Think You're Ready to Meet "The One"? Watch This First...
Being ready to not be lonely anymore is not the same thing as being ready for a relationship.
One of the proverbial questions we have in our love lives seems to be this
debate over whether timing is everything or whether meeting the right person is everything.
Some of us may wonder to ourselves will my love life fall into place when I meet the right person?
Is that when all of a sudden I will find myself getting into a serious relationship
and there won't be any doubt I'll just go for it because it'll feel right?
Others may be wondering is it about me getting to a point where I feel ready
and then when I'm ready it's about finding someone to do that with.
Maybe not even the ideal or perfect person but someone who is appropriate and someone who is
right for that timing in my life. I personally have I suppose over the last few years started
to take a bit more of a stance on this. I'm increasingly convinced of the importance of
timing, of someone being ready as the natural precursor to having a real relationship.
On this channel we talk a lot about how do you tell if someone you're dating is ready so that
they don't waste your time or lead you on and then break your heart. But I think it's also
a relevant question to everyone who watches this channel who is looking for love or looking for
something let's call it a relationship to ask themselves am I really ready and if I am really
ready am I behaving in a way that someone who is really ready for a relationship would be?
A male friend of mine described the experience of being in most of his 30s as one of
continuously looking for the ideal person, continuously looking for the person who was
going to be and have everything. The person who in his mind represented the perfection he was looking
for and one day he had a sobering conversation with his own mum. She said to him he said my mum's
very insightful and she was hearing me you know she was saying what is it you actually are looking
for and he said well I'm you know I'm looking for everything and she said I hate to be the one to
break it to you but you're not perfect and then she went on to describe and list to him all of the
ways that he wasn't perfect, that he was flawed as a human being, that he wasn't always easy to be
around, that he could be difficult or high maintenance. He said for him it was a sobering
moment because he realized that he was looking for all of these things in other in another person
like he was trying to buy the perfect thing off of a shelf but not looking at himself and what
someone would actually have to deal with and put up with and live with in order to be with him.
When we're ready I do believe that we start to look for the best in people instead of looking
for all of the reasons why they're wrong. We start to actually make space for who they really are to
inquire about who they really are not to fall in love too quickly because again I think falling
in love too quickly is a sign that we're not ready for a real relationship. It's almost like never
never liking anyone is a sign that we're not ready because to me that's a sign that we're
not actually making space for who anyone actually is and to get to know the beauty in people
but if we fall in love really quickly that's also a sign that we're not ready because we're
falling in love with the projection and then the moment someone doesn't fit that projection
which they can't eventually because we've just constructed this beautiful image of them
that's not real then all of a sudden we don't like them anymore. We sort of treat people
romantically how we treat our celebrities in today's culture you know we fall in love with
our favorite celebrity aren't they wonderful I just saw them on this interview they're so charming
they're so charismatic they were amazing in that movie you know we construct a projection of them
and the moment that celebrity deviates from that projection or says or does something we don't like
they're the devil and they're cancelled or we don't want to know them anymore we unfollow them
because we were never trying to have a real relationship with that celebrity in the first place
we wanted to idealize them we wanted to idolize them we wanted to worship them and when relationships
fall into that same dynamic it's no wonder that everyone eventually disappoints and you know we
could take the cynical view and say everyone eventually will disappoint or we could say that
everyone eventually will prove to have many if not all of the same flaws that we do if we apply
you know what brings the best out of ourselves is someone being curious about us someone looking for
the best in us and elevating the best in us and someone soothing some of the worst parts of us
some of our negative tendencies and habits and neuroses you know we we often I sometimes think
the right person is the person who elevates our best and soothes our worst they're not going to
eradicate our worst and and it's not their job to take it away but they don't agitate our worst
and when we're looking for someone we have to ask ourselves am I am I really looking for the best in
people am I immediately meeting them with a bunch of judgments anytime I hear anything about them or
am I really looking for the beauty am I looking for the treasure and I do think that as we become
more ready we start to look for subtler qualities in people subtle in the sense that they don't
immediately announce themselves like massive charm does or massive charisma does or any of
those things that immediately impress us or our friends you know I I you know I think sometimes
one of the great tragedies of consulting our friends on who we should be with is that our
friends are often dazzled by the same things that dazzled us you know we introduce this person to
our friends and they all go oh my god they're really amazing and there's so much fun and they're
so charming and they get amped up and excited by the same things we did and it might be that the
person who didn't announce all of their best qualities immediately because maybe those best
qualities are a little more subtle maybe it's a quiet kind of intelligence maybe it's a kind of
understated kindness or maybe it's the qualities that could make this person a wonderful parent
down the line all of those things don't immediately in shining glamorous glitzy fashion announce
themselves when they meet your friends and then when faced with the guy who maybe has all of these
deeper more important qualities or the guy who's charming when he walks into a room their attention
goes to the charming person oh my god he was great and then you get lit up because you buy into the
same thing oh my god he was great wasn't he and now all of a sudden that's the most exciting person
