Speaking of past boyfriends, these are little “swamp things” growing out of the muck in a rather lovely lake near my home. Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder, all rights reserved.
From the upcoming book,23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It
You wouldn’t let your last boyfriend–the one with all the drama and problems–choose your next boyfriend, would you? Yet that’s what most of us do without realizing it.
Whenever I’ve been single in my life, particularly after being married, supposedly smarter people than me are great at unsolicited advice like “Just ask the Universe to bring you the right guy” or “You should pray for God to pick the perfect person for you.” Well, duh. These people also tend to have been married to the same person for a couple of decades and just looooooovvvvve telling others how to be as miserable as they are. Yes, they amuse me.
But their advice isn’t all bad. It makes perfect sense, yet in recovery from the last break-up, we don’t so much choose to let the next guy to come to us be exactly what we need as we do hope they’re not what we had last time. In that sense, we look for, seek out, attract to us a guy with key features that are the opposite of what we just endured. And we try like crazy not to keep attract the same kind of guy as last time while actively seeking something better. Better equals opposite, you see. That doesn’t bring us the perfect guy for us–it brings us a guy with a different set of drama than the last one.
For example, after dealing with a romantic partner wasn’t very romantic, wild passion was definitely what I looked for in the next man. The key factor missing from my previous relationship instantly narrowed my dating pool to a few teaspoons of men who were the opposite of where I’d been, regardless of their other issues. I got wildly passionate–and tons of drama and him sobbing in my arms. So the next time I was open to a romantic partner, I specifically asked the Universe to bring me a guy who was happy and drama-free.
I got that, too. Of course, he was happy and drama-free (seemingly) because he was leading at least two secret lives and delivering a daily performance that’s just got to be worthy of a suspense thriller in my future as a novelist.
After that, it was easy enough to set my intentions for a new romantic partner who isn’t living a life worthy of a whole week of guest starring on Jerry Springer, but I decided not to. Instead of looking for people who aren’t anything like the last guy, I reset my intentions. The next special guy who settles in for some extended good times with me doesn’t have to have the opposite traits of all my past partners.
Nope, he just has to match to me, not to what I didn’t have in the past.
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