How to Finally Meet Your Perfect Match: The Kucinich Approach

in #life8 years ago (edited)



What does a funny-lookin' former congressman have to do with dating? The picture should give you a clue but we'll come back to him shortly. First, let's take stock of the situation here. 

A lot of people continue to struggle with the mating game, men and women alike, and for most of my life, I was no different. It's a topic that intrigued me since childhood and frustrated me as a teen but these days, I'm happily paired-off and the mystery has been put to rest. I only hope that now I might help someone else find a similar sort of peace so, without further fuckery, let's dive in and take a sober assessment of the situation.

Committing to high standards is usually a lonely proposition. As a vegan conservative anarchist expatriate entrepreneur, I've definitely cut myself off from the majority of society in terms of compatibility... but I've got some good news: With a fundamental a change of strategy, you can turn the whole game around in your favor. 

Coming to Terms
A few years ago, I gave up on dating entirely. It just seemed to be a complete waste of time and energy to me because I realized that I wasn't willing to accept any less than the best and frankly, I couldn't afford that. Even if I found that proverbial needle in the haystack, I wouldn't be able to pick it up or hold onto it. As a young guy in my early twenties, just starting out in the world, I didn't have much to offer and really had no business shopping for Aston Martins when all I could afford was a bus pass.

The Problem with Pleace-holders
Was I being unreasonable? Some told me that I should compromise and just cozy up with a place-holder for the time being. I won't deny that it could be a tempting notion at times but I knew better. The problem with place-holders is that they tie you up and prevent you from leaping into action when its appropriate to do so. Years could pass and you could end up more and more entangled with them, which only complicates things. When you're ready for a quality mate and they finally present themselves, will you be in a position to step up and claim them or will you be prevented by the suddenly-inconvenient bed-warmer on your arm? 

Value in the Sexual Marketplace
It's important to first acknowledge our nature and how the game is set up. As men, our value in the sexual marketplace is mostly determined by our power, resources, and ability to acquire them. In this regard. we generally start out poor and build our value up over time. We can potentially peak in our fifties so it's important to remember that we have time and shouldn't feel rushed to find our ideal mate when we're young. For men, it's a good idea to focus on personal development first and then look towards settling down when older, wiser, and wealthier. Women, on the other hand, tend to be valued more for their fertility, physical attractiveness, and ability to keep up with children. As such, they start out wealthy and steadily depreciate over time. The sooner we understand this dynamic, the sooner we can start to strategize accordingly. 

Modeling the Success of Others
One of my childhood heroes was Tony Robbins. When I was twelve, I found his 30-day Personal Power cassette course and listened to it over and over again. It was in there that I learned to save time in life by modeling others around me. In short, he said "if you want something, just find someone else that has it and do what they did." Simple enough, right? I applied this idea to the mating game and took a look around. It was an election year in the US and Dennis Kucinich was in the news a lot. For those of you that might not have heard of him, he was a congressman in the Democratic Party that was known for frequently rocking the boat. He has a very likable personality but let's just say that physical attractiveness is not one of his selling points. He's a diminutive leprechaun of a man and not terribly wealthy but somehow, he appeared to have landed an absolute knockout wife. Elizabeth is tall, beautiful, intelligent, well-spoken, and half his age. A first glance left me with more questions than answers but the man was clearly doing something right so I took a closer look.

The Thing About Needles in Haystacks
So what's the deal with this guy? Does he live in a solid gold house? Nope. Is he in a powerful position? Not really. I guess congressmen have some pull in terms of being able to influence government policy but Dennis was one of the more honest ones that resisted lobbyists so I don't think we can say he had that much power either. Well, let's see what Elizabeth herself has to say about it. This article tells her story and at the end of it, we can conclude that she values a unique list of particular qualities and that Dennis fit her personal criteria perfectly. Such ideal matches can seem like fairy tales because of how unlikely they are to happen by accident. Finding someone so uniquely suited to your personal subjective preferences is like finding a needle in a haystack. Damn near impossible, right?
Fortunately, no.

If you're on your hands and knees, looking for the needle with a magnifying glass and tweezers, then yes, success would be extremely unlikely... but that's just because you're doing it wrong. By the time you find the needle, you might have wasted decades of your life and not even be the same person anymore. Maybe you'll evolve and not even want the same needle by the time you finally find it. Fortunately, there's a much, MUCH better way of going about it. I often refer to it as the Kucinich Approach but in keeping with our needle metaphor, we might just as well call it the Freakishly Ginormous Electromagnet.

What this means is that instead of hunting for the needles ourselves, it's much better to focus on developing our own value so that we attract better people to us. We have to be clear in our own minds about what we want and understand what our ideal mate would want. Think about it for a minute. Would your perfect mate want you as you are now? If not, then you've got some work to do and that's a good thing. If you have to work towards it, it means you believe in your own potential and know that you can achieve your loftiest dreams with enough effort. Dennis didn't go and find Elizabeth in England, he made himself into the sort of person that she was uniquely attracted to and positioned himself in a visible and accessible place. It took a long time but it finally paid off when he was in his sixties. Hopefully we don't all have to wait that long but even if we do, isn't it worth it? I guess it might not be for everyone but if you're like me, you have a mighty ego that can't settle for less than you know you can potentially attain. Another metaphor for all of this could be that of a crowd. Instead of playing Where's Waldo, wouldn't it be easier to fire a flare into the sky and let Waldo come to you? As we shine brighter and brighter, the people that are attracted to our particular colors will gravitate towards us and in this age of online social networking, the tools at our disposal for accomplishing this are more powerful than ever.  


Sort:  

This is fantastic advice.

Ding, hit the nail on the head with this one.

Thanks will. Plenty of trial and error went into it, I'm afraid :-/

"Freakishly Ginormous Electromagnet" - that made me laugh so hard because it's so accurate. :-D

This question came up recently with one of my friends on Facebook, and my advice to her was essentially the same: without doing the necessary work of self-knowledge, there can be no favorable outcome when it comes to building a happy, fulfilling, long-term relationship with an ideal partner, and I think this is the core problem for a lot of people. We live in a culture of instant gratification, and it’s often easier to look to others to fill in whatever gaps we perceive in ourselves rather than dealing with them directly.

What I’ve learned through my own trial and error in relationships is to focus on developing a solid, honest, and loving relationship with myself first and foremost. I needed to do a great deal of soul-searching to uncover what my strengths and weaknesses are, and to embrace them. I also needed to have a firm understanding of what my values and principles are in life so that when I was ready to date again, I’d feel confident that I’d be guided by my own moral compass and attract a high quality partner who shares my values, and thankfully, that’s exactly what happened.

Sounds like you've been watching stefan molyneux videos.

I would certainly have to count him among the influences, yeah. Tony Robbins, Nathaniel Branden, and Malcolm Gladwell contributed quite a bit as well. I'm gonna do a follow-up piece soon that focuses on assessing new people, trusting first impressions, weeding out the crazies, and making the most of time.

I love your idea. It remembers me one advice before that be a man that will tell a woman to join your adventures in life. Just like freakin electromagnet thing: the more you build your value, the more you attract attention to others

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.18
TRX 0.15
JST 0.028
BTC 63615.94
ETH 2475.04
USDT 1.00
SBD 2.54