I have everyone I work with take the VIA and compare them. Real fun begins here. I know our results blew my husband away. He said, “OMG, you were right. We ARE so different in so many ways.” Yet we are superglued with an understanding, non-judgmental love that puts a smile on my face when I think if it. And it only took me 39 years to choose a guy whose puzzle piece fit into mine. Loving is curious learning. I may have been a slow learner re: partners, but I agree that pain was a terrific motivator and teacher. Relationships, even the best of them, are often like mercury. They slip and slide. They separate, but they always come back together if the tilt in the same direction. Independence balanced with cameraderie. and lots of letting go and forgiveness.
Trade-offs. Frequent remembrances after you have figured out by a history of learning what really makes yourself as well as your partner happy. Like no $100 roses for me on Valentine’s Day, though I appreciated the first time he asked me what I would like. My husband knows I would rather have a note hand written by him. Just a few lines. I have saved every one. But he also knows my favorite flowers are daisies.

I DO appreciate your humor, and I can even follow most of it. I just needed you to connect the dots a little for me, which you did here. Thanks!

Yes, the speed dating approach is something that has also occurred to me. Meet someone, get to know them for a while, and if it’s not working – for whatever reason – move on and find someone else. This can be done, and there are good reasons for doing it. But at some point, after having done it for a while, a person might start to ask himself/herself, “Am I just being too picky?” Mostly a wondering because, for me, I just can’t see holding onto something that doesn’t feel like a hand-in-glove fit. That doesn’t mean that he is perfect, or that I am perfect, or that we will live happily ever after. And it’s also hard for me to define what exactly I’m looking for. But I know it when I feel it, and that’s what I’m after.

Keep making me laugh, Jeff. It’s good for my soul.

It was a lame attempt at what you humans call humor I like your stuff. I mean I enjoy your writing. I don’t joke around with people unless I like their spin on the world. Very little of what I say a) makes sense to others and b) is entirely serious. Your confusion with my rambling is very common. You are not alone.

As for reducing complexity, I think the term is simplification. Simplify Simplify Simplify! Easy to say, Hard to do. Dumb it down means make dating so easy a caveman could do it. Without the club and the hair pulling. What do you want? What does he/she want? Give it and get it. If you don’t get it, kick him/her to the curb and start over. Easy to say, very Hard to do. The faster you do this process…almost like speed dating, the closer you’ll get to what you really want in a mate. Don’t waste time on a waffler. You are a very attractive woman with a brain. That’s a commodity. Work it!

Jeff

Are you saying you have a problem with “reducing complexity?” Or “the dating process?”

And what is called dumbing it down? Sorry… I’m not following you.

I checked your credit score online. Um, don’t bother calling me, I’ll call you.

JD

P.S. put your pic on your thumbnail in the comments section. It is pretty.

I laughed at your very up-front approach. In several places. And I also felt like your words are good for me to pay attention to because they offer the male trait of reducing complexity. Hopefully, I can pay attention when it matters.

I am also a fan of Richard Rohr, although I haven’t ever heard or read his words that you mention above. So true, though. Pain IS an excellent teacher. I know that I have learned volumes about myself through my adversities in the past few years. Many of those lessons have to do with learning from the past (what I contributed to my adversities)and many of the lessons have to do with what I want to create for my future. It’s pretty exciting. This is posttraumatic growth.

I appreciate your comments.

Divorce can teach you a lot, can’t it? Pain is such an excellent teacher. Like Richard Rohr says, pain is the one thing that has the power to wrench us out of our arrogance and ignorance and help us finally see the reality of what we’ve been creating.

It’s great that you’ve nurtured such a positive attitude within you to reframe the events of your own divorce and find your own resilience, and to help others find theirs as well.

It can be tough to dispel the demons of self-doubt when life delivers such a crushing blow, until we recognize that life didn’t deliver anything we didn’t order. We co-created the situation we’re in. But at the same time, we have the power to do something about it, maybe not everything we’d like, but in fact a great deal. Focusing on those aspects, like you say, can open up huge reserves of untapped energy we never knew we had.

In your article “Give Anxiety the One-Two Punch,” you really put things in perspective: “This moment is full, yes, with goodness and plenty, and the troubles that plague me were not a problem two years ago, and they will be utterly forgotten in fifty.” There is so much we can do on this planet while we’re here. “I could and often did reach out to others with the intention of bringing joy to them.”

Yes, yes, yes…

If you keep this up, those troubles may well be forgotten in fifty years, but that joy just might leave a viral legacy.

I’ve been thinking about your comments since I read them last evening. I wanted to give myself a bit of time to consider them before responding.

You have stated so many things that resonate with me, and I think so many of them are contained in these sentences: “Angry judgments kill connection and make people want to hide their innermost self from one another. If you don’t feel completely accepted by your partner, how are you ever going to feel it’s safe to expose yourself in vulnerability in order to be completely known? And isn’t love really about being known completely, and fully accepted anyway?” Yes, yes, yes… And I love the way you have brought Aaron Beck’s work with reframing thinking into this conversation. So much of personal resilience is about being able to reframe events in order to focus on the aspects over which we have control, while accepting the ones we can do nothing about. And I can totally see the application of these same concepts to relationships.

Thank you for your insights.

You didn’t just say “dating PROCESS”. In which places did you laugh? Probably the bedroom. I get that a LOT. I actually toned down my previous comment. Be thankful!

Jeff