Hey X, Was out yesterday celebrating our 19th anniversary, so a little delayed getting back here. Here goes….

Hey, Michelle!

Congratulations on the milestone! Wishing you and your partner many, many more years ahead!!!

Q1.  Yes, that’s exactly what I meant by the restaurant analogy. If you are picking men based on one set of criteria, then it is not too surprising when they don’t magically match the real criteria you want them to have.  It is much easier/normal for people to value the short-term ( physical looks, instant attraction, chemistry… ) than to think about the longer-term.  It’s why it’s called a gut reaction and it’s not a bad thing – but it’s just one piece of information. Since you know you have a history of choices that haven’t made you happy then it’s worth spending some time thinking through and embedding what you really want, hence the ask on the top 5.  Now I’m not suggesting you mentally run everyone through a checklist since agreed, it doesn’t work that way, you don’t know enough about anyone until you start finding out the reality, finding out more.  So through conversations, through dates, slowly gaining more knowledge, experience – not through assessing them further in your head, in your imagination.

Do I mean you should start dating people you aren’t attracted to – no. I don’t think you can fake attraction and you shouldn’t have to.

Michelle, what do you think of the following answer in a popular dating blog? I would say that I find the answer very true and worth following.

https://www.evanmarckatz.com/blog/chemistry/how-long-should-i-wait-for-chemistry-to-develop

But I do think you could try to keep an open mind for longer before dumping people into the friend zone. Some people become more attractive the more you get to know them, as they open up to you. Given your current method isn’t working, trying a different approach is the only way the outcome can change ( a la Einstein’s famous quote re insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results ).

I am only too well aware of this quote. However, I think it might be misleading relationshipwise. Even if I am more or less the same person (“even if” because I definitely think I have made some progress and a few premises that I held before entering the relationship with my ex are now deemed by me not true and are forgotten), I meet different men, don’t I? Just like you (and Anita) said, if an anxious person is in a relationship with a healthy one, s/he may heal. So it is not a given that anxious person is bound forever to pair up with another one, not healthy, is it? So this tenet doesn’t hold, does it?

I haven’t really dated at all before falling hard for #1, which was very a very short-term affair. It is really only after my ex and those six years that I am now looking at the entire dating thing seriously. I am very comfortable on my own now (just as before I met my #1 – up until I decided that something must be intrinsically wrong with me, not having had a boyfriend at 23 and not having kissed at all, so I think I was putting myself in a very vulnerable position believing that I am damaged and looking for a “saviour”). If you look for something, you find it. Or so you think.

Tiny Buddha and Anita’s recommendations to get to know the man slowly over a long time ring true.

So given all that and combined with my mother’s advice (and Mum had a lot of suitors in her 20s and 30s, she is very feminine), I am certainly not discarding men at once if I don’t like them. I am “giving them a chance”.

The problem is I am either approached by men in their early 60s (one at work was direct enough to insinuate that he wanted to sleep with me, another one at the cafeteria is literally jumping out of his pants when he sees me – so creepy!), or by men whom I can’t stand (and I am at a loss how come they don’t see it?) or by men to whom I, too, “give a chance”, everything seems to go well and be promising for some time and then they just go MIA. True, these are men who haven’t resolved their issues (married or not over their ex or whatever) before approaching me, but nevertheless.

As I wrote before, the way those men behaved eventually (am not talking about Category 1 – definitely not my cup of tea!) showed that my gut feeling was not wrong (and even my mother agreed!) for Cat. 2 and that it was good riddance for Cat. 3.

So as Mum put it, “There isn’t really anybody for you to choose from”.

But Michelle, since I have so little experience with dating, let me describe how it began and was done with the men whom I knew to have no partners. I would really love to know what you think.

1. Guy on a trip (Cat. 3). Met him at a restaurant when travelling. He was my waiter. Asked me out. Had a great date, talked a lot, had dinner, he was willing to pay, I suggested we go Dutch. Wouldn’t have minded ending the night at my room, but respected my no.

Next, I go to another town. Don’t hear from him for several days. Write him a letter saying that I really enjoyed the date (I did – he was my first crush after my ex!!!) and would love to get to know him better. He replied. After that he would drop me a couple of lines (literally a couple – nothing too fancy, definitely not in a way one does when one wants to get to know a potential mate) here and there, go silent for six weeks, then resurface again. Finally, went MIA three months after our meeting in his country. Then wrote again two years (!!!) after that saying he wanted to visit me. He did talk a lot about his ex who had finished things off about a year before we had that date. Had had a couple of girls since, but nothing serious.