all of this is about a shift in perception of what a relationship actually is that a relationship is a
place we go to give love and to construct something with a willing teammate not a perfect
teammate but a willing teammate i think one of the sad things about today's
it's an overused cliche now that fast food dating culture is that we don't create the space to
really know if someone could be that teammate you know we do order dates as if we're ordering food
to our house and we expect you know we pick someone from a lineup don't we i mean that's
dating apps these days i'm not even knocking dating apps i just think it's they serve a very
limited part of the process which is just access to people easy access to people that's the part
of this whole thing that dating apps solve they don't solve anything else not really there are
very grandiose um claims made by a lot of dating apps about how they solve parts of the process
that go beyond the meeting stage to get into the matching stage and how they're pairing you with
someone great and so on and i think a lot of that is really overblown and overstated because the
only way you really get to know those things is time time spent with each other a little bit of
time invested a little sacrifice a little skin in the game and that's often the thing that people
are unwilling to do these days you know i met a guy recently here in london where i am right now
and he said matthew i'm uh you know i i saw you posted something recently about you know people
need to love themselves more he said i'm dating in london for the last few years as a single man
looking for a relationship he said i think the opposite might be true i think people might love
and they're not willing to actually to actually show up for dating to show up for a relationship
to give what needs to be given now although i think that there's a kind of a slight misreading
there of what i believe true self-love to be self-love isn't narcissism self-love is an
obsession with self uh and it's not selfishness it's more akin to self-compassion but i understand
the point he's making that in especially in cities where people come a lot of the time for
selfish reasons they come to build a career to to level up their life to create the life
they always wanted to live a life with their friends socially that they wanted to live and
and it can get us into quite a selfish state of mind without ever realizing it all of a sudden
we think we're looking for a relationship but really what we're looking to do is just
meet another need of ours now in addition to where i live and my social life and my career
and these things that are building i also need to fill the relationship category being ready
to not be lonely anymore is not the same thing as being ready for a relationship
those are two very different things in life and a lot of people who think they are ready for a
relationship are really just ready to not be on their own they're really just ready to not be
lonely i'm ready to not feel this discomfort anymore of being on my own that's what they
mean they don't necessarily mean they're ready for a relationship because that comes with certain
sacrifices they may not be willing to make and some of those sacrifices is just going on a date
and getting to know someone actually spending a bit of time with some matt i don't want to go on
any dates i don't want to get on the phone with some oh then maybe you don't want a relationship
maybe you're not ready for a relationship because what all i hear is what i want is to have someone
delivered to my door relationship ready and to walk into that situation but a relationship
isn't deliveroo if you're in england or postmates if you're in america incidentally postmates sounds
a lot like a dating app it sounds more like a dating app than it does a food app dating is
really like cooking a meal that turns into a relationship it's more akin to cooking a meal
than ordering food and that's where i think the fast food analogy for dating does work because i
think a lot of people these days are just not willing to actually make the sacrifices that
lead to a real relationship which don't just involve being willing to give someone time
they also involve being willing to create space for who someone actually is to see that person
as they are and if we can if it's possible with who they are to not constantly cast judgment on
the worst parts of them but to see those parts of them and to see the best and like i said to
elevate the best and to help to heal some of the worst as we hope they will do for us that to me
is a real relationship and i think one of the great treasures that we do get from making space
for who someone really is is that we become different to that person than other people
because that person truly feels seen and when someone truly feels seen and when we truly feel
seen it is such an exquisite calming beautiful feeling that it can actually shine a light on all
of the benefits and the beauty of a real relationship even for someone who perhaps
wasn't sure that they were ready they suddenly start to see what it is to be with someone not
just who's hot not just who's you know super attractive but they start to see what it is to
be with someone who truly sees them and accepts them and and i think that is what what could be a
bigger gift of a real relationship than that i ask you not from some pedestal but from a place of
reflection for all of us what decisions have you been making in your love life that suggest
that despite your uh professing of your readiness for a relationship deep down there's some part of
you that's not really acting ready do you choose people that are an age that is not appropriate
for where you're at in your life and what you want do you choose people who are really far away
where the relationship is set to be fraught and difficult from the beginning do you choose people
based on superficial qualities or qualities that may be dazzling in the first six months of a
relationship but are not going to be the important ones in year five or ten or twenty have you been
choosing people that are telling you that they're not ready and you've been ignoring all of those
signs direct or indirect if you're watching this with a feeling of confidence that you are ready
for a real relationship but you want to know with maybe even a particular person in your life right
now how to move it forward with that person i have a video for you a free training that is going
to give you the language around moving that relationship forward and communicating your
readiness in an elegant and confident way all you need to do to get that free training is go here
click the link you can be watching it seconds from now and as always i will see you next week