Righting Ourselves Before Mr. Right
Finding Mr. Right in today’s society is not as simple as it was when Shakespeare’s Juliet uttered her breathy and cliche, “Where fore art thou, RomeoâÂ?¦” That phrase is a well-worn line, and now sends men scattering across the globe. Post-modern singles are dumbstruck with 60-hour workweeks, amassed credit card bills, and a penchant for selfishness that rivals the greediest of corporate whores.
Finding Mr. Right has become a failing art for most women; it’s lost to the sea of lack of communication, wavering self-confidence, and over-analyzing every little thing he does; that is, every little thing that man does well, or fails at miserably. Women now carry more baggage than in any other time in history when it comes to relationships, and now wonder why every man they meet suddenly has a “deal breaker” or poorly formed excuse to break off the relationship. Men simply can’t handle all those unresolved issues and women refuse to let go of it, verging on irrational paranoia.
There is no such creature as Mr. Right. Expectations are much too dependent on stereotypical delusions of grandeur. There are many wonderful men in today’s world, but until women fine-tune their overrated laundry list of features in a man, adjust their emotionally imbalanced state, and communicate, they will continue to be miserable, and more notably, single.
There’s been an onslaught of clever prose on the language of lovers, both verbal and body over the past several years. The singles are consuming these relationship books like children in a candy store. When did society stop using their own brains and common sense to know that if one does not communicate their needs, and no reciprocity, or compromise exists in a relationship, that the pages of a book are somehow going to fix it?
Consider, that as children, we were blunt, or we were shy-we told that cute little boy or girl next door how we felt; “I like you” or “I don’t like it when you pull my pigtails” and never thought twice about it. To illustrate, some women are consistently in a state of complaint that they haven’t had a great orgasm with the recent man in their life, but are loath to tell the poor sod, “just a little to the left” would most certainly do the trick.
The same analogy applies to any given relationship issue, without communication, no woman or man will be happy, nor can they provide their partner happiness if needs, wants, and desires are not communicated. Somewhere down the line, the relationship will fail, and one or the other is handed the “deal breaker” and left with a poor excuse of sorts, when simple communication could have resolved the issue much earlier on. If the relationship manages to survive, there are two very unhappy parties merely existing.
When we get right down to the nature of the single women’s woes, there is no escape from the angst of what so-and-so did some 13 years prior. One of the biggest mistakes women and men alike, make in the mating game, is to carry around years, and sometimes decades, of excess emotional baggage. It is time to empty the bag of every evil deed, some ex-boyfriend or husband of no consequence, invoked on you. Every individual deserves and has the right to be treated, as the individual they are, not how “a woman scorned” perceives them to be.
Our experiences make us who we are; we grow by learning. If that bad relationship didn’t afford an obvious lesson, the lesson is on the table now; refrain from alienating the potential Mr. Right with a bad history that belongs to someone else.
While emotional baggage can be resolved, personalities don’t change. It is a scientific fact that it takes approximately two years of new behavior for a person to acquire or change an innate personality trait. Women cannot change men or vice versa. How many times has it been said, “I can break him of that habit?” The next fact is obvious; people cannot be “broken,” “tamed,” “trained,” or even slightly “modified” to adjust to a woman’s concept of what is acceptable. People are who they are-it is innate. If said habits are unacceptable in the early period of the relationship, they most assuredly will become intolerable later, and likely result in divorce.
Just as women and men cannot change each other, it is even more important that women not attempt to “snare” Mr. Right, with tactics not their own. Women tend to be chameleons, changing their personalities, behaviors, style of dress to attract and please Mr. Right. This is false-unless you can keep up the act for the next 50 or 60 years, Mr. Right hasn’t even fallen in love with “you,” he’s fallen in love with the persona of a woman who speaks, dresses, and acts like someone else!
Everyone falls prey to the mating game-women especially will go to the extra trouble of presenting themselves in a light they perceive as the one men want to see. This is actually true, but people must be true to themselves. Looking extra hot on a Saturday night is one thing, but men know most women don’t typically dress as such, all the time. Be yourself. Be true to yourself.
Speaking of Saturday nights, bars and nightclubs may be where everyone hangs out, hotties and not, but rarely does anything more than a one night stand or 3-week stint result from an encounter that evolved from the drunken stoop of the local pub. Think about it, if that sexy barfly settled in at the end of the table is there often, he’s going to be found later, warming the same seat and possibly someone elses. Old habits die hard, and that one usually doesn’t.
Is that clock ticking? Have confidence that he knows it, too. With modern technology, science, and marvels in medicine, it is now safe to have children well into the forties without consequence or risk. There are a few additional tests that will need to be completed, but rest assured, children are in fact possible at later ages. Relax, and enjoy the carefree experiences of youth, while still young!
As young, hip, and even trendy, or aging singles abound these days, so does the cost, the time, and notably the angst of finding Mr. Right. It’s more common than not to work 60-80 hours per week, to have weekends consumed by perhaps even more work, simply to make ends meet. Really, there is little time left to socialize. Women have more recently inundated themselves with the trauma and panic of “not being able to find a man,” much less a “good” man, and are making the ultimate mistake of “settling.” This is considered desperation; it’s a cheat to oneself, and it robs both partners of an honest relationship. As individuals, we all deserve the best of what life has to offer. Selfishness, loneliness, and desperation do not make a solid foundation for love. Avoid inflicting it on others who absolutely do not deserve the selfish plight of your desire to be in a relationship, married, or having children at this very moment.
Women tend to overlook that desperation by setting unrealistic goals. Once upon a time if the female gender was not married off and having babies by the time they were thirty, they were considered “old maids” and “spinsters.” In today’s terms, single women are simply referred to as single or “bachelorettes.” With careers and education pulling at the traditional and long-gone societal roles for the twenties, by modern standards, the twenties have evolved and are now lasting to a realistic estimate in the forties. What’s the rush?
Once the excess of emotional baggage is gone and communication lines are opened, women can and will find themselves in tune with a few more men who may be closer to their ideal of the elusive Mr. Right. Understanding that both men and women need to be true to themselves and to each other is vital, while communicating needs clearly and concisely makes all the difference between misery as a post-modern single, and the exhilaration that a healthy relationship produces.