2. Next was the “guy who led me on”, enough about him on that other thread.

 

3. A guy from the shooting range (Cat. 2). Asked me out. I suggested we meet at a café. I arrive, he is already there with a cup of coffee. He tells me to go and get my coffee. I do. Then he gives me something simple for my pistol saying, “I asked you out, so I was supposed to pay for your coffee, but since I have this present for you and its cost is comparable to that of your coffee, you got your coffee yourself.”

 

WHAT??? Michelle, I am totally fine paying for myself. But women like men to be generous. I do, too. (Isn’t it in the female psyche, selecting the mate who can provide best for her and offspring?) I always insisted on going Dutch with my ex. We even had a third card for outings together, which we would pay 50% each. But when a man has just asked me out… I work mostly in a male environment, and somehow men (even in higher positions) at work take pleasure in paying for my coffee at our coffee stand. And we are just friends. And they are certainly not thinking of anything “like that.” (Just yesterday I ran into my manager’s husband, and he bought me coffee just because.) So I don’t really understand it when a man asks me out, asks me where I would like to go and then (I don’t choose a fancy restaurant) just sits there, having already gotten his beverage expecting me to serve myself. Say, my ex at our first date nearly started an argument over me wanting to pay for myself. The waiter guy was ready to pay, too, but I had wanted to do a few things on our date in his city that it was only natural for me, given the difference in our revenue, to suggest splitting the bill.

 

4. A guy from my sailing program (Cat. 3). I hadn’t noticed him at first, then all of a sudden, two or three months into the training, he approaches me and starts asking me questions, telling me about his brother married to a woman from my country… I was rather neutral towards him at the beginning (and he was bald, I seldom like bald men, in fact, he was only a second bald in my life whom I ended up liking), at our next class, he offered me a piece of clothing to borrow (I hadn’t brought one and wouldn’t have otherwise been able to participate in an activity) and then… Nothing. As if he thought better and changed his mind. I sent him a request to become friends on Facebook, started a few matter-of-fact chats, came up to him when he was working in a distance by himself to say hi. He just stopped coming up to me.

A colleague of mine, from my country, too, said that I should have pursued him. Well, I don’t like the idea of a woman “pursuing” a man. I initiated contact several times (normally, “poke” three times), if he is not coming to me in his turn, he is not interested. I for one hate to impose myself.

My mother likes to bring up as the reason for men not pursuing me my lack of qualities of a housewife and femininity. She says that men who are serious, are looking for a wife. I retort – are they looking for a wife & a partner or a cook & a maid? Besides, if you take that colleague of mine, yes she is very family-oriented (and cooks, too), but nevertheless she got herself a loving boyfriend who became her husband one year ago only well after she turned 30.

Besides, when I remind my mother (and my aunt) about their skill level when they were young, they concede that yes, they learnt to cook only after they married…

5. One more guy from the sailing program (Cat. 2). Would text me quite often even though I said I preferred email or regular phone (one of my quirks – I still live without a smartphone), then invited me over to his boat for a Christmas party. Well, only two more people came, so there were three men and I. Not a very nice feeling, being in a boat with three men, female alone. No special program, played a game. I forgot what it was called, but it was a game where players are given phrases and they are supposed to make sentences and then vote which one is best. Well, a few phrases were alright, but quite a few were related to sex and sexual organs. I didn’t find that game funny at all; more than that, it was quite vulgar after my taste.

 

To compare, sometimes I gather together with folks from my country who are here on rotation and we play games. But we play board games, such “Cashflow”, and it is a totally different level. That is why I said that education is very important, too.

 

The same guy asked me out. Via text. I responded in texting with a question about time. He never responded until about two hours before the time that had still to be confirmed. Well, if you insist on texting, have the decency responding to texts in time!

 

Next, the date. Not much to talk about. In fact, it seemed as if he was expecting me to reveal something to him (since I am from a different country) that would turn his life upside down and make it even more “fun”. Sorry, mate, can’t help you here. And how do you like the phrase, “You really need to learn to cook if you want to get married?” Dear, who ever told you that I wanted to get married???

