The problem with single people is that they are too busy getting themselves together to actually look for love or meaningful relationships. We’ve all heard the catchy phrase, ‘ you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else,’ but is it true?
That depends on your definition of love. While we can commit to, interact and have sex with, cuss out and cuddle with, our ability to actually love others is in question.
What would it take to feel loved anyway? If you can’t define that feeling for yourself you wouldn’t recognize love no matter where it came from. While you may believe love is the most important thing in the world, it can’t be defined.
What you can decide on now, whether you have love or not, is to be happy.
Giving dating advice is tricky because you first must explain what dating actually is. Whether you consider dinner or grabbing coffee dating, or seeing the same person a few times a week I will say for my advice dating is interacting with someone with the intent on physical intimacy but without commitment.
You are free to date as many people as you want, as little or as often as you desire.
What an exciting thought right? Except when most singles look for a partner they are looking to date in pursuit of commitment. Why? Because they assume that commitment will make them happy. Security and validation from someone else will make them happy.
I want to let you in on a little secret, being happy is a choice. You could be happy right now, if you wanted to. In a scene from one of my favorite versions of ‘The Secret Garden’ when the character Martha is trying to get her cousin Colin to lighten up he starts to throw a fit exclaiming he’s going to die, everyone thinks so.
She says to him, very matter of fact, “If everyone thought that of me, I wouldn’t do it.”
Happiness takes that kind of renegade defiance. There is always some ad campaign that will sell you a product to make you happier. Be thinner, eat what you want, be blonde, have long hair, have short hair, own expensive sunglasses etc.
Western society is all about why you shouldn’t be happy now, as you are, with what you have. Because if you are, you won’t buy the useless junk being sold to you. You wouldn’t spend money frivolously and the economy would continue to suffer.
What does this all have to do with dating?
Imagine you had the kind of life where people smiled at you, did things for you and found being around you a pleasure. Too many singles see relationships as sanctuaries. Work is stressful, family is stressful, our other obligations weigh us down but our relationship is the one place we can turn and relax.
Well, what if life wasn’t stressful?
What if, everyday you got what you wanted out of life and attracted people to you that also found living a pleasure instead of a chore?
Okay, I’ll stop asking questions and answer one: What does it all have to with dating?
The first step to being a great dater is the ability to give emotionally to others without expecting anything in return. In our search for happiness, adults are conditioned to collecting, acquiring and not giving.
Being happy starts with giving because you have so much of something positive to give. How simple is that? If you don’t have anything to give, don’t date. Don’t suck the life out of those who do have a lot to give. Don’t pursue people to give you something that they have no will, want or desire to give. Don’t seek to be like people who have more, or are more than you are.
This is why wealthy and beautiful people alike are so attractive to potential dates, what they have to give is obvious. They are basking in the abundance of money and good looks, who wouldn’t be attracted to that? What makes you any different from a gold digger than if you pursue a happier or more attractive person?
Instead of like attracting like, we abide by lack attracting lack. What we don’t have we seek from others and vice versa, you will never be satisfied going this route. That phrase, ‘you have to love yourself before you can love someone else,’ is easy to understand.
You have to have before you can give.
Just as airplane safety tells you to put on your oxygen mask before you help anyone else, you must have love, happiness, beauty and appreciation in your life first before you can be of any use to anyone else.