I read a story once about a middle-aged woman who had never married herself and she realized that men her age who had never married were typically not good candidates for marriage and men who were divorced were bitter. So she began telling all her friends to introduce her to any widowers they knew and she was able to eventually get happily married.
This is probably not a nice, neat formula you can rip off and reproduce her outcome but it's provocative food for thought. How do you intentionally seek out good candidates for your next relationship given x, y, z in YOUR life?
Let's back up a minute and talk about unintended consequences.
In my teens, I used to buy myself pretty things from import stores and what not. One day, I noticed I had bought myself three turtles, two of which were a set, and I grouped them on the same shelf together while rearranging my room.
Shortly thereafter, a friend of the family came into my room and remarked "Oh, you collect turtles." Um, no. I didn't collect turtles, BUT the very next present I got from that person was a turtle and what with being not the brightest bulb in the box, I stupidly put it with the other turtles I already owned.
The next thing you know, EVERYONE thought I COLLECTED turtles and you could count on me getting more turtles at every Christmas and birthday for years to come. So though I NEVER collected turtles, I absolutely ended up with a turtle collection for some years.
I have no idea what TV show this was, but there is a scene that sticks in my mind where some woman similarly had a pig collection and told everyone it was destroyed in an earthquake. A friend asks her something and she says "I'm sure they broke when they hit the bottom of the dumpster after I shoved them into the trash chute."
And then, having TOLD everyone her BELOVED pig collection was tragically destroyed in the earthquake, one of her loving aunts REPLACES them with identical duplicates.
I got married at age nineteen, having only been seriously involved with a couple of other people before him. By the time I got divorced, I had been married more than half my life.
My divorce was amicable and there were things I liked about my husband. I didn't feel like I screwed up BIG TIME in marrying him, but the marriage had always had a lot of friction and I made the conscious decision when I divorced to find some means to sort the wheat from the chaff and try to find some means to not repeat whatever mistake I had made without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
One of my early social experiences during my long, drawn-out divorce was making casual conversation with a mixed-gender group of people I thought of as friends at the time. Some guy was trying to update his wardrobe and everyone was talking about clothing styles and clothing color and what not and I talked about stuff that looked good on my future ex and mentioned his hair color to say "If your hair color is different, you may need to adjust the color palette."
To me, this was a conversation that said nothing whatsoever about my dating preferences, yet to my shock men with the same hair color as my future ex acted like I had just announced "You -- yes, YOU -- are my next hot lover" and men with a different hair color acted like kicked puppies, as if I had told them "I am NEVER sleeping with you. I ONLY sleep with men with THIS hair color."
That was a LOT of years ago and I have since learned that MEN don't typically casually talk about things like clothes and hair color and yadda. I'm a woman. Talking about clothes and hair color and such is like a NORMAL part of my life but doing so in mixed company while getting divorced got me into a pickle reminiscent of the above story about my "turtle collection."
Being less young and stupid than when my "turtle collection" got started, I decided I was NOT going to repeat the experience with my dating life, THANKS.
So I decided that if I was going to find a good relationship, I needed some dating version of The Rooney Rule. I needed some means to NOT eliminate men too early in the process, so early that they wouldn't even inquire if I was interested because they had already decided "She will never date (someone like) ME."
I'm a woman, so men typically initiate. If I am inadvertently sending out signals that convince men they aren't my "type," then they won't ask me out, which means the relationship ends before it can even begin.
And in the case of hair color, I thought that was like, wow, extremely SHALLOW criteria. So based on that, I decided to do my best to scrub my speech habits of specific details about anyone and everyone I had ever been romantically involved with.
I did my best to not casually mention details like hair color, eye color, profession, hobbies, age, height, build, ethnicity, how they dressed, etc. I did my best to just NOT talk about them AT ALL, even though I'm one of those people who attracts nicknames like "The Mouth from the South."
This was effective. I stopped having men self-select ahead of time for "I MATCH traits her ex has!" (Which seems dumb to me -- as someone once said to me "Why not assume She's DIVORCING him. She HATES men with that hair color!")
Because I married young, I didn't have a lot of experience. There was a very short list of people to whom I had been close. I'm not easy to get next to and I didn't get close to a lot of men during my divorce either, but I did let more men chat me up and that fact means I did get a better idea of what I liked -- and didn't like -- in a potential romantic partner.
One of the biggest things I learned is that I had a set of pre-conceived notions that were pretty black and white. They were pretty limited and thus they were limiting.
There are a LOT of people on planet earth and they absolutely do not come with some predetermined package of grouped traits to pick from, like some simplified game. It's also NOT true that X and Y always go together, nor is it true that X and Y never go together.
If you think like that, it's probably "baggage" talking, not reality.
If you have a serious career, one of your big challenges may be how to meet people socially where you have no conflict of interest. How do you meet people some way other than via your work?
Some options:
I have an interest in doing community development work and that means anyone in a position of power in the town where I live is a potential conflict of interest for me (a fact obvious to me but which seems to not occur to other people). So I basically have a "no locals" rule.
This might sound like a huge barrier, but for me it's really a non-issue for reasons I don't care to share with the entire world.
Last but not least, "Wherever you go, there you are." The single most common thing I have noticed when talking with people who say they just cannot find a potential romantic partner is that this declaration is frequently followed by a sometimes lengthy list of criteria.
The longer your list of criteria for people you do not bother to chat up and get to know at all because you've pre-decided to eliminate them, the shorter the list of potential dating candidates.
