I don’t want my neuroses about someone being ‘good enough’ to prevent me from finding love. But choosing to be with someone who is not right seems like a death sentence.
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Dear Hera,
I am a single woman directly at age 20 who is dating in a medium -sized European city. The only thing is that I can’t shake the terrible feeling that no one is good enough for me. I followed advice to list what I want in a partner, who rands “smart” to “have decent work” to “get well looks good in a hat”, but it seems that I can never find someone who fulfills all these summaries at some capacity. If he is intelligent, it will be revealed that he is bogged down in debt; If it is creative, it will also have a taste for synthetic drugs; If he has a good job, the main hobby he will have is to post on Reddit.
I feel embarrassed by the feeling that no one can be measured with what I want: after all, I have friends who are in love and long-term relationships with people who would fail in my criteria. I also passed men that I really know, but I felt that they were not as ambitious as I or their lifestyle did not complement mine. Similarly, I dated men without shift for periods, because I felt that my artistic liberal cohort would judge me for refusing someone who could have been fucked by the capitalist system, man!
As a result, I was very single in most of my adult life. Sometimes I would like to have a father or guardian to help me sift my hinge combinations to tell me if potential suitors are good enough for the little girl.
The world is so disorienting at the moment, and my anxieties are not helped by a strong sense that everything can burn next week. I don’t want my neuroses about someone being “good enough” to keep me from finding love. But choosing to be with someone who is not right seems like a death sentence.
Should I throw my list on the trash and give up my standards?
Sincerely yours,
Depleted and disturbed
Dear demanding,
The problem with choosing a partner as if you were choosing a piece of scanding furniture to a difficult corner is that you can spend so much time by focusing on your list of desires that neglects the most important criteria, which is first of all, a deep and genuine connection with someone else.
What I noticed most in your letter was the complete lack of emotion. There is no sense that you have already fallen in love catastrophically. You may never have experienced this kind of chemistry. Maybe you have, and everything was terribly wrong, and now you’re trying to be a little more demanding. But it seems to me that you are doing things in the wrong order.
No one likes to be spoken as a lower mark of hand cart. And yet, the way we date seems to be increasingly pleasing a mentality of the domestic shopping network. I am not saying that the traditional method of choosing the most attractive person in their atrophied remaining water is necessarily a better system. But I think we are so impressed with the choice that it is easy to forget what makes romance romantic.
I am not saying that you should reduce your standards, because it is the illuminated or ethical thing to do. It’s genuinely no one from anyone who you choose to date and why relative you choose measure them. Justice has nothing to do with it. But I think your rigorous criteria can prevent you from experimenting with one of the best feelings life has to offer.
Perfect people do not exist, and even if they did, it would be heinous to be in a relationship with one, because being able to love someone, despite their flaws, and offering you the same grace is much more powerful and transformative than trying to find a perfect laboratory specimen.
It is also noteworthy that people change and that it is possible for two people to rise and transform. I am not suggesting to assume someone as a “superior fixer.” But things like jobs and debts and hobbies are not permanent states of being. Healthy people get sick. Persons secure financially lose their jobs. Everything in life is subject to change, for the better and worse, so it makes sense to find someone with whom you are willing to know these changes.
I don’t think it’s wrong to have some break -of -Mar. But you must save them to the things that really matter to you. The solution does not mean reducing your standards. Sometimes this means compromising some things you found important and get many other extra things you didn’t even know you wanted or needed in return.
It seems that all your objections are proof of the fact that you have not felt hard enough about someone to replace your initial reservations, and that is the main question here rather than an inherent choice. If you can find someone who brings you joy, it represents 75% of the battle. When you know someone you are crazy, things smaller than you would usually give you “ictism” is not only irrelevant, but they can also become paradoxically attractive.
So how do you find someone who gives you that feeling? There is no easy way. But in your case, I wonder if this means starting from a place of curiosity and trying to be more alert about how people make you feel than what they bring to the table. It means trusting your heart and intestine as well as your intellect. It means trying to date the spark. With the right person, you can eat a roasted chicken next to a trash and feel alone, while the wrong person will make a five-dishes tasting menu look a living nightmare.
I’m not saying it’s easy. But I think you’re so worried about making bad decisions that you have stopped paying attention to how you feel, which is certainly the point.
It is entirely possible that no one is good enough for you. On the other hand, no one is really good enough for anyone, and We must all be grateful for it. Over time, you begin to understand what privilege is to be invited to one’s life, to witness their best and worse.
If you are struggling to make this connection, do not force it. It is a thousand times better to be happy and single than to put on a miserable relationship and eating canned meat in silence until you die.
But if you want the real thing, I suggest reserving your checklist and pay more attention to your instincts. You may not get exactly what you thought you wanted, but sometimes getting exactly what you want is not so satisfactory or interesting. Fortunately, you find something deeper and deeper along the way.
