I have stressed time and time on this blog that dating takes time. You can’t expect things to just fall into your lap, to meet that perfect guy or girl and to have courting them be easy it will take time and devotion. You have to work at it every day in order to be successful at dating (i.e. to meet your long term dating goals, usually marriage).
You also can’t be afraid of dating because of a fear of failure. Everyone will fail at least a couple times before they get good at a particular skill. Every athlete in the history of sports has had major defeats and setbacks that jarred them and made them question that what they were doing was the right thing to do. I am sure that you have felt lonely before; that you have questioned whether that young lady or young man liked you back; and you have probably felt frustrated about the whole "dating thing" and wished there were a better way.
All of these negative thoughts can bring you down.
“Attitude determines everything”, if you reflect on the negative aspects of your life, such as how you wish so desperately that you had a boyfriend or girlfriend, your life will be shaped by that desperation. You will come off to people you just met as though you are desperate and that you are starving for their attention. If, on the other hand, you reflect on how any day this week you might meet your future spouse, then your life will be shaped positively. You will be looking for that opportune moment to meet someone new, and you might even go out of your way just on the hope that that special someone is just around the corner.
Finding your future husband or wife is hard work. It takes years of sifting through dates to realize things about yourself and about who you want to marry, and then to prepare yourself to find and woo that person. Should you reflect on how hard it is though? I do not think we are meant to reflect on the difficulty of this task. In the beginning, when you fall in love, chemicals are activated in your body that heighten the experience and add a “magical” touch to your relationship. By this point in your relationship there are still plenty of hurdles to overcome before you actually marry that individual. I do not think that we are meant to reflect too heavily on how hard things are; we are meant to focus on making things a little better each day.
There is a common saying of which you have probably heard: “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. As you know, Rome was one of the greatest civilizations in ancient times. It took several hundred years for Rome to reach its height of greatness. Thousands of people devoted their lives to bringing it to that point.--If you want something “great” out of a relationship, then you will have to devote your whole life to it; of course relationships don’t end at marriage, they continue forever. Will it be hard? Of course.
However, rather than focus on how hard dating or having relationships is, you should focus on how much it is worth it to you.
Is it worth it to put up with hard times? Is it worth it to have to date ten jerks before finding one really amazing person? Is it worth it to fix your bad habits in order to please the guy or girl of your dreams? Is it worth it to feel lonely now, in order to motivate your to find that special someone?
Dating and having relationships is hard, but it is completely worth it in the end!
Try to remain optimistic. Whether you are happy or sad about your current situation, you are still going to be in your current situation, so why not be optimistic?
That brings up my final point: you will remain in your current situation until you change your situation. YOU have to change it. No one else can change for you. No one who doesn’t like you now will suddenly like you in the future unless you change; they aren’t going to change for you.
But you need to change for yourself and not for the guy or girl. When you change for yourself, you make lasting changes. When you change for other people, you revert to your old behavior when you stop trying to impress those other people. As your relationship progresses and you both mature, you will eventually realize that you never had to impress that young man or woman and you will stop trying to impress them and start acting normal. At that point, if you didn't change for the benefit of yourself, you will slip back into the kind of person you were before you attempted to impress him or her.
Even if someone changes in your behalf, unless they relate it back to themselves, their changes aren’t going to be lasting either. You should not expect or rely on other people to change in order to love you the way you are. You should not make demads of people that they change so that the two of you can get along better. Instead, do yourself a favor and make yourself in to the kind of person that will please the kind of person you want to marry.
Change is always hard, but it is always worth it. Keep that in mind as you decide from now on that you are going to change and adapt to get along with others rather than expect them to fix their problems to get along with you.
