A single woman recently wrote me this:
What do guys want? I’m an intelligent, good-hearted woman with a lot to offer any man. But all the men I meet seem to have some sort of congenital aversion to commitment—to settling down, getting serious, getting married. But isn’t that the best life has to offer — finding that special someone, falling in love, getting married, settling down, having children, growing old together? Don’t men want that, too? If so, how do they think they’re going to get that, if they’re not willing to commit to a relationship?
Though of course we’re talking here about a world of variables, one enduring, universal truth is that men find unappealing in women the same thing women find unappealing in men: Neediness. No one is attracted to the emotionally needy. (No one whom anyone would want attracted to them, anyway: there are always cretins out there looking for weaker persons to prey upon.)
Any woman who is frustrated by how reticent the men she dates seem to be about getting involved with her in a serious relationship would do well to consider the possibility that she’s too clearly communicating to those men that she wants them to get involved with her in a serious relationship. Because if that is what she’s doing, she’s blowing it. It’s like screaming at a cat to come to you: it’s certain to instead run away.
The woman who is putting off vibes that she’s looking for a committed relationship might as well hang a sign around her neck that says, ‘Desperate! Please Help! Please save me! At Least Compliment My Hair!’
No one is attracted to someone who is clearly looking for anyone.
The bottom line is this: You can’t live your life waiting for a man to make your life. Feeling that a man will complete your life is the one thing guaranteed to keep a good man from being attracted to you. Because inseparable from the message, “A man would complete me” is “I’m incomplete.” And to signal “I’m incomplete” is to signal, “I’m a loser who doesn’t like herself.”
Not exactly catnip. If you don’t like yourself, how can you expect anyone else to?
Consciously and purposefully looking for Mr. Right can only mean that you think that you are Miss Wrong.
My advice is to forget Mr. Right. Just stop searching for him. Instead, start thinking of yourself as Miss Perfectly Fine By Herself, Thank You Very Much. Because in truth that’s who you are. And if that not who you are, make it who you are. Become perfectly fine with yourself. Make your own life. Be whole, independent, happy, productive, active, physically fit, interested in stuff. Do stuff.
In short, commit to yourself before worrying about anyone else committing to you. Live your life; and let Mr. Right find you. And he will. Nothing attracts a man more than a woman who doesn’t need him. Confidence is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Life is one big paradox. And one of its biggest is that the only way to find Mr. Right is to genuinely and truly stop looking for him.
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