in: Dating & Relationships

Why We Date the Wrong People

Everyone will tell you that relationships take work, but how much work is too much? Let’s take a look at why we date the wrong people and when enough should really be enough.


In dating, we sometimes get into an odd mindset of really wanting to conquer someone we normally wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole. Even if it is obvious for an outside observer, it is not as obvious if we are the ones who get caught up in such a moment.

The way to acknowledge that it is happening is observing if we feel like everything about that person is an emergency, and your entire life must take a back seat for the sake of the conquest. At a first glance, it seems like a paradox: why would we try to attain the last thing we’d ever want so badly? It’s because we fear rejection. Because we know that the person is not our own kind of person, we sense a higher risk of rejection coming from the person.

We want to avoid rejection because we humans are generally desperate to be assured that we have the power to control our lives. To gain this assurance, our mind sometimes runs a silly test: it picks something challenging, like dating the wrong kinds of men and women, conquers them and feels a massive sense of achievement. What a waste of time!

Here is how to fix it: just drop the expectation that it is good if life works out as you wish. You simply don’t know if your mind is wishing for the right thing or the wrong thing for you. But you certainly do know if something is way too difficult. If a relationship is too difficult, you should realize that it is a wrong one for you.

Here is a story: Scott was an intense man. He was into ultra running and traveling to exotic locations. He had been married to his wife for 10 years. He always felt like she was a drag: she didn’t work out, and always complained that he never wanted to go for shopping or brunch with her. She would also make fun of the indigenous people’s stories that he brought back from his trips to the Amazons, Asia, etc. She also often called him when he was at business dinners, making him cut his evenings short to go home.

All his former fraternity brothers and their wives told him to consider a divorce, or just ignore her and do his thing. Scott couldn’t accept either option, because he feared that his wife would leave him if he ignored her; and if he initiated the divorce, he would be actively admitting that he made a poor mating choice.

Finally, his best friend Steve had it. He organized a trip to Nicaragua with a bunch of guys. In a small town, they went out to for a drink. Over glasses of the local rum “Flor de Caña” in dirty glasses,  Steve told a cute local girl, Maria, that Scott was single. Scott ended up getting close to her for the next couple of weeks. That experience really started to mess with Scott’s head because spending time with Maria was easy, compared to pleasing his wife. However, now Scott was more receptive to Steve’s message: “Detach from wife and have a good life.”

To Steve’s surprise, Scott did exactly that. Now when Steve wants to see his friend, he has to fly to Chicago, where Steve moved away to with Maria. He doesn’t mind. He’s happy to see his friend scratching his head and keeps saying “Hey, life is way too easy. It’s so weird, man.”

Now examine your expectation about a romantic relationship. Does it feel like you have to work too hard for it? Or, if you are single, does it feel like you have to work too hard to land a date? If so, chances are that you are in the company of the wrong kind of people.

People get into such situations because they are often taught since childhood that people must earn good things in life through hard work, such as wealth and love. This assumption cannot be furthest from the truth. Relationships, sex and jobs should feel natural, easy and pleasant. The way to make it happen is consciously making sure that you socialize in a community where you feel that life is “too easy” for you. That’s the community in which you will find your soulmate.

 

[image: via Silvia Sala on flickr]


About the Author

Sunyu von Conrady is a technology industry guru and a writer. In her writing, she suggests ways to make life easier by dumping unnecessary guilt, fear and artificial dependencies. Her content is based on the various paths in life she has personally walked. She was born and raised in Seoul, Korea. The backdrop of her upbringing was a mixture of Christianity, Buddhism and Korean shamanism. Her parents fled from North Korea during the Korean war, and built a solid outdoor gear manufacturing company. Growing up, Seoul was full of student protests against the military government, flying stones, molotov cocktails and tear gases. It was obvious to her as a kid that the world could be changed at people’s free will. During her 20s, she moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina and became an Argentine tango performer. Then she moved to New York, joined a startup that was eventually sold at $400 million. After that, she worked at Google building algorithms for online advertising auctions. One October, she encountered a lame request from human resources: “Hey employees, please complete your career and personal development plan.” Sunyu decided to put down her real goal: “I want to live in the woods and teach freedom.” She did just that. Now she lives in Boulder, Colorado right in front of a mountain and writes about freedom on her bloc, Picnic to Earth. Follow her on Facebook, and she can be reached via e-mail by anyone, anytime: [email protected]

 

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