 

No need to say that it never occurred to him to suggest paying for my meal.

 

6. Another one, this time a nephew of my aunt’s good friend who happens to live now in the same country as I (Cat. 2).

 

I’ll omit the intermittent communication that we had leading up to the date. Now the date. We look at each other, and I realise that he is NOT the one. He made a tiny move as if he was ready to pay (at that place, one pays at the counter), but seeing me with my wallet, happily let me pay for myself. Next the talking. Made me talk about myself, yet, when I would answer and then ask him about the same (I hate it when the conversation is not balanced), he would answer in one sentence and then proceed to asking questions about my life here again. Then he went to the loo, came back and said that he would be going.

 

Needless to say that I was only too happy not to have heard from him.

 

With him, it felt as if he was complying with his relatives’ wishes to meet me only in order to be able to say that “Yes, I saw her and didn’t like her”.

 

It is also funny how great the power of stereotypes is. When guys hear that I am from such and such country, am 34 years old, have been in this country for over ten years and am not married, have no kids (nor intend to) and work where I work because I studied where I studied and my another passport is coming shortly, they feel that something is fishy and they better get out of here. Such things merely don’t happen! Well, I am certainly not the one who will be holding them back.

 

Maybe I am too old-fashioned and old-school? But aren’t we all brought up on the same books and movies and stories? Or, since I felt such a strong aversion to them, they didn’t expect me to “give them a chance”, because other girls wouldn’t, and when I did, so intelligent and pretty, they decided they could twist me around their little finger?

I am also only too aware of a wide array of distractions and instant gratification in the modern world. With smartphones and apps like Tinder, it is so easy not to make any efforts. On the one hand, we all know that there is no “one and the only one” for each one of us, that relationships are built and not happen, but on the other hand, when one knows that there is always the next one… My job involves lots of distractions as is, I hate typing on the small window keyboard (speaking is so much faster!), I don’t want to be a “smartphone zombie” and I have access to computers all around, so I have been able to resist the smartphone mania so far. Of course, that sounds very suspicious, too – that I still live without a smartphone. But if somebody really likes somebody, all those quirks are just lovely peculiarities, making that other person endearing, are they not?

So do you think I should have continued dating them (Cat. 2, I mean), getting to know them better after that? (We are assuming I didn’t feel that physical aversion to them or, at the very least, felt neutral.)

Is my bar too high? If I lower it, I get jerks. If I keep it, I get wishy-washy unavailable men with whom it goes well at the beginning, but then they just dissolve into thin air.

It is not like any of those guys (even the ones whom I didn’t like) stayed around to try and win me over. Say, with my ex, we corresponded daily and talked over the phone for over two months after his first business trip here when nothing had yet happened between us. With the “guy who led me on”, we corresponded almost daily for four months, literally discussing all possible topics from interests to finances, before he stopped writing back and initiating.

All in all, it does seem like I did my best to follow the adage, “If you want a prince, be a princess” only to discover that all princes have been taken and there are none left for me. 😉

My impression is that the guys who do ask me out, do it with the expectation that I will be the one dancing attendance on them, and if I don’t, nothing to worry about ‘cause there are many more to check out on Tinder.

Q2.  It’s a good list of goals – how many of them are you actively pursuing, i.e. all I’m really asking is do you have a balanced life or do you have a lot of spare time to spend dreaming and imagining up your perfect man  and how life will be great only if/when you have met the right man.  Most people I know end up meeting their partner when they weren’t looking for him, when their lives were full in a good way and they were happy.

Michelle, I have thought about this one too. I believe myself to be tremendously lucky. You see, I work with languages, something I have always wanted to do. My job allows me not only to do what I have been trained to do, but it also has a few opportunities to take my time, read books, articles online, do some research, learn new things. One could say that what I do at work is what I would be doing in my life anyway. I am comfortable with the salary and can afford to travel on a budget when I am on holiday. It can be anywhere between 6-10 weeks a year – just depends. Am totally fine travelling on my own, no company needed (though it would be nice to share a glass of wine with somebody and to have somebody lug my suitcase 😉 ).

