I make resolutions every year.
While some people think change should occur all year-long or it’s useless to make a promise to yourself, most people can’t keep, I look at resolutions as my longest term goals for self-improvement. I tend to use my resolutions for the New Year to aid in my personal growth.
Throughout the year I set goals for my career, my finances, things I want to buy or accumulate in life but New Years is the time I set goals for who I want to be as a person.
Ask yourself now, what kind of partner do you want to be and how can you get there?
I was sharing with a few people what my resolutions were and they asked why 3? I’m not sure. It just seemed like a safe number. One might be too easy and two might be too hard, three seemed to be just challenging enough without becoming overwhelming.
They might not be the answer to your dating problems entirely but I believe that they are a great place to start if you’re dedicated to finding real love this year. If finding a significant, happy, and fulfilling romantic relationship is on your to-do list, feel free to adopt my resolutions as your own.
Don’t be reactive.
I have a tendency to jump the gun when I feel rejected, disrespected, disappointed or hurt. I have been known to overreact. Instead of taking a moment, even 24 hours to put a situation into perspective, it’s been my pattern to yield an immediate FUCK YOU, and erase someone’s number. I dated a man, years ago, who I wouldn’t speak to for months at a time. I wouldn’t tell him why I was upset and I’m sure it seemed like I was “overreacting” but to me I was pissed and done. I realize now that being done with the person you care about isn’t a solution or a great plan for a healthy relationship.
I realize now that I can be wrong about situations and that one person’s actions could be the straw to break the camels back of a slew of other incidents that have pissed me off.
I’ve come to the conclusion that if I give people enough time, they might actually do what I want them to do.
Or at least I can politely and calmly tell them, fuck you very much. I don’t have a temper but my reaction to a slight can be to never speak to someone again. I have to do better.
It might not actually be an action but sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Don’t send a text, post a tweet, update a status, delete a number, tell a friend, write in my journal, not a thing. Don’t react. Reflect.
Don’t assign a meaning to things I don’t know the meaning of.
I read a book once about a synchronicity. It explained that if you listen to the universe, you could piece together this puzzle called life and find your true purpose. I believed, after reading that book, that everything meant something. It’s only this year that I’ve learned, yes, maybe everything has a meaning but I don’t always know or have to know what it is.
I believed that serendipitous meetings meant true love or soul mates. I believed that if too many good things happened something bad had to happen to keep my life balanced. Not tragic but if I was lucky in one area of my life the next day I’d have a boot on my car. Womp.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t need to assign a meaning to everything that happens in my life and its better that I don’t.
Judge nothing that occurs today, is a saying I learned from Deepak Chopra. I am committed to it. What happens in my love life doesn’t prove or disprove that someone is meant to be in my life. Just because I fall in love and it doesn’t work out doesn’t mean I’ve learned a great life lesson. Whatever happens if its good or bad, I will not judge it, I will not rack my brain about what lesson the universe is trying to teach me.
I will not stay with a man because we met under fairytale like circumstances nor will I dismiss another because we met at a club.
Stop having sex outside of committed relationships.
If you’re celibate or abstinent, same difference, this may not affect you but if you’re like me, the average single person, you have sex.
I was a late bloomer and didn’t start having sex until I was 20 years old. Throughout my twenties I went months at a time almost a year without any sex. It was only last year that I resolved to have more sex to see what the hype was about.
I learned in life and from readers of this blog that most single people want love via a committed relationship. I think sex feels good and I don’t think having sex without commitment is necessarily bad but I’m a woman about results. If having sex without commitment hasn’t been working for me, why would I keep doing it?
As a person who fears commitment it made sense that if I was going to have sex, it was going to be outside of commitment. For a long time I thought a relationship would totally ruin my dating life. Now that I see the value of a happy relationship, I’m willing to make a sacrifice. For me it boils down to one thing, I’m accustomed to being alone.
Am I going to feel dejected because a man doesn’t want to spend time with me unless I give in, put out, get it on, etc? No. Because honestly, I’ve slept with men who didn’t want to spend time with me anyway!
And not because Steve Harvey says so, or any other relationship expert but because when we choose the action we choose the outcome. I may not think having sex plays that big a deal in getting a boyfriend but there’s only one way to find out isn’t there, good old trial and error.
So these are my resolutions for my dating life because like you, I want to find a really great man who I can love completely and be loved in return. While I have found some wonderful men throughout the years I wasn’t smart enough or mature enough to hold on to them. But now that I’ve learned I can want love and enjoy dating simultaneously that’s exactly what I intend to do.