Bad Ways To Date That Could Turn Good!

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At Handel, we believe in maximizing love. Over the years, we’ve given a lot of good advice based on our methodology about dating and how to find love, and we’ve successfully helped many clients find their “ones.” With love-centric February on the horizon, I’m summing up for you the three most common “bad” approaches to dating in order to show you their real effects on your prospects and how you can overcome them to find your special someone.

“Bad” Approaches to Dating:

“It’s Better than Being Alone.”

A lot of people think this! Often people reason that dating inappropriate people is better than being alone, and though this fills one kind of void, it prevents another way more important void from possibly being filled. If you fill up on junk food, you will not have space for your veggies and proteins! Please learn to keep your hunger alive for real love. Be with the discomfort that sometimes comes with being single, so you stay available for your “one” to appear.

Upside of this approach: At least you’re in practice. When you let go of the one you’re with, you will unleash a torrent of power in your life. Choosing to wait for the meal, job offer, or date that is RIGHT for you is a very powerful NO to The Uni-verse, which brings a very powerful next offer your way. And makes your future YES even more potent.

Projecting in Order to Avoid Yourself.

You are dating someone who is “beneath” you, but for a reason you’re being very sneaky about: you look good by comparison. Think about it: Does he have an addiction or habit that drives you nuts? Is she much lamer about her career/money than you are? She or he has some fatal flaw that will eventually break you up, but it turns out that focusing on your mate’s/date’s fatal flaw gets you out of having to look at your own.

Upside of this approach: If you see you are doing this, it might get you to look at your own issues and deal. Fixing what you don’t respect in yourself always improves the quality of people you attract. By the same rule, the person already with you will also raise the bar on him/herself to the extent you do. So, if you stay with the one you are dating, s/he could turn into “the one,” that is if you both want to take on your “bad traits” and fatal flaws and cheer each other on. Be sure to avoid “fixing” the other person and skipping yourself!

Proving Some Bad Theories.

Because of how you were raised or even hidden issues in your lineage, you believe some very negative things about love or men/women. Any of these sound true to you?

They can’t communicate, be honest or commit.
There will always be game playing.
They will always want you for the wrong reasons.
They will always take your money.
They will distract you from work.
They will probably ruin your life.
You will always be a doormat, or a bitch, or disappointed, or fill-in-the-blank.

We know the world tends to match our thoughts, so we then attract in accordance with our theories. If our theory is that hot guys are shallow, or would never like us, will we ever find a hot guy who is deep and likes us? NO! It’s impossible. You literally cannot SEE such a man. It would be as hard to see a purple turtle. If you do not think it exists, you will not find it.

Upside of this approach: If you can see your theories, you can consciously work to disprove them. Find examples of what you want and study them: talk to people you know who are happily married, if that is what you want. Research your own lineage and your relationship past and sort out fact from fiction, so you can be very clear what you want to repeat and what you want to upgrade. You can prove any theory you want to believe; now that is good news.

I hope this compilation of “bad” ways of dating will wake you up and inspire you to be honest with yourself. It may not be easy at first, but have a sense of humor, get a coach or friend to help you and most of all, get back in touch with what you really want love to look like for you. Your bad approaches in the past may actually be a blessing in disguise leading you to a better way, a better you and a better mate.

Love,

Laurie

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Laurie Gerber is President of Handel Group® Life Coaching, an international coaching company, which specializes in teaching individuals to take focused and powerful action in every area of their lives. Through an engaging, edgy and truthful conversation, which first confronts and then inspires, Laurie is able to help people strip away the psychological or emotional burdens that hold them back and allow them to lead extraordinary lives with an emphasis on Personal Integrity®. Laurie’s rigorous yet loving coaching style was showcased in MTV’s True Life Special “I’m Getting A Second Chance.” Connect with Laurie on Facebook and Twitter.

Lighten up about your love life (or lack thereof) and get to dealing with what and who you really want! Come to Dating 101, our 4-week teleseries, beginning Feb 5.

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Corey

HI Laurie,
A wonderful Lady I’m interested in, sent me this Love Blog and this is my first time reading anything you’ve written.

I appreciate you pointing to the fact that the world arises from our our thoughts, views and closely held beliefs. These “internal states” are the drivers behind all of our unconscious actions. It takes something to actually confront our own inauthentic and often hidden ways of being.

In a class I attended last night, I shared with my group, about an assignment that my coach offered me up, that I took on and I’ll do the same for your readers.

For years I had been looking “out there for love”. I made up games to to bring enthusiasm and excitement to what occurred as a painful, sad process of “finding love”. One month I created the “game of 1 blind date per day for 30 days”.

Foolishly, I even chose the month of October to play my game. At the end of the month, I was exhausted, mentally and emotionally. I thought that “love” would find me if I did something extreme, something new.

My coach said, “Corey, I want you to go back in time and think about all the people you dated, were intimate with and call them. On the call, I want you to clean up the mess you made and what you left them with (their upsets and disappointments, etc…).” My immediate reaction was “your kidding me! You want me to call all these people and apologize? He said, “an apology may be necessary, mostly I want you to get their experience of you and what happened in your relationship and then see what there is to see about it all”.

So, there I was sitting in my living room, writing names of old girlfriends that I hadn’t thought of, for +25 years. My mind swirling with thoughts about “why did this one fail”, and “why did she leave”. I had built my list, I knew it was incomplete, and I did it. I called these old girlfriends. I found them on Facebook and reached out to them. Each call I made I tried to remember “the why” and then let that view go, so I could just listen and learn…and here’s what I learned.

The common theme in all my wonderful and failed relationships was me. I failed to bring myself to the relationship. Each Woman said to me, “I was never good enough for you”. I saw that I was with holding my love out of fear of them leaving first. I looked at why I would with hold and saw that my Dad was always threatening to leave my Mom and I used that (unconsciously) “strategy” for love.

Today, I share it all. The with holding of myself no longer holds me back in being available to fully give, share or express my love for people. In fact, it all occurs to me as THIS is what the world was waiting for all along….me!

Corey Goldstein