Last week, I conducted another workshop on developing a healthy GPS (Guy Picking System). It always seems that the same question comes up. I know what I want, so now where do I find the guy?
My response to that is, “Are you sure you know what you want?” Whenever I ask that question, the woman I’m asking it of tends to look at me like I have two heads. The response is usually, “Of course I know what I want.” But then I ask her a few more questions, such as, “What do you want out of your life?” “What do you want out of a relationship?” “What are your goals and aspirations?” Sometimes these are questions she has never considered before, but before picking a man, it is very important to figure out what you want in your life by answering such questions.
Conflicts in relationships can arise when partners have competing interests–you must know what your interests are before you can pick a partner whose interests complement, rather than compete with, yours. When interests compete, too often a woman places her desires secondary to the relationship, and in so doing she can lose herself. She can experience a feeling that her value has decreased. If the relationship dissolves, she is usually very depressed, because she has placed the needs of the relationship before her personal needs. In some cases, she is not even sure what her needs are because she has ignored them for so long.
When she loses that relationship, she feels her purpose and her self are lost, and she begins looking for a new relationship to give her new purpose. This creates a vicious cycle of trying to become whole by being half–of a relationship. But we can only be in a happy, healthy relationship by being whole, already, in ourselves. You need to be a whole, happy person in order to be in a happy relationship. That starts with understanding what makes you happy, knowing what your individual dreams are, and what you want out of life.
It’s paradoxical, but until you are whole and happy as an individual, you can’t be whole and happy as part of a couple. Love doesn’t add–it multiplies. In this Love Math, it takes two whole individuals, multiplied by each other, to equal one whole relationship.
This blog post was written by Dawn Maslar, author of the book, From Heartbreak to Heart’s Desire – Developing a Healthy (GPS) Guy Picking System.