I mentioned what I would like to learn / do in life. I need to mention that I spend very little time getting to and from my work place, so after work, I go swimming three times a week, shooting (once) and fencing (once). Now I do sail training at the weekends every other week, before that I did martial arts for three years and rode horses for five. I also strive for a good night’s rest, 7-8 hours preferably. I paint, too.

Despite all these activities, I start feeling stuck in a groove after roughly 3-4 months, so I do my best to plan my holidays and travels so as to break up the routine, as I call it. I am very thankful for how my life has panned out in this respect so far.

So when I meet somebody who starts pursuing me and I don’t like him, I immediately begin to think that I still have so many things to do, my list is far from finished, I am not ready yet, I am so reluctant to pass on on any of my hobbies for the sake of meeting up.

But when I really like somebody, all that flies out of the window, I literally have to make myself follow my usual routine so that I am not incessantly daydreaming about him. But I am aware that I am prone to co-dependency, I am making a mental effort not to let go of all my other activities, even if it is out of mere spite. And I still do them all, but all am living as if in a fog when I am in love.

But yes, I did feel that I was sort of filling my time (even though I greatly enjoy my hobbies) awaiting my ex.

I also had that feeling that I was putting my life on hold up until I meet my “other half”, but that was before #1. Is if I was not ready because I hadn’t checked off a few items from my list – back from my studies – as if I hadn’t earned those degrees yet. Well, now that list is nearly done, and I do feel a bit more at ease. It might be one more subconscious reason for my choosing men who wouldn’t need full commitment on my part. (???) But then again – am I not supposed to have my own interests and my life?

I am not sure I do it anymore. I have definitely become more aware, read a lot about Buddhism, about being in the flow, but I can’t help feeling as follows:

• When I feel that I need somebody (that “hole” to be filled that I now fill with the many other people – and I used to expect that one’s partner should be “the one and only and everything”), I meet people who are just as deficient, one-sided as I am. So obviously, it doesn’t work.
• When I feel perfectly rounded, wholesome and happy on my own, I don’t meet anyone at all. As if, on the one hand, why would those who are happy on their own need anybody at all? and on the other, as if there were so few really wholesome people out there, that our paths simply don’t cross.

Or is it the perfectionist in me? (Well, I am really not that bad and obsessed at all, I adhere to the “take nothing to extremes” wisdom – I do everything until it is “good enough”)

When I was told and believed that I should stand by my man and support him (think the good wife of the 50s books), I was doing just that (my ex). Still couldn’t get over the cooking thing – didn’t want to compete with his wife; besides, my ex was fine with eating out.

Now I am told that I need to be happy on my own, I can assure you that I am perfectly happy on my own. When I meet somebody I don’t quite like, the only thing I can think of is how well I am doing all by myself and how many things I still have to do before I can afford to waste my time on guys like that.

Q3.  It’s good you have considered the father figure aspect. I believe it has less to do with age than looking for people who can take care of you, make sure you feel safe, protect you from the world when needed and who will provide direction/guidance and generally mean you don’t need to take such responsibility for your own life. So people who are either in positions of power, authority or have those kind of qualities attract you when looking to replace the father figure, not the age thing.  Do you tend to feel the chemistry, this family portrait thing with men who resemble your father?  Especially given your childhood and lack of attention/love, it would not be surprising to still be looking to fill that hole with a relationship plug.

GL just wrote to me on my thread, and for some reason his explanation now hits home. I knew all this before, but probably in the heat of the moment, it didn’t ring true. Now somehow it does. I elaborated more on this one in my answer to him below.

But isn’t the female of any species wired to be looking for the male who is able to provide for her and future offspring (of course, there are exceptions, even in nature out there)?

When Matt and I had our correspondence, he said that he also had the innate need to know that his wife was out there for him. So I guess it is true for both sexes.

And yes, I do acknowledge that when I look at a man, I need to feel admiration for him (probably goes hand in hand with him being sexually appealing to me) AND there is that tinge of me wanting to be able to lean on somebody who is secure in his position.

You see, in the first place, one could say that I am the anxious type and on the other, no matter how happy I am with my life right now, it is all due to a very long-term project. But everything that has a beginning has an end, and this project, however long-term, may end. When – it is still out in the open, but in any case, it will hardly last until my retirement. And I don’t know whether I might be able to find something as fulfilling as this job.

