My story

My whole life, I have been devoted to setting goals and reaching them. When I was 6, I started playing the violin, it was hard at first and I hated doing it but I told myself that I wanted to do it to prove it to myself and I slowly got better until the time I was 14 when I was faced with a decision: devote my life to the instrument, or drop it completely.
I was quite a nerd back in those days, had very few friends and even fewer REAL friends, and when this decision was forced on me, I chose to quit the instrument, thinking that my devotion to it was the cause of why I wasn't popular and didn't like where my life was headed.
The next year after I gave up music, I realized that the violin hadn't been preventing me from making friends. True, I devoted all of my time to it and avoided other activities that were a little more social because I was so busy with music, but it wasn't what was preventing me from making friends. The thing that was preventing me from making friends was that I was shy, timid, and somewhat of a social reject--I say that in the sense that I was interested in things that others my age thought were odd. I would say weird things because to me they weren't weird and I actually enjoyed them.
I had thought, all growing up, that the key to winning friends was to be skilled at things--I looked at athletes, musicians, entertainers, etc. and I assumed that it was pure talent that won them friends--boy was I wrong! I devoted my life to becoming intelligent and learning about obscure topics that would blow most adults' minds, yet they were boring and unfascinating in the eyes of peers my age. True, I was smart and intelligent, but that didn't make me have friends.
When I made the realization that talent didn't win friends, I remember seeing novice musicians, well below my own musical abilities, who had hundreds of more friends than I did. My initial instinct was to brag about my abilities or to show off, but that only made things worse for me. I couldn't figure it out--why were these people so well loved by others and I was not?
That's when I was humbled the most. I spent the follow 2 years on what felt like the bottom of the totem pole. I became subject to people's jokes, and the only friends I had were merely my friends because they needed to have someone around who they could pick on in order to make their self-esteems higher. I hit a very dark period of my life where I questioned what the purpose of life was and whether mine would turn out alright.

That is when I made my first big revelation: my self-worth controlled the kinds of friends that I had. When I had lower self-esteem, the only people who wanted to be around me were people who also had low self-esteem.--people that didn't have friends either. There was an odd connection that attracted like-minded, poor self-esteemed people, and the outcome of it was that we would each bounce negative comments and deeds off of each other thinking that it was making us feel better. We would pull pranks and jokes on one another that were brutal to our emotions and harmful to our self-confidence.
By the time I was 16 I realized I had had enough of that and I had completely done away with any friends who were treating me poorly. I resolved not to treat others poorly so that they wouldn’t have to go through the things that I did with those old friends.
Around that age, I started dating young girls. –I wasn’t very good at it, but because I knew that I wanted to have a girlfriend, I pushed myself to be confident when I asked people out so that I would feel less embarrassed when they turned me down. I pulled on my experiences playing the violin and how I had to be confident and continue learning before I made any progress, and that I needed to put an effort into this area of my life if I wanted to get good at “dating”.
I studied a lot of topics at that point in an attempt to become "better" at it.--Bear in mind I was only 16, but I was studying Freud, female psychology, and medical books. I even studied a lot about success and reaching goals. To add to this, I developed interesting friendships with people who were, like me, devoted to specific topics that they wanted to figure out.—I learned from these people what they knew about life and I tried to make sense of how it was related to dating and having relationships.
I had several girlfriends throughout high school and, out of ignorance, I constantly broke it off with them.--You see, at that point in my life I was refining my definition of what I wanted. I was setting criteria for what I ultimately wanted to marry. While dating a girl, I would pay close attention to her behavior and actions and personality, and I would compare it against other girls I had dated. If I didn’t like certain things the girl would do that a previous girlfriend did right, then I would call it off. –I say that I did this out of ignorance, what I mean is that I didn’t know further lessons that I have since learned that might have helped me to have better relationships with these girls.
When I hit the age of 18, I realized that enough was enough—-I knew so much about how to attract women and about dating and having all these short-term relationships, but none of that was really helping me. What I really wanted was devotion. I wanted a good, long-term relationship, not a road paved with many short-term "mini" relationships that didn't have any substance to them. I entered a stage where I reflected on my life and what I really wanted out of it. That’s when I shifted my focus a little from simply attracting the opposite sex, having lots of friends, and being able to go on as many dates as I wanted. At that point, I began to take an in-depth look at what relationships are composed of. I already knew how to start and end them, but what makes them last?
I took a look at my parents’ relationship, I looked at the lives of the elderly people in my life, including grandparents, neighbors, and relatives. I then began to look at my relationship with my parents and with my best friends, and I learned several key lessons from this behavior. For one, I learned that my relationship with my parent’s wasn’t the best, and I set about to fix that. I corrected a lot of the relationships I had with friends. And I started working towards a real, long-term relationship; one that I didn’t want to end.
I have twice since been very close to getting married and both times I called it off—-not because our relationship was terrible, or because the girl was a horrible person, but because I was not ready to be married and needed to grow some more. But even with these experiences, how do I know that the things I know about having a long-term relationship works?-–because I am still close friends with everyone I made friends with or dated since I was 18. I have not lost a single one of them. In fact, I have developed closer, stronger relationships with everyone I chose to be friends with.
But even that is not good enough.
The thing that makes me an "expert" at dating and relationships is because I feel as though I have found success in this area of my life. I am happy and comfortable with my abilities. I do not sit at home on a Friday night wishing I had a date, while I am in a relationship with someone, I do not feel as though I have no control over where the relationship is headed. I am not uncomfortable with getting a girl’s number or talking to strangers. I feel quite the opposite: I feel as though I can make any relationship work out if I put the effort into it. And that is a good feeling. That is all I teach on this website: things that will make YOU start to feel comfortable about dating and relationships.
I started this website thinking I could change the world with it. I thought that somehow since I was writing these articles that the world would become a better place simply because more people actually knew what dating and relationships were all about. I have since learned, after over a year in the process, that I can’t change the world. I can only change MY world. What I choose to do to make my life better is all that pertains to me. I can encourage others to do the things that I have done, to have the attitude that I have, and to break out of their shell and grow up and move forward with their lives; but I cannot change their life for them. Change is a personal behavior that brings about greater good; and I can only change myself. Only YOU can change yourself. And now all I hope is that when you have finally changed, you’ll thank me for my help.

-Kyle Oakeson
Author of Dating Zion