RANDOM THOUGHTS- SCiTOMA, "SETTLING", AND LESS THAN PERFECT

A little under a year ago, i got into a debate with three people, a very LONG debate about relationships.I held the side of the debate that in a marriage partner, i wanted a woman that was God fearing(un rivalled passion for Holiness), Gorgeous, Modest, Intelligent, Funny and really down to earth. At the risk of sounding narcissistic,i went  to say she had to be much more better looking than me, the kids gotta get their looks from their gorgeous mom,lol.

Now, I'm not Adonis, or whoever happens to be the current heartthrob of the ladies,but i hold my own. They went livid at my expectations, these three people told me that i was naive, it was impossible to find such a woman.From their intensity, there weren't saying  I ,couldn't find her, but that she simply did not exist,anywhere in this solar system .The went on to say  i was not being realistic and i should expect to settle for much less, (dunno if that was praise for me, or a diss)

I couldn't believe it!!!, What was i hearing!!!. Settle for less!!! Were those traits too much to ask for? Is there not a woman on the planet that meets those criteria??  I mean, if someone possessed all those would see implode because no one person can have all those traits.

This debate went of for several hours , back and forth. I made my case, but they always shot me down, telling me i was living in a fantasy world, and i was not going to find such a woman on this planet. I should be like everyone else and SETTLE( I'm beginning to resent that term). After all, the married one's amongst them had settled for less than they wanted or expected and the others in dating relationships had also settled. (Little wonder ,confusion and  compatibility issues always arose in those relationships)

When i told them that i actually had a friend in my college days that had everyone of those traits, they fought me on it, and said

-i was lying, and didn't know her well enough

-Since i had not dated her , i was not clued in to the real her.  ,  

-if she really had all those traits , why wasn't i with her right now.

My point wasn't if i was with her or not, the point was that i had seen someone with all those traits. They fought me relentlessly, telling me since there was no romance involved i didn't know the real deal about her. It made me wonder why they were so determined to disprove my claim.

Ok, here's the Haymaker. The other three people on the opposite side of the debate ,were ALL WOMEN!!!!.

They insisted that settling was the key to being in a relationship. I couldn't understand it, were they telling me that , they didn't have embody those traits,? None of their friends,sisters, cousins anywhere in the world had or could embody all those traits. You would think i was asking
for Wonder Woman's genetic identical                                                                        .

I dunno about anyone else , but I'm still not convinced by the concept of "settling". In fact, no matter how great a relationship is going, if i find out that a woman i am seeing considers me settlement, there are gonna to be issues that day.

NOW granted, some people have their head in the clouds about their expectations from a partner in a relationship. Their perspective is clouded by what they've seen in romance movies,watched on day time soaps, read in soft sell novels. Those unrealistic blinders are what cause problems in their relationships or  their attempts  to enter one.  THAT is a different topic entirely.

We don't settle for friendships do we? We don't look round, and then pick friends out of the lowest of the low. We don't see people, that don't share our values,beliefs have parallel direction in life ,and then go "oh, i can't find anyone else, so I'll pick that one, that will cause me frustration for the duration of the friendship"

If you are going to spend the rest of your life with this person, do you really want to wake up in the morning, see your spouse, and have nagging at the back of your mind "i could have done much better".

Soon, that nagging thought is going to become bitterness in your conscious mind. Whenever you spouse does something lower than your expectations and resentment for your choice slowly builds. You will become like the man, that ordered something at the restaurant, and then sees what the patron on the next table is having and wishes he ordered that instead.

I'm not saying we should seek perfection in a potential spouse. As there are no perfect human beings, the perfect man or perfect woman is an impossibility. However, we can still find that person we want, without succumbing to the idea of settling.

Settling is : "I can use save up for the house i really want for the next 6 months, and sacrifice some special treats". OR "I can still enjoy my treats ,make no sacrifice and settle for a 1 bedroom flat available right now,  and then console ourselves with the rationale after all, why do i need a house ,when a flat will do".

Pretty soon, when friends that endured annoying room mates, while sacrificing and saving, move into their own places, you begin to feel like a prisoner in that flat that you settled for. It's suddenly not so homely, and is too small. Now for someone else that REALLY wanted a flat, it's a great place, but not for YOU since you settled.

Peak performance coach, Tony Robbins, has several saying "Our lives are nothing but a mirror of our most consistent thoughts" he is also known to say We get more of what we focus on.  another one is we have no limitations, our only limitations are our expectations


In the Bible ,Job said What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.Job 3:25 And guess what!, His worse nightmare manifested in his life.


What is my point with those quotes?

As long we limit ourselves to "settling", we should not be surprised when we get it.
As long as we operate through the mental blinders, and the paradigm of, i'll never find such and such a person with these certain traits.  Our mind shuts out all those people present.

When we do that,we have given our subconscious the direct command to make us blind to those people and it obeys since it does not distinct fact from fiction. Psychologists call it , Scitoma, a blind spot, that stops us from seeing what is right in front of us.

A man that wears yellow tinted shades will see the world as yellow and would never be unable to see other colors properly. Every color would be distorted and perceived through yellow, until he removes those tints. The same goes for everything else in life, when we wear those settle tints, that is what we will consistently get.

I'm not suggesting, searching or waiting for perfection , because as humans that is never going to exist, and if we aren't perfect, it's unfair to expect it from someone else. If we have run off every prospective person because we are petty about habits which are changeable, that's our own fault, and should not assume that there are no available people with our desired traits. The friend i admired was not perfect,(was a bit loco which i liked),I actually did make a move, but  she turned me down :(, but that did not take away the fact she had the desired traits, and ironically we  become closer friends after the turn down.( imagine that)

I think romance is a little......ok  HUGELY overrated. People skip the friendship foundation, in search for someone that lights a spark. Problem with a spark, that it there for less than a second, and gone with no evidence of it ever existed.

When finding a partner,(speaking as a guy now,ladies can flip it) it should be more than just physical attraction, or earning power.

It should be someone years down the marriage ,you will be willing to care for when she's sick in bed and you haven't kissed or made love in months, but you are still crazy about her.

You should be a better man spiritually, emotionally, psychologically and financially as a result of having her in your life.

YES, romance is important, BUT no human has the energy to be romantic 24/7 , 52 Weeks 365 Days. Even if by some miracle some is, it get's old and not so exciting after a while.When dating, if you do not have a GREAT friendship with that person, and it's only romance you seek, that relationship is VERY likely to have  short lifespan.

I will leave you with a quote from an unlikely source.

If you’re not married to your best friend, the marriage may have an issue at a certain point.-Ashton Kutcher