Right now a relationship does feel like a cherry on top, one last check mark or one last item to add to my list of fulfillments. But I am only too aware of how fickle life can be, and I don’t know if I simply succeeded in convincing myself now that I am better off on my own.

But no, surprisingly enough, I never dreamt of anybody who would be similar to my Dad in appearance. On  the contrary, my first glance is caught by men who are rather opposite to him in appearance. My father is not very tall at all and wears glasses, well, so far, I have been attracted to only one bespectacled man for a brief half a day in my whole life. On the other hand, I have found only two bald men appealing in my whole life, and my Dad still has all his hair. I have been attracted to several plumpy men, and my father is all bones and muscles. And yes, tall men do stand out. But as time passes, even as brief a period as half an hour, and all those initial pickings go away.

Looking back, I can’t really say that I feel the pull to a particular appearance by default.

Your mother sounds difficult and you sound like you are still carrying expectations of hers. I’m glad you have managed to cut contact to once/week – daily is ridiculous. Well done. I know from experience it is hard to work through determining your own values and not still living to those given you by your parents. Take the marriage example – understand completely on that one. My partner and I are not married and when I was still insecure it used to worry me – and it took me a while to work out that I was only worried as it did not meet my parent’s expectations, hopes whereas the big wedding, the 2.4 kids was just not actually me, not something I wanted.  This comes back to goals again and determining your own values/aims – learning to stop having your mother in your head judging you for not being married yet and therefore ‘not good enough’ , ‘not pretty/ladylike enough’. All untrue but hard to recognise when still judging yourself with your mother’s voice and so damaging to your self-esteem.

My father has always been very supportive and he was the one who would check my mother and grandmother telling them to leave me alone and let me do things my way and let me think what I want to think and live according to my own views.

Frankly, I can hardly imagine what I would do with my mother if/when my father is not here anymore.

She loves me very much, but in her own way. It is as if she loved the image of me that she has in her head. I must acknowledge though that she / we have been working on this. For instance, I explain that I simply can’t be always available for her emails or calls. She says okay, but if you have no news to tell, drop at least a line saying that you are okay once every two or three days. So it’s work in progress.

Q4. Ha – excellent, probably way too much detail for here but hey, yep, seems you’ve ticked that box well and good.  It’s just odd that the first thing that comes to your mind when attracted to someone is to hug them. Back to the theory that you are really looking for affection, love but are assessing people instantly on sexual chemistry instead.

I have also read lots of psychology books, in different languages (I speak a few) after the breakup, because obviously, I didn’t know a thing about reality and real-life men. One author was a practising thererapist who used the opportunity of dealing with people’s problems to conduct polls. So he effectively showed that in some areas men and women did think the same, but in a few others the difference between what women and men would think could be very wide. His books were fun to read and were rather eye-opening as regards male psychology both at the beginning of a relationship and during.

One of his works was a three-volume on sex. Michelle, it was very decent without any technical details (contrary to what the title suggests). Among other things, he stated that men and women tend to be naturally biased in favour of their sexual appeal and skill. For instance, one can be convinced that one is very sexy whereas in reality, one is not. So I thought I need to be more specific about actions and thins vs what I might be thinking.

As far as hugging goes, when I look into this, I see that my culture is not a very tactile one. Besides, (GL had the perfect insight, and I elaborated) when I turned 11 or 12, I started to distance from my parents and so all the hugs went away (I don’t think we actually ever hugged, like really hugged). And never came back. And now too much time has passed, I really have no desire to introduce it. I feel bad already that I can hardly think of giving a good hug to my grandmother, but I’ll try to do it this year when I see her.

But I know that we are “herd animals”, hugs and touches lower blood pressure etc., so now I consciously make sure I don’t shirk from hugs at work and the people among whom I live now. So that I am not starved for human touch.

Now to your questions! 1.  So first, not convinced I agree that like attracts like, often seems it’s that opposites attract. And if you look at most of the stats people throw around, there are apparently nowhere near enough secure-style attachment people in the world to match the number of relationships in the world! So given that, what’s important these days in determining if a relationship is going to be good for the long-haul is all about being able to help each other grow, not expecting perfection all the time, not buying into the Disney view of romance.   

Well, as far as like attracts like goes, somehow people always look for things in common be it in friendships or romance. True, the differences may not be a deal breaker, but they look for something similar to bond.

