I suppose in 2015, after 5 years of marriage, you can call yourself a success...maybe?
5 years in, and I can honestly say that marriage is hard work, it is a test of your ego, will, and patience, one that is harder than anything that you will ever experience.
But it is truly worth the work and sacrifice!
I am sure that I am one of many women, who looks at her parents' long, rocky, but happy marriage, praying for the same thing. My father is the only man that my mother has ever been with, and she still beams to this day when she shares this fact, to her, he is her soulmate, the only man she was meant to be with. She will spend the rest of her life with him, that is hard to say about any marriage today, but I wholeheartedly believe it about theirs.
There is something to be said about the way many of our parents were able to stand the heat. It seems as if no one today is willing to stay and fight for the people they claim to love, as if the love evaporates at the first sign of trouble, could it be that we have forgotten what true love is?
We are obsessed with the process of falling in love, the romantic definition of love, from the chase to the wedding planning and walk down the aisle.
Or maybe it is due to the lazy ass approach we seem to have with relationships.
My mother met my father in person, they met, you know, the way people used to.
In person, out and about. My father was a Christian camp minister, and my mother was a young girl in search of a stronger spiritual foundation. He just happened to be her minister for the summer, and from there, nothing was clear. She developed a crush, and she thought he did, but he never approached her, and she was raised not to approach a man first.
Fast forward a few months later, camp was out, she was home, her handsome camp minister, long forgotten and she receives a letter from France. The handsome minister, finally took the first step, he professed his love for her, through a letter, while he was thousands of miles away in France, on ministry duty. My young mother was shocked, but she knew in that moment that she had found the man she would spend the rest of her life with. He was away for months, but they worked to build a foundation that has allowed them to navigate through the challenges of marriage like troopers.
Most of us today, do not understand the work that goes into relationships, or maybe we do, and we simply just don't give a rat's behind. We are a culture obsessed with the idea of falling in love but unwilling to work on nurturing the feeling that we spend so much time searching for.
Online dating has been a great way to cut our feet from under us. If you do not have the personality to put yourself out there, then you can easily hide behind the screen of a computer and search for love. Its easy, you don't have to get dressed up, you can create a profile in seconds and start searching for your soulmate. There are, however a few out there, actually interested in finding something of substance online, and for these individuals, there are a few things to consider in your process, whatever your reason may be.
There are a lot of online dating websites out there, and a lot of online dating horror and success stories. No relationship is easy, whether started online or in person, knowing how to create a great foundation will help you to remain focused, and strong through your personal journey.
Be HONEST! I mean like really, eventually you will have to meet these people, go out on dates, and if you find a great fit, build a relationship, which means that if you lied about something significant, you are putting a future relationship in jeopardy. I know that can be hard to grasp, because you do not have this relationship yet, if it helps, visualize your future love and while you are at it, visualize the downfall!
Honesty was very important for me, when I started to consider online dating. I was very shy, and had always been a better communicator through my writing. I felt more comfortable starting a relationship that way, because I knew that it would make the 'getting to know you' stage a bit easier. In person, I would clam up, but being able to write helped me to speak clearly, and to really blossom.
My profile was very honest, I wanted everyone who contacted me to know what was important, because if you contact me, you shouldn't have a problem dating a mother, you know that I am a mother...You love big families, because you know my family means the world to me, and we are kinda huge...You are career oriented, and stable, because you know I want a man not a boy.
Being clear about who you are, and what you want, will create a natural filter. Will some clearly 'illiterate jerks' still slip through the cracks? It's a high probability, but knowing that most of the men that contact you are clear about what they are getting themselves into will help to make the process a lot less complicated.
Do Not Email, Unless He/She Has The Qualities That You Want It will be a waste of time, and will be a good way of gauging just how ready you are, to really meet and build something of substance.
If after reading through a profile, you notice that there are very few things you find interesting about this person, and you choose to send a message based solely on looks, you are probably thinking with the throbbing organ between your legs, and doing very little actual thinking.
It is one of the things I loved about C's profile, I swear I fell in love with the profile before I fell in love with the man. To this day, when I get pissed off at something he does, that profile comes to mind, and I get even more pissed off!
His looks fit 100% Tall, dark, and oh, so handsome...
He was a father, which I loved because I was a mother too, and he talked a lot about his children, and his need to find a woman who could also be a spiritual partner (Christian, at the top of my list!) I loved the fact that he mentioned that he did not have his own house yet, because he wanted to buy his first house with his wife.
