Find Your Real Valentine: Getting Yourself into the Right Relationship

Well, this is my last Valentine's day as a bachelor. By this time next year I'll be married to my favorite person in the whole world. The word soulmate gets tossed around a lot around marriages. Not to be judgey, but a lot of couples don't make that standard. Plato's theory of Forms suggests that each object has an ideal unattainable perfect form. My fiance, while of course not perfect, is the best representation possible of what my match looks like. Tall, beautiful, someone I get to enjoy being myself with, and one of the few people I will readily admit is cooler than I am. Beyond the superficial though she's caring, an fantastic partner, responsible, emotionally intelligent and legitimately my best friend. Sometimes I wonder if we're so good together that we're setting a too high a standard for the people we know. In a sense that may be true, but most of all we understand this is rare and are thankful for the fact we actually met to have this connection. There are 18 million people in the NYC metro area, she's not even from here originally, the odds are pretty low that even if we met the timing would be right. But I do have a secret for how this worked out that I'll let you in on later.

First things first though, to appreciate how special this relationship is, it helps to have experienced bad relationships too. Before this one I was with a girl for 6 years in a really toxic and abusive relationship. I'll save the details of that for another post but I think there's two really important things I learned from it. The first is it doesn't really matter if you're young or the other person has issues, if they aren't making an effort to be a good partner they probably aren't going to suddenly grow into it at some point. In the meantime all it's really going to do is build-up resentment and turn the relationship toxic which pretty much guarantees it will fall apart eventually. If someone isn't currently ready to be in a relationship or to be a good partner, DON'T BE WITH THEM! If you really care about them and want to help them, be their friend. And not like their friendzone friend where you're secretly hoping to fuck them at some point. I mean their actual friend. You will be better support for them without the added pressure of trying to maintain a relationship with them. The second part is I did love her and there was a lot of stuff we enjoyed doing together, but like most of my past relationships it were of an "opposites attract" thing. You don't need to find your clone but it turns out, for me at least, it's actually way better dating someone similar to you. Even silly stuff like not having to negotiate the radio in the car is just so enjoyable. Knowing what I know now, I'm not sure I would have dated her for as long as I did, even if the relationship was decent.

The relationship I have now is the one that movies, stories, and Valentine's Day tries to sell you on. Really I swear the whole point of this post isn't to brag about my relationship. In fact, while some people may never get the opportunity, some may also not want this relationship either. A successful relationship can take many forms. Maybe you really value your independence and you just want someone to come home to but mostly lead separate lives. Maybe you're poly. Maybe you're most interested in finding someone who can be a good co-parent. The most important thing when deciding who you want to be is you understanding the relationship that you want the most. Forget what your parents think, what your friends think, what Hollywood thinks, or what Hallmark thinks is the best relationship. Maybe even forget what you think and approach it without preconceived notions. The only thing that I think needs to be true for any relationship form is that the person you are with is able to be a good partner in your life. You guys are working together towards the goals you want to achieve, you each need to be doing your best to support each other.

So you've know decided on what your ideal relationship looks like, how do you now find the person you're looking for? Well the secret to it is go out and be the person you want to be. You're going to find a theme in a lot of the advice I give here, which in order to find a relationship with someone else your relationship with yourself had better be solid. If you don't understand your own wants, needs, and desires, then how can you understand someone else's (and conversely how can they understand yours)? Online dating is cool I guess. But most of us don't live online. Online you read about the version of a person they've chosen to present and decide if they seem interesting enough to go meet. Offline though you meet the people actually interested in stuff enough to go do it. If you go out and do the things you're passionate about, you'll find other people passionate about it enough to go do it as well. That's how I met my fiance. I thought about who I was and what parts of myself I had been neglecting because I didn't have anyone else in my life with the same level of interest, and I chose to go do it myself knowing I would meet other people who were passionate about it as well. All I really wanted was a friend to go to more Drum and Bass shows with. I got a lot more than that.

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