Second, I don’t know because when I started off this premise, I found a few deeply buried traits in myself that were similar to what my ex revealed about himself. But maybe I simply found them because I was looking for them. I am talking about my inner desires that pulled me to him and that were similar, not about the anxious-avoidant me vs dismissive-avoidant him.

And yes, novels and Disney made me want to test out the idea that “if I am a good girl and wait long enough, I’ll meet him and we will live happily ever after.”

Now I know it is not so.

Most people are just not that self-aware or used to questioning their feelings, reactions as to what’s best for the long-term instead of short-term instant gratification.

I like the test of time. More often than not, my initial attraction evaporates. If not, I am ready to work on the relationship in a consistent manner. But that is me. And I need to remember feeling-wise, what it was that attracted me in the first place. And I do remember.

I am not so sure about those whom I meet in our instant gratification world full of distractions with Tinder.

1a. Do you believe you are worthy of a good man?  Per above – are you still expecting it all to happen magically or are you willing to deal with the reality of the world, the reality of others.  No-one is perfect and I don’t believe there is only ‘the one’, indeed my own life story so far tells me otherwise. This is why it’s worth being curious enough to learn more about people before discarding them. Is my other-half perfect, of course not in the same way I am not. But we have had an amazing journey so far and I know him way better each day as we grow together – the love today is incomparable to what I felt at the start, richer, truer, sturdier.  Could I have known that at the start – absolutely not.

Yeah, I am really starting to think that Mum is right and I am not presented with a decent pool of men to choose from. Even though I do my best to be exposed to the maximum – lots of men at work, my hobbies (when the sailing program starts, there are over 150 persons, a few of them men), I am not shying get-togethers, even though, as an introvert, I get tired of throngs of people and having to repeat who I am and what I do.

I did some research once. People would meet at all sorts of places, ranging from a parking lot to when travelling (I travel alone, so it is very easy to approach me), but most often coupes are formed at places of study/work, hobbies (as you can see, I actively pursue lots of things) or through friends or family.

Today, people also meet online. Anita gave some good advice on how to conduct the selection process. I may want to try it sometime. However, the online dating project seems akin to looking for a needle in a bundle of hay these days…

2. I think it is very much down to how the child-you perceived it at the time – which is why twins/siblings can grow up so differently in the same environment, they will have perceived the experience differently based on their own perspectives, emotions.  Regardless of the actual reality, if you felt disconnected, lacking attention or protection from your parents at the time, that’s going to leave you with a hole to fill.  This is where Anita was going with her questions, to help you recognise that what you are looking for from a relationship can’t fill that hole – it’s like trying to put a square peg in a round hole – it’s not going to heal that hurt. Well, again I don’t know whether I sort of fake being so busy whereas deep down I am still looking for the one who will come and turn my world around and make me safe and happy. But if I do, I do it so expertly that even when I, with all my propensity for looking inside myself, don’t find it there.

Recognizing that I have a hole that I tried to fill with my ex was also one of my first steps after the breakup. I tried to enumerate what it was I was getting from him and what it was I was missing after the breakup and how I could get it from other people. Hence my being more open, hence revealing different parts of real me to many more new people with whom I enjoy interacting and who respond to me in a way that I appreciate.

I think I succeeded, so I am a little bit surprised that I am still single, approached by men who are definitely not a match and still daydreaming about other men, albeit different ones. (I don’t know if it is a sign of progress, but since the breakup, I have been attracted to two men happy on their own and not looking for anybody, one single but clearly not over the ex of one year before, and two no longer with their wives and not because of me.)

I have family over for Easter here so if I’m slow getting back to your responses don’t worry, I’ll get there. Hope it helps in meantime.

Michelle, it was very thoughtful of you to write it. I do confess that I was checking my inbox a little bit more often than needed on the day following my post, but it is okay. I guess I belong to the anxious type by nature, but I am also a thinking and reading person, and I know that people ghost often nowadays. It is even easier to do online, so I wouldn’t be surprised 😉

And it is not a good sign on my part to almost expect people to drop out. I was so happily busy with my activities on Wednesday and Thursday, and I do need my beauty sleep, so I was not sure I could written or posted anything myself. I could have, but it would be to the detriment of my sleep and well-being.

THANK YOU!

Looking forward to whatever comments you might have! Whenever 😉

Happy Easter!