Online Dating Is A Lot Like Pre-Season Football

 

            Online dating is a lot like Pre-Season Football because it’s all about which rookie is going to make the team. Your team. 

You have your top draft choices going into the first round. The ones that look the best, show intelligence and know all the plays. They are the most promising and boy do they smell good.

            Then there are the later draft pics. They aren’t as sought after as the top choices but they can hold their own and are worth taking a look at especially when the first round pics prove to be disappointing.

            Of course you have your free agents. They’ve been let go from another team and they have the ability to sign with anyone who will take them.  But the question always is…why were they let go? It couldn’t be because they’re the best, something went wrong, yet we still give them the once over.

            Some may ask, what about the walk-ons? Well, that’s only in college football, but I will say from experience, you will get calls from the young ones. It’s like trying not to look at a train wreck, you just can’t help yourself. But after a few bouts with them, you toss them back, it’s catch and release…they really need to grow a little more.

            Pre-season football is about the team finding its identity, similar to the type of relationship one is looking for as the meet ups begin. Will it be a hard hitting team, translating to an emotionally, quick witted sparring relationship? Or will the team be methodical in its approach on the field, translation – slow and careful, one step at a time relationship. It can also be an “all or nothing team”-- hot and passionate relationship or we’re out.  One never knows as we give each and every rookie their time on the field.

            Now, for the locker room. Will it be respectful and dignified, or is it anything goes with no boundaries. Whatever the off-the-field looks like, and in relationships it’s what happens behind closed doors, it sets the tone for what happens on the field as each game brings us closer to the Super Bowl – a serious relationship.

            So we go out, put our best foot forward and we look for the serious players, the ones with heart for the game, and the one who can go the distance Then we sign them, and watch how the season progresses. We may have the winning combination, or we may not. But for all those who just can’t seem to put that winning team together…there will always be another season with new rookies and the hope that next season we will finally get it right.

            So, what do you do till that winning player is in your sight? You stay focused on your goal, be passionate with your encounters, and trust that the best is yet to come. 

Game on!!

Liars Are A Lot Like Magicians

So, you’ve discovered that your partner lies…a lot…and it hurts. You know that there’s something wrong but you can’t put your finger on it. You wonder if it’s you. You try to ignore it, get busy so you don’t have to deal with it, yet you just can’t go on any more and you demand the truth.  That’s when you realize that liars are a lot like magicians. It’s all smoke and mirrors to prevent you from seeing who they really are and what is actually happening. Liars have you so consumed about focusing on what’s not real that you miss the reality. For them it’s all about controlling the narrative. It’s about power. And if you’re married to one it’s often about control. It’s keeping you unsure about the truth, about yourself, and mostly about them.

Everyone spins the truth now and then, but it’s when the lying becomes the default to communicating that it becomes a pathology. Most people are uncomfortable with telling a lie. A pathological liar is someone who is uncomfortable when telling the truth.

So how do you deal with a pathological liar? You don’t. A liar who is found out will continue to lie. They will lie about their lies to hold the power. As long as they are lying and you are trying to prove their lies you keep them in power. The moment they are found out they lose the power and become insignificant and that to a pathological liar is worse than death. It’s the power of the lie that keeps them significant. There will always be another lie.

You may think that if you show them that they are always lying and that there is no need to lie that they will stop. They will not. They know they lie, you don’t have to prove anything to them. And they know they lie all the time. They lie so you are always looking at the lie and not at them because they don’t like themselves. Who they are is insignificant to even themselves and they need you in their lives to make them feel important. So they lie to keep you, not to lose you. It is solely for their own need to feel “significant.”

Unfortunately, they don’t realize that relationships are built on trust. Pathological liars will never experience a true relationship because they will always be found out and their relationships will end for the simple reason that no one wants to be involved with someone who will never show you who they really are. The older they get, the more they feel the need to lie and the worse they get at it. Their lies begin to even confuse them. They begin to get angry at those who start to catch on and as their families begin to identify their “Tell” (a behavior that indicates a lie is being told), their world begins to crumble. Their spouse is now on to them, their children begin to connect the dots of a lifetime of lies, and soon friends and extended family members catch on as well.  Their world begins to become very small and eventually their worst nightmare comes true…they become insignificant.

So what do you do if you find out that the person you’re living with is a magician and not working at the Magic Castle???

Well, you can stay and play hide and seek with them for the rest of your life never really knowing what is going on. You can go to therapy with them and try to gain an understanding of the insecurities that bring all the lying about. Or you can leave and hope that your next relationship is with someone who loves themselves enough that they can be honest and open about their feelings.

I MARRIED MY MOTHER! I MARRIED MY FATHER!

If I received a dollar every time a client told me that they married one of their parents, I would be a very rich woman. The truth of the matter is that we do marry one of our primary caretakers. Sorry, it’s the truth and this is why…

Did you ever meet someone for the first time and feel like you've known them your whole life? You are thrilled, and your first thought is that you’ve known them from a past life, or something. Well, it’s the something I want to address. We're attracted to our partners because they are familiar to us. They actually have qualities of one our primary caretakers whom we have the most issues with. And it will be through this relationship that we work out those issues in adulthood. Most often we set up very similar home lives to the ones we've experienced in childhood. I've always said that we spend most of our adulthood trying to get over our childhood and this is one of the ways we do it.

Question: What happens when we work out those issues with our partner and we are no longer blocked by them?

Answer: Often times those relationships come to an end. I know…this was as difficult for me to accept as I'm sure it is for you right now. The truth of the matter is that every relationship we engage in, we learn from, and these lessons add to our lives, helping us to grow into the people we were meant to be. If both partners grow, then the chances of them staying together increases.

Question: Do we ever find that one person who we don’t have to work out issues with?

Answer: Yes, only after we have worked out the issues that stand in the way of us developing into the amazing people we were meant to be.

Dr Donna XO

Visit us on Twitter @TheDr_Donna

HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT

People talk about falling in and out of love all the time. The question is…do we really “fall” in and out of love, or is there more to it?

Let’s look at our behavior when we are “in love.” We are respectful, patient, kind, interested and helpful. We are happy, fun, adventurous, and open to many of our partner’s interests and curious of their feelings about a whole bunch of stuff.

Now let’s look at our behavior when we are “out of love.” We don’t seem to have patience for our partner and because of that we become disrespectful, uninterested, and not there often enough to be helpful. We become bored, the laughing seems to stop and we are not that interested in what our partner has to say. We start to ignore their feelings, focusing on our own, which often times turns into resentment.

Rather than the idea of falling in and out of love, I think what we fall in and out of is respect, kindness and patience.

Now, to blow your mind a little bit. When we fall in love we are actually falling in love with a reflection of ourselves that we see in our partners. So the next time you fall out of love take a look in the mirror and see if the bottom line here is that you have just fallen out of love with a part of yourself.

Dr Donna XO

Visit us on Twitter @TheDr_Donna