Ideally, our career on the dating scene ends with us finding our soul mate. Yet, we often search for that person for much longer than we expected. If you are in this position, you've probably had your fill of armchair dating advice and dating site memberships that went nowhere. So, what can you do? If you are like many women who are tired of the dating scene, you might be reassessing your life and questioning whether your career, friends and family and are enough to make you happy.
However, if your vision of happiness includes a soul mate, you're chances of feeling fulfilled without finding him are about as likely as getting struck by lightning. Instead of giving up on love, a better idea is to develop a new strategy for finding your soul mate, and it's easier than you might think. By asking yourself the following three questions, you can reorient your romantic efforts toward achieving their sole goal: finding a soul mate.
What are you looking for in a soul mate?
When asked this question, most women answer sensibly, citing honesty, trustworthiness and intelligence. Yet, their dating life often fails to mirror their answer. When we start out on the dating scene, we are usually attracted by qualities that are admirable but superficial, such as wealth, good looks and romantic charm. And once these qualities have defined our romantic vision, it's hard to replace them with more substantive qualities. Instead of looking for deep qualities and viewing other qualities as a bonus, we end up looking for shallow qualities and viewing deep qualities as a bonus. If you want a man with integrity, you should make integrity your focus. If you don't, you're soul mate will be a long time coming.
What traits do you insist on in a soul mate?
For many women, finding prince charming means literally finding a prince charming. If a man lacks model looks, wealth or fatal charm, some women won't look twice. The problem with this perspective: none of these qualities will result in deep bonding. Similarly, women also insist that their soul mate possess such traits as: never watching sports, never drinking from a straw and never wearing cargo pants. Can you say "shallow"? What if your boyfriend insisted that you always wear heels, have perfect breasts and never cry? You would probably think that he was a dullard, and you'd be right.
Where do you search for a soul mate?
This is a big one. For many women, the dating scene amounts to little more than the bar scene and the club scene, neither of which is good terrain for meeting soul mates. Because most people go to bars to cut loose and have fun (not to meet their future spouse), your chances of detecting Mr. Right amid the smoke and twirling lights are dubious at best. If you want your partner to be substantive, then look for him in substantive places. Join a community service group, a reading group or an environmental group. Just do anything but search for love on the pleasure scene. Sure, you could end up getting lucky, but you're far more likely to end up crying in your screwdriver.
