of empowerment is in fact choice. When we choose to have romantic relationships with the people that balance us, we are in control and empowered enough to choose and co-create, with that person, what that relationship will ultimately be.

    We can alchemize and create relationship dynamics such as passion, dedication, and unconditional love—all of the fairy tale cues we yearn for. All accomplished by setting the intention to have that type of relationship and backing it up with actions that align with those intentions. But it must start from a space of feeling balanced in our love interests energy and presence.

    In this moment of clarity I was able to realize literature and society had it all wrong. I had it all wrong. Big romantic love isn’t this overpowering energetic force that takes us over and sweeps us off of our feet. It is something we intentionally choose to co-create, from a balanced place—with a partner who draws feelings of peace from within us, not anxiety or fear, and a partner we can be our most authentic self with.

    So How Do You Make The Shift and Create Healthier Romantic Relationships?

    1. Understand your attachment schema and piece your own patterns together.

    There are plenty of books out there, the most helpful and well-rounded of them being Your Brain on Love, by Stan Tatkin.

    2. Remember, awareness is the first step.

    It won’t stop you from feeling those intense emotions when you are around someone who triggers your attachment schemas, but it will empower you to make healthier choices about what role those people do or don’t play in your life. We have been conditioned on multiple levels to seek overwhelming love; it isn’t a habit we can break overnight.

    3. Continue to become more aware, and heal your wounds any way you can.

    Re-write the stories you’ve told yourself about what love is and what love is not that have held you back from having the type of relationship you really want. It takes time to reprogram the narrative and build real love from a balanced place, without more self-sabotage.

    4. Balanced romantic relationships can start in a multitude of ways, but friendship seems to be the most naturally balanced place to start from.

    This doesn’t mean force friends first, in an inorganic way; it just means listen and pay attention to how you feel when you are with that person.

    5. Notice when you feel inner peace, joy, authenticity, vulnerability, and acceptance when in the presence of someone.

    Those are the sentiments and emotions felt when rooted in balance. Anxiety (butterflies), fear (please don’t leave me), an anxious need to be with someone, and feeling like you need to be something or someone you aren’t—those are the biggest indicators that you are not coming from a balanced place.