Not to mention, he had a career that he was passionate about, and was in the early stages of transitioning up, and knew it was the right time to get married.
I couldn't stop smiling at the computer screen, as I read through this man's profile. He was one of the first few profiles that popped on the screen, and just as I was about to send a message, I noticed the red numbers on the corner of the screen showing that our compatibility level was really, really, really low!
Sometimes, it's okay to ignore the numbers on the side of the screen! Sometimes, meeting your perfect match, is not always the best way to go. You should complement each other, not be the exact reflection of one another.
What makes my parents fit so well? Their personalities complement each other: my mother is dominant, my dad is more laid back. He is not always the best with money, she can turn $10 into $100 in 2 days, my mother is definitely the nurturer, my dad is getting there, and it is because of what he has learned from her over the years.
The first relationship I had after my online dating profile went up was with a great guy, who was my perfect match, he was shy, I was shy, it was boring as hell. I rarely took initiative in social settings, I do now, because that is who my husband is, and he has made me better at it....just like my butter heart, has helped to soften him up a bit. That is the point of dating somebody who complements, rather than is exactly like you.
The best part of this journey has been the transformation that love has had on me, and vice versa. We laugh about it today, but although C is great in social settings, he has always hated being put in those situations, he is a homebody, and while I am terrified of being put out there, I hate being stuck in all the time, I at least need to invite people over to do something. When he finds himself in one of the many family gatherings we have now, he laughs and says, I swear, five years ago I would never have thought...and yet because of you, here I am.
I hear it said so much today, you cannot change somebody, and we forget so often that, Love is transformational. It is able of turning a selfish man into a selfless man, that is the power of love, to be able to put somebody's needs before your own. How on earth can anyone tell me that a person is not capable of changing? Maybe you are not doing enough...
Be Patient Although I found C's profile pretty quickly after creating my OkCupid account, the first dating profile I created was quite different. I tried a paying platform and did not have much luck there, mostly because I was hesitant to meet people. I did not agree to meet simply because you ask me to, I wanted to get to know the person from distance first.
You will meet a lot of jerks, and I mean a lot of them. Be prepared to get cursed out for politely informing somebody that you are not interested in speaking with them. Everyone is so darn sensitive these days, and for somebody like me, it was hard. I hate hurting people's feelings, but I was looking for something that was important to me, my goals were clear, and I did not want to be distracted.
Love is patient, and you will need a lot of patience with online dating, but the great guys are out there. I met quite a few of them, but sometimes, factors, like geography, and time were a factor, but even in those cases, friendships were created, and I never regretted it. One of my closest friends, up to the point I got married was someone I met through an online dating site.
After a few weeks of dating, C told me, that the day he saw my message, he was on a date with a girl that he met on OkCupid, it was horrible and he was just about to delete his account. As soon as he read through my profile, he decided to give it one more try, and we were married 6 months later. I am so glad he decided to give it one more try, be patient, you may not meet the right one in the first few weeks, but there are online daters that are serious about finding love.
Eventually, You Actually Have to Have a Relationship, Like, In Person and you will need to put in the work and effort that it takes for a long-lasting relationship to function.
I have heard it said that online dating creates lazy daters. And I can understand it, if you can hide behind the screen of your computer it keeps you from having to put in much effort early, and that lazy energy could slip through to the energy, but it really depends on the person and the mindset with which they choose to approach relationships.
Like I mentioned before, we live in an age where no one wants to deal with conflicts in relationship. We think our love lives should follow the plot of a romance movie, boy meets girl, boy chases girl, they fall madly in love, then comes the conflict, and magically pieces itself back together and they live happily ever after. The reality is that you will face many conflicts, not just one, which means that your happily ever after, will take a lot of work, multiple resolutions that require humility, grace, forgiveness, and most important, love.
Being in love is awesome, but keeping that passion alive takes work. It takes a mindset that we have all lost as we fight for our own identities. The feminist, the provider, the working mom, the stay at home mom, the success story, we are fighting for our own purpose and a meaning to our existence, which takes the focus away from the other person.
As a business owner, blogging mom, youth leader, and every little thing that makes me who I am, prioritizing is becoming a word that encompasses who I am. I have to remember what, and who matters most to me, and to keep my focus on these things as I branch off and navigate through my life journey.