This is probably not a nice, neat formula you can rip off and reproduce her outcome but it's provocative food for thought. How do you intentionally seek out good candidates for your next relationship given x, y, z in YOUR life?
Let's back up a minute and talk about unintended consequences.
In my teens, I used to buy myself pretty things from import stores and what not. One day, I noticed I had bought myself three turtles, two of which were a set, and I grouped them on the same shelf together while rearranging my room.
Shortly thereafter, a friend of the family came into my room and remarked "Oh, you collect turtles." Um, no. I didn't collect turtles, BUT the very next present I got from that person was a turtle and what with being not the brightest bulb in the box, I stupidly put it with the other turtles I already owned.
The next thing you know, EVERYONE thought I COLLECTED turtles and you could count on me getting more turtles at every Christmas and birthday for years to come. So though I NEVER collected turtles, I absolutely ended up with a turtle collection for some years.
I have no idea what TV show this was, but there is a scene that sticks in my mind where some woman similarly had a pig collection and told everyone it was destroyed in an earthquake. A friend asks her something and she says "I'm sure they broke when they hit the bottom of the dumpster after I shoved them into the trash chute."
And then, having TOLD everyone her BELOVED pig collection was tragically destroyed in the earthquake, one of her loving aunts REPLACES them with identical duplicates.
I got married at age nineteen, having only been seriously involved with a couple of other people before him. By the time I got divorced, I had been married more than half my life.
My divorce was amicable and there were things I liked about my husband. I didn't feel like I screwed up BIG TIME in marrying him, but the marriage had always had a lot of friction and I made the conscious decision when I divorced to find some means to sort the wheat from the chaff and try to find some means to not repeat whatever mistake I had made without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
One of my early social experiences during my long, drawn-out divorce was making casual conversation with a mixed-gender group of people I thought of as friends at the time. Some guy was trying to update his wardrobe and everyone was talking about clothing styles and clothing color and what not and I talked about stuff that looked good on my future ex and mentioned his hair color to say "If your hair color is different, you may need to adjust the color palette."
To me, this was a conversation that said nothing whatsoever about my dating preferences, yet to my shock men with the same hair color as my future ex acted like I had just announced "You -- yes, YOU -- are my next hot lover" and men with a different hair color acted like kicked puppies, as if I had told them "I am NEVER sleeping with you. I ONLY sleep with men with THIS hair color."
That was a LOT of years ago and I have since learned that MEN don't typically casually talk about things like clothes and hair color and yadda. I'm a woman. Talking about clothes and hair color and such is like a NORMAL part of my life but doing so in mixed company while getting divorced got me into a pickle reminiscent of the above story about my "turtle collection."
Being less young and stupid than when my "turtle collection" got started, I decided I was NOT going to repeat the experience with my dating life, THANKS.
So I decided that if I was going to find a good relationship, I needed some dating version of The Rooney Rule. I needed some means to NOT eliminate men too early in the process, so early that they wouldn't even inquire if I was interested because they had already decided "She will never date (someone like) ME."
I'm a woman, so men typically initiate. If I am inadvertently sending out signals that convince men they aren't my "type," then they won't ask me out, which means the relationship ends before it can even begin.
And in the case of hair color, I thought that was like, wow, extremely SHALLOW criteria. So based on that, I decided to do my best to scrub my speech habits of specific details about anyone and everyone I had ever been romantically involved with.
I did my best to not casually mention details like hair color, eye color, profession, hobbies, age, height, build, ethnicity, how they dressed, etc. I did my best to just NOT talk about them AT ALL, even though I'm one of those people who attracts nicknames like "The Mouth from the South."
This was effective. I stopped having men self-select ahead of time for "I MATCH traits her ex has!" (Which seems dumb to me -- as someone once said to me "Why not assume She's DIVORCING him. She HATES men with that hair color!")
Because I married young, I didn't have a lot of experience. There was a very short list of people to whom I had been close. I'm not easy to get next to and I didn't get close to a lot of men during my divorce either, but I did let more men chat me up and that fact means I did get a better idea of what I liked -- and didn't like -- in a potential romantic partner.
One of the biggest things I learned is that I had a set of pre-conceived notions that were pretty black and white. They were pretty limited and thus they were limiting.
There are a LOT of people on planet earth and they absolutely do not come with some predetermined package of grouped traits to pick from, like some simplified game. It's also NOT true that X and Y always go together, nor is it true that X and Y never go together.
If you think like that, it's probably "baggage" talking, not reality.
If you have a serious career, one of your big challenges may be how to meet people socially where you have no conflict of interest. How do you meet people some way other than via your work?
Some options:
- Hobbies or mutual interests
- Introductions via mutual friends
- On vacation (think about how to foster this on your next vacation)
- Any social group you belong to not directly related to your job (church, bible study, online forums where you participate regularly, etc.)
I have an interest in doing community development work and that means anyone in a position of power in the town where I live is a potential conflict of interest for me (a fact obvious to me but which seems to not occur to other people). So I basically have a "no locals" rule.
This might sound like a huge barrier, but for me it's really a non-issue for reasons I don't care to share with the entire world.
Last but not least, "Wherever you go, there you are." The single most common thing I have noticed when talking with people who say they just cannot find a potential romantic partner is that this declaration is frequently followed by a sometimes lengthy list of criteria.
The longer your list of criteria for people you do not bother to chat up and get to know at all because you've pre-decided to eliminate them, the shorter the list of potential dating candidates.
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