Loving someone and having them love you back is the most precious thing in the world. ― Nicholas Sparks
The desire to find love and to find that special someone to share our lives with is very strong for so many of us. While the desire may be strong, the actual process of finding that special someone isn’t always easy. I know this from my own personal journey and from what I have witnessed in both friends and in clients.
If you are currently single and struggling to find your ideal partner, it is my hope that this article will both help you to realize that you are not alone and to give you some insight and inspiration from both my own experiences and the patterns that I have seen in my work with clients.
Here’s The Key to Finding True Love
I’d like to start by sharing a little of my story. Before I met my fiancé last year, I was single for 9 years. During that time, I had periods of time where I was actively dating and then periods of time when I got so frustrated with the dating process that I needed to take a break.
When I was actively dating, I would spend hours looking through profiles on dating websites, searching for guys who sparked my interest and seemed to meet my key criteria of what I was looking for in a partner.
In the beginning years of my online dating experience, I would find guys who I was interested in, write them nice little notes expressing my interest, only to never get a reply from any of them! Talk about frustrating…
When guys contacted me and they seemed interesting to me, we would message back and forth for a week or too, I would get excited to meet them, only to have my hopes dashed.
I went on tons of terrible first dates filled with awkwardness and silence. The person who I went to coffee or dinner with just didn’t feel like who I thought I was connected to during our email messaging.
In addition to the terrible first dates, I would also go on the occasional first date that felt great to me but which never led to a second date, much to my confusion. The process was exhausting!
That feeling of exhaustion would then lead me to retreat from actively seeking a partner for a period of 3 to 6 months, during which time I would focus more on myself and my personal growth and development. Once I had recovered enough from the exhaustion, I would then start the cycle again and put my profile back up on some dating websites.
How to Attract Ideal Partner
It wasn’t until I actually did some very deep internal work on some subconscious beliefs, fears, and patterns that were getting in the way that I was able to attract my ideal partner. Some of the beliefs that were blocking me from successfully finding someone were things like “I will NEVER find someone to love me” or “If I fall in love, my heart might get broken.” With these thoughts active in my subconscious, they were hijacking my success!
During my healing journey, I also realized that the energy that I was giving off on those first dates that felt good to me but didn’t result in a second date was that I wasn’t really open and ready for a relationship. It was a real eye-opener to be out there dating, saying I wanted to find my special someone, only to realize that the vibe I was emitting didn’t match that!
In talking with my clients about their experiences with dating and searching for their ideal partners, I see some common themes.
In the day and age of online dating, another very common experience is that it is very easy for men to lie about who they really are on their dating profiles. This can be simple (yet important!) things like their age, what they do for a living, and more disturbing things like whether they are actually single or not. I have worked with women who have gotten into relationships only to discover months later that the guy was married and hadn’t told them.
What I learned from my own experiences with online dating and also have heard from clients who do lots of online datings, is that it is important to be more discerning in who they choose to connect with, not to trust what someone says in their profile, and to have very clear boundaries in the initial stages of dating.
My biggest piece of advice is not to immediately trust someone (this goes for anyone you meet, not just someone you meet online) but to take time and to allow them to prove themselves to you.
I’d like to conclude with a few key things to remember when dating.
Remember that taking your time when dating and developing a relationship is not a bad thing. Let the relationship unfold at a slower pace and think of the process like peeling layers of an onion.
Don’t settle for someone who doesn’t really meet your expectations. You are AMAZING and you deserve to have that person be just as amazing. Many of the women who I have spoken with who are in happy relationships shared that it is only when they didn’t settle that they could find that amazing someone.
Get clear about what you really want. What are your must-haves and your deal breakers? Write those down. Take the time to write down whatever description you have of your ideal partner and keep refining that as you gain more clarity from your experiences.
Accept that it is OK to be alone. Being single is NOT a reflection of your value and worth.