I was watching Meet The Parents: Little Fockers the other night, and found myself defending Jessica Alba’s crazy, driven, young, vibrant, successful but absolutely hopeless in love and dating, twenty something character. If you haven’t seen the movie, she is a pretty crazy character… and tries to rape Ben Stiller… which in itself does NOT make sense to me…
When I think of my idols, most of them were successful in their own right, and then met either a hardworking man or several, but always seemed to ultimately end up lovelorn.
I know personally, I used to be the kind of person that I always thought once I had a relationship sorted out, the rest of my life would fall into place. I saw a partner as being a great support network, backbone and motivator for achieving my other goals in life.
However, during my single periods and also after my last boyfriend, I realised that if anything, having a partner (particularly the wrong one) requires a lot of sacrifice of the areas that you are succeeding at otherwise. All of a sudden it is so easy to shift your focus on to someone, who may not be there in the long run, and it requires you to pay attention and put effort in which takes away from your time spent working hard at your career, hobbies or friends. Guess what … There is no guarantee that all the hard work and sacrifice you put into a relationship will guarantee marriage or happiness. In the end, you have to weigh up the time invested vs the risk. Unfortunately, the volatility of relationships means that there is never a guarantee that the other person will contribute as much or stick around in the long term.
This is where many successful women fall flat on their face. They can control every other aspect of their life, and usually work their arses off and see success. They take control of their lives and goals and don’t waste time on things that take away from time that could be better spent earning money or prestige. However, when it comes to relationships, being upfront, honest and open about your expectations and wanting a straight answer can often lead to males running for the door as they feel as though they are being put under a lot of undue pressure to know what they want within the first couple of dates. Men hate having to be honest about their feelings, wants and needs – that and they really don’t know most of the time what they want.
For instance, I’ve worked in my job for 7 days now.. 5 days were 14 hours, 3 were 12 hours long and today is meant to be my day off but I’ve spent all morning planning, on teleconferences and sorting through reports and emails.
It may seem crazy and I guarantee I’m not normally this much of a workaholic, but to be honest, what I contribute to my career and with the hard work I put in – I will see results. I would rather spend more time at work, then dating, flirting or clubbing. The reason? Finding a partner and finding a partner that will actually want a relationship with me, is completely out of my control.
It’s taken me a long time to reach this point, but after so many failed relationships, dates etc. where I spent hours working to only make the other person happy, days upon days of sacrifices in my other areas of life to spend time with them and then months or years just down the drain because ultimately I realised that it didn’t matter how hard I tried or how hard I worked – you can’t force another person to want to be with you.
Someone I greatly admire once told me that if you want to find the perfect person, you have to be the perfect person yourself. It really resonated with me and I have since worked my arse off at uni, work and every other aspect of my life (besides cooking… but I imagine my future husband/wife will either love 2 minute noodles or will be a chef). However, I started finding myself more upset than before, because I had great self confidence for the first time. I was so extremely proud of everything I had achieved and yet – I was still getting rejected. I started to put it down to the fact that I didn’t have blonde hair and fake tits… and it hurt, because part of me wanted to change and dye my hair blonde and get a boob job – but then I had a lightbulb moment.
You can be the best person you can be… and you can continuously work at improving yourself … and you can even be drop dead gorgeous… but that doesn’t mean that you can find someone who appreciates this, is willing to take it on board and wants a long term relationship. It is so easy to persecute or hate someone for not wanting a relationship with you when they are clearly brain dead not to, HELLO I am pretty much the most amazing woman on the earth and I give the BEST BJS… (you can decide what of that is true)..
So instead of being the ‘perfect’ person to find the perfect person, I decided that I would be the ‘perfect’ person for me and for my friends and family. Instead of sitting alone, watching Audrey Hepburn and eating Blueberry ice cream by the tub asking what the fuck I have to change or what I have to do to improve myself in order to find my soul mate and creating voodoo dolls in the shape of those pricks who used and abused me, I decided that I would just be happy with who I was, improve what I could and be grateful for the lesson that I had learnt.
At the end of the day, I am happy with who I am and I will continuously work my arse off to determine my own future and my own success. If someone comes along who is at this same point in their life and personal development and is able to take all of my crazies on board, then I will High Five them… if not, I have a lot of other things that I want to achieve in my life, that in no way require a partner by my side to reach them.
My happiness, success and dreams have never, and will never depend on someone else.
