‘Don’t be too successful and
chase the men away’ she said and I replied; ‘if a man is scared of my success
then that’s not the kind of man I want to be with’…so I looked at him and asked
‘are men really scared of strong successful women? He pauses for a while then says; ‘the honest
truth is men like strong successful women and every woman wants same from her
man but there is more going on than merely a meeting of the minds’.
Hmmm and that got me thinking
right! What never really occurs to any of us is that:
We are being evaluated on far
more than our most ‘impressive traits’.
Sometimes these traits come with
a significant downside that is painful to acknowledge. Take me for example
right! I’m a reasonable person (at least I think I am), I’m fairly independent,
I’m smart, great sense of humor, I can hold a good conversation and so on; but
right behind my good traits are a series of bad traits. Anyone who knows me to
a certain level can testify to that:
The flip side of being bright is
being opinionated
The flip side of being analytical
is being difficult
The flip side of being funny is
being sarcastic
The flip side of having moral
clarity is being arrogant
The flip side of being
entrepreneurial is being a workaholic
The flip side of being charismatic
is being self-centred
The flip side of being a
go-getter is being impatient
Again, NOT EVERY person who is
bright is opinionated, and NOT EVERY person who is funny is sarcastic. But
there’s enough anecdotal evidence to suggest a strong correlation. And I’m just
talking about MYSELF here. So if my good qualities come with bad qualities,
have you considered that yours might as well?
We all have that perception that
it’s hard meeting people who would appreciate our qualities. I mean what we
think is great and what we’re putting out there, and how people actually see us
tends to be very different.
At some point I believed I was
unlucky in love with a penchant for attracting emotionally unavailable men and
assclowns. I often described myself as ambitious, a go-getter, outgoing,
attractive, intelligent, and then some more. Whilst there is no escaping the
fact that I did go out with men who acted like assclowns at some point, it was
a bit of a shocker to discover that on a deeper, honest, reflection, I was
aloof, picky, sarcastic, pushy, and often times difficult where I thought I was
having fun and being ‘entertaining’.
It’s always very easy to focus on
the surface qualities that we believe are our selling points and totally ignore
other more important characteristics and behaviors that may possibly be
impacting on our ability to have relationships. It doesn’t matter how
intelligent, pretty/handsome or ambitious you are; if you’re afraid of
commitment and subconsciously sabotaging anything that may lead to it.
There’s no point in being
beautiful/handsome if you don’t act that way or harbor beliefs about your own
abilities that impact on your self-esteem. We also have to accept that if we
can find faults and flaws with others…that people will find those with us too.
No one is perfect.
It’s not about taking the onus
off the people that don’t appreciate us for who we are but it is about taking
responsibility for who you are and recognizing that not everything about you is
that wonderful. I used to be able to list countless faults (infact I could
write a book if I had to) about the men I met and dated, but rarely paid
attention to my own flaws. It’s so easy for us to mention the faults of others
and not look at ours. It’s so easy to blame the ex on everything that went
wrong in the relationship and forget we were also part of the relationship (it
takes two to tango). At some point in my life I realized that, who I thought I
was and who I really was had to reconcile and in that, I hope I’m able to forge
far better relationships from an honest level.
So next time you bemoan your
relationship luck and list your surface qualities, view yourself from another
person’s perspective and even play back recent dates and scenes from previous
relationships in your mind.
Could you be doing something
differently?
Let me know your opinion
Xoxo Chantel