Learn Love, Episode 3. How can I find the right person to love in my life? The simple answer is that you have to look for them, be ready when you find them, and beware of accepting okay or good in place of finding great. For me, this is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I have never screwed up so much at any one thing, and I have never been as frustrated as I was with trying to find my now wife. You could argue I started when I was in my teens, say around sixteen, so it took around ten years to find my wife. Nothing I have ever done was so punishing and agonizing and hurtful. It was more awful at any given time than it was ever good. That is, until I finally found my wife. Then it was amazing after that. I wish that when I was younger I had understood it might take ten years to really do it right, and that I only had to do it right once. How many times you fail does not matter at all. It only matters how many times you do it right, and you want to minimize those failures.
The First Step Is Just to Look
To break this down a little further, let us talk about the three parts to finding the right person to love in your life. The first step is simply to look. My advice is to look while you are single, because it is a lot more honest than looking while you are in a relationship. You have to look. And I do not mean to just sign up for a dating site, or to occasionally talk to a girl your friend introduced you to, or a guy, whatever. I am putting this in my own terms, but understand you can put it in whatever terms apply to you. It applies across the board.
In order to look, you have to always have your eyes open everywhere you are, all the time. This means at the grocery store, at work, during your hobbies, and at the times when you are hanging out with your friends. You should also be doing intentional dating sites, in order to increase the amount of opportunities you have to look. You should always be looking. You never know exactly when the right person might come passing you by. If you are not looking right then, how would you feel about missing that right person coming by? When you are looking, you want to always be looking.
The idea is that you want to meet as many people as possible. You do not want to just have a few long-term relationships, because you are not really getting good at it and you are not meeting enough people. The name of the game is simply to meet a lot of people until you find one that is perfect. And by meet a lot of people, I do not mean shack up or bang a lot of people, or have a lot of relationships. I mean just get to know and talk to someone for thirty minutes, an hour, a few hours.
Take Thin Slices and Meet in Person
If you have read any of Malcolm Gladwell's books, Blink is a very good analogy for this. You want to get very simple snapshots of someone. And again, I do not mean dirty snapshots. I mean just a quick blink, a quick look at who they are as a person. That first impression, and I am talking especially in person for this, is critical. So if you are using a dating site, the object is to just get a quick lunch kind of meeting. If you are playing online games, or doing anything else online like social networking, you have got to get an in-person interaction out of it. Because your brain and your body can tell you so much in such a short period of time, just by seeing someone in person, that you cannot get online through Facebook pages or video game conversations. If you are gaming with a person you might be interested in, or talking with someone from a dating website, that quick in-person meeting can tell you so much that you want to know immediately, and it uses the least amount of time possible.
Now, I am explaining something that is very emotional, and I am explaining it in a rational tone, so that you can take action on it. This means you want as many quick in-person meetings as you can get. You want to take as many thin slices of getting to know someone as possible in the shortest period of time. If you could meet one or two new people you might be interested in being the love of your life every day, the odds of you finding the right one fast are drastically increased. They just rocket through the roof. When you have greater odds of being successful, and when you are consistently putting yourself in a position to be successful, you are going to eventually be successful. A lot of finding the right person to love is simply about positioning. And I do not mean positioning on top of them or anything. I mean putting yourself in the right position to meet them. The key is that you just have to meet them.
Do Not Settle for Okay or Good
What is difficult about looking is that you get snagged up on people who are good, or who are okay, or even who are bad. They might have given you a great first impression, but the problem is you get caught up with these people who are holding you back, who are preventing you from finding a great person. If you and them are not that great together, then you are hurting both of you by being together. If you meet each other and you are not that impressed, then it is hurting both of you to be together. You want to make it clear to them that it is not going to work, and you want to move on.
This is really difficult, because most of us are not wired to be single forever. Being lonely is one of the worst things. It is one of the worst feelings I have had in my whole life. It is really easy to just look at someone and say, well, I think they might work. But that is not what you want if you want to be happy for the rest of your life. You want someone who is just amazing, who you love, and who makes you say, I do not want to be with anyone else out there. I do not care who else comes along. That is what you want to look for.
Imagine being with someone who is okay, or even good, and then seeing someone great come along that you could have been with, and saying, wow, I really screwed up by not being with them. What a lot of people do then is try to just get with them anyway, and you have just created a mess at that point. You want to keep your life simple and clean, and that means you want to always be looking for someone great to come along, and you do not want to have anything holding you back. That means relationships, exes, any baggage. You want to be free and clean, so that when the right person comes along, you can be ready to be a team member with them.
It Only Works If the Feeling Is Mutual
So when you are looking, you want to look, and you want to meet as many people until you find that one where your body, mind, and soul all say yes. Wow. Yes. Go for it. And what is important is that this is only fifty percent of the deal. The other person has to be thinking the exact same thing. How you feel does not make a damn bit of difference if the other person does not feel the same way. Now, more often than not, people will feel the same way about each other if they are being honest and openly communicating. In other words, if you are talking with me, and I am being honest and open with you, then we should both be on the same page. We should both be telling each other what we feel and what is important to us, and it should be easy for both of us to figure out and feel the same way about something, whatever it is, and especially if it is about each other.
So as long as you are being honest and openly communicating, and this is why it helps to be looking only when you do not have baggage or other things you cannot kick to the curb, you want to be ready. And you have to have mutual interest. If there is no mutual interest, if you think the other person is great and they think you are crap, that is a failure. And that is fine. Like I said, I have never done anything so hard in my whole life, but it is worth it to try and do it right.
Most of the pain and punishment I brought on myself. I kept banging at a door that was not going to come down. I ignored how the other person was doing and how they felt, and just tried to focus on how I felt. Or I let how the other person felt influence me too much, even when I knew it was not right for me. In my experience, both of those mistakes cost me years.
A Great Example of When Looking Goes Wrong
I have a great example of when looking goes wrong, and of why you should not let someone who is okay or good be who you settle for. Because each of us has great inside of us. You have great inside of you. There is a person who will be with you, and you will be great with them. The question is, are you willing to take the pain and punishment until you find them? And in return, get just an amazing happiness and a wonderful life that you would not have had otherwise, or that you would not even know or understand about otherwise? If you are willing to go for it, there is a great person out there for you. And here is what you should not do.
When I moved home with my parents after college and after being a police officer, I was going back to graduate school in Tampa. So I was looking online. I figured, hey, if I do this right, I can literally have a girl lined up for me when I get to Tampa. I was desperately afraid of being lonely, because when I had been a police officer I had not had a relationship in years, and I was so lonely. I was always looking for people. But as we get into step two, which I will talk about after I finish this story, I was not ready to meet the right person. So even though I was looking, and I was doing everything I just shared with you, meeting a lot of people and getting good snapshot slices of them, they continued to not be right.
I looked so hard before I moved to Tampa. I went through hundreds of dating profiles on all the dating websites, the main ones at least. Match.com, where I later met my wife. Plenty of Fish. OkCupid. eHarmony. I was on them, and I was actively messaging and looking on all of them. I sent messages and winks to hundreds of different girls, and had all kinds of email conversations, and I had all kinds of things go wrong. There would be an email conversation I would be really excited about that would fall apart, and suddenly I would not get an email back. Or the girl I was talking with would send an email, and something I read in it would stop me cold. One sent an email about how she had dated some gangster ex-boyfriend or something.
How I Turned a Bad Feeling Into a Three-Month Relationship
I was so put off. I was just like, no. I don't want to date you. That's awful. That's not the kind of girl who was going to be perfect for me to have been with, or to be with in the future. All of this lined up until I was finally talking with some girl who had a lot of energy and enthusiasm for chatting with me, and she seemed to meet my criteria well enough. The problem was, I was so afraid of getting to Tampa and being my old single self that I focused so much on her that we were practically in a relationship before we had even met.
Then when I did meet her, when I went to Tampa, I met her. To give you this small snapshot slice of what I screwed up: I sent so many emails and spent so much time talking with her online that I started to think that actually mattered when it came to meeting her. I thought it actually mattered for having a relationship. The very first time I saw her, we pulled up to my auntie's, and as soon as she got out of her car, my entire feeling, the visceral, the irrational part of me that feels, the part you could call my heart, was just wrecked with disappointment. As soon as I looked at her, my body's and my heart's first thought was no. This is not the kind of woman you want to marry and be with and have a family with. I had just wasted so much time and energy that I felt forced to continue and finish the date with her.
What I should have done exactly then, when I felt that, was said, "Look, I'm sorry, I just have the feeling this is not going to work out with us." That was before we had even introduced ourselves, because my mind and my heart could immediately sense, completely and exactly, when we went on our first date that it wasn't going to work. And she was so nervous. She no doubt had figured out it wasn't going to work either, just based on how I was acting. The problem was, I just couldn't let it go. And you know what that turned into? That turned into a three-month ex-girlfriend for me. I could have avoided all of that by just doing what I'm telling you to do now.
It's not great if you know it's not right. If you don't invest too much time and energy getting to know someone before you meet them in person, you can avoid wasting a huge chunk of your time. I look back now and I thank God that I met my wife literally a month and a half after that ex relationship ended. And look, I'm not saying it was her fault or my fault, because it was both of our faults. I just wish I could have done my part to not waste either of our time. That's how relationships are. It's two of you together. It has to be two of you together. What one of you wants, or anything about one of you, is not what matters. It's how you make a team together. Maybe I could have met my wife three months sooner if I hadn't gone and gotten into a relationship with a girl when we both knew it wasn't right for us. I could have avoided that by listening to my heart. My heart spoke loudly and clearly, immediately.
You can avoid that too. When you feel just disappointed with whoever you're out with, or you feel no positive, passionate energy, then don't waste your time. Keep looking. I know it's hard, because I know you don't want to sit there and be single forever. Even if you like being single, you probably do still want to find someone to love eventually. You never know how love is going to work out. So if you just keep looking, and you meet and are friendly with as many people as possible, the right person will come into your life. If you waste time, if you get into a lot of dragged-out relationships that aren't good, then you're not going to have the opportunity to meet as many people, which drastically lowers the chances of you getting a great relationship. I want you to be happy and find the love of your life. I don't want you to have your first divorce, or your second divorce, or a family down the road with kids and a marriage separately, or one of you cheating, or one of you not emotionally available. I want you to have a wonderful and great life, and having a great relationship is the key.
Looking Is First, but Being Ready Is Everything
Looking and keeping your eyes open is the first important thing. The second important thing is being ready when you find them. Some of you certainly might say, well, you can't separate looking from being ready. Looking, to me, is the mindset you're doing, and it is very closely related to being ready. The problem is, either one by itself is not going to put you in the position to succeed. I'll give you a great example of that, again, myself.
I always looked as much as possible. Out of the ten or so years I went dating before I found my wife, I was single about eight of those years. So I looked and looked. I've picked a girl up