Choosing a good partner
In this I’m going to talk about the importance of choosing a good partner.
You need to find someone who is single, available, and emotionally healthy and ready for dating.
I got 2 emails here that talks about this.
Justin says: Hey coach, I wanted to ask you your advice about something. There is a girl at my work who is absolutely amazing. She is beautiful, smart, and kind. However, her she is married. Her husband is an alcoholic. He wrecked the car recently while he was out drinking. He is very mean (I would say verbally abusive) to her and she tells me about her life. I know she is attracted to me and if she was single we would get along great.
Okay, that may be the case. Maybe you would get along great. But you’ve never dated her, so it’s a fantasy that you’ve created. You don’t know if she would even want to date you if she was single. She may be attracted to alcoholics. If her father was an alcoholic, she may not even be emotionally ready to date a guy who is emotionally healthy.
But unfortunately for you, she is not single, and there is a lot of drama that is going to come along with this situation. She is married, the guy is an alcoholic, and they’re married. I know you may want to be her knight in shining armor and save her. But it’s a lot more complicated than you think. She isn’t even at a point where she has left him. So you could be sitting around for months or years waiting for someone that never becomes available.
The bottom line is that you need someone who is single and available to date. Be her friend, but stop living in a fantasy. Start dating single women. If it’s meant to be with her, it will happen.
I got another email here that gets more into the issue of finding someone who is emotionally healthy.
Hi Craig, here’s my situation. The guy I’ve been seeing and I recently broke up. He has a lot going on in his life. We have been on again and off again for about 3 years. He goes back and forth between me and his ex wife, who he has 2 kids with. Occasionally he goes out with other women if he is not with one of us. He tells me about them if I ask, but his wife only knows about me. I’m not sure I should keep trying. To give you a little more about his life, he frequently changes his jobs and he is bipolar. When he is on medication he does pretty well, but then he stops taking it when he feels good.
Most people with bipolar who get off their meds do the exact same thing. They feel great and say I don’t need the medication. But it’s because the medication is working that I feel great.
I love him, but he has a lot of anger. He is manipulative and puts me down when I try and talk to him. I’m so tired of being hurt. It just seems like we are on an endless loop and I want to get off. Do you think he is going to change?
He isn’t giving you any indication he is in the past 3 years. Obviously the endless loop is only working for him. He gets what he wants, if he doesn’t he goes back to you, or the ex wife, or whatever new woman is going to come along.
He isn’t emotionally healthy and you know that. You will never get what you want from this man. Just like you didn’t get what you wanted from your parents. That’s what you really need to explore and deal with so you are emotionally ready for someone who is emotionally ready for you.
I have a great analogy I want to share for you guys.
Imagine someone gives you 2 trees as a gift. You have a beautiful orange tree that is producing delicious sweet oranges.
Your other tree is this pitiful sickly little apple tree. You spend years trying to get it to grow. Spending all kinds of time with fertilizers, tending to it, taking care of it. No matter how hard you work, it barely responds.
Finally, after years of exhaustion and hard work you see something growing. You get all excited and run outside. Only to find out it’s a lemon tree.
The tree will never give you what you wanted. You had ignored the little tag on the tree all those years.