Most People Have to Kiss a Few Frogs

Photo by kaibara

Bad dates.  Everyone's had one.


At the start of their date one guy told my friend, a fellow doctor, "I'm making a rule: we're going to split everything 50/50".  When she pulled out her credit card after dinner, he didn't flinch.  He just let her pay.

Another friend went on a date with a guy whose head was snowing dandruff.


Another date talked about his ex-girlfriend the entire night.


Cheap dates.  Presumptuous dates.  Poorly groomed dates.  Boring dates.  Dates that talk too much about themselves.  Dates that are just plain rude.


If you've never had a bad date, you might not be putting yourself out there.
Either that or you married young.


If you have had a bad date, take heart.  You're in good company.  And it doesn't mean a thing about what you deserve, or your chances of finding the love you want.

Yeah Baby, Let's Talk about Sex

Photo by artistfriendship

A friend recently broke up with a guy she'd been dating for a couple of months.  She thought he was nice but not the right person for her.  She wrote this in an email:

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"The biggest lesson I am taking from this experience is something that I've heard said so many times before and always rejected out of hand as part of my general rejection of my paranoid-of-the-body Catholic upbringing: 
sex clouds judgement.


You start to bond energetically and it is harder to notice incompatible character traits and red flags. Or maybe you notice them but other parts of you dismiss them right away.  I still made him wait a month but as soon as we crossed that line, that was when I got more confused.  


I am beginning to reluctantly admit that maybe the nuns were right ;-).  I would never marry someone without knowing if we are sexually compatible first.  But I might try waiting until I am more certain about the relationship before introducing this element next time."

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What's Time Got To Do With It?

Photo by eliazar

My husband and I knew pretty quickly that we wanted to be together.


Within a few weeks of our first official date.


It just felt effortless and obvious. There was no sense of "I love him, BUT..."


There were no buts.


I didn't know he was the love of my life on the first day we met (although I did notice his truly fantastic smile).  We didn't even have our first date until over two months later.


When we eventually became friends, it was effortless and easy.  We connected on a lot of different levels.  We could talk for hours about everything under the sun.  No matter where we were or what we were doing, we had fun.


We turned each other on.  I found him incredibly interesting on lots of different levels (and still do).  We felt natural with each other and energized by each other's company (and still do).  We laughed constantly (and still do).  Commitment wasn't a huge leap for either one of us.  At a certain point we just recognized that it was already there.

I'll tell you something.  The day that I realized he was the one for me, and I was the one for him, was one of the best days of my life.


Sometimes two people in a relationship are trying to figure out whether they're right for each other.

Sometimes one person is more committed than the other.
Sometimes one or both people find it hard to commit because they haven't yet figured out what they want from a life partnership in general.
But sometimes it's easy.  Sometimes there's a mutual sense of certainty.
And when that happens, it's magic.


That mutual sense of certainty can develop very quickly.
And it happens all the time:
In January my sister was teased by her good friend Suany about getting engaged to someone she'd dated for just six months.
Then Suany met someone in May, and got engaged in August.
Sometimes when you know, you know.

Don't mistake me, the point is not about how quickly you can get engaged or get married.  It's about recognizing when something is right, and how quickly that can happen.  It doesn't necessarily take two years, or even a year.  Especially if you've taken time to ask yourself what you really want in your life.

If you're ready for a life partnership and you aren't certain within six months that the person you're with is right for you, and vice versa, you might think hard about whether it's ever going to feel right with that particular person.  Or at least you might want to take a good hard look at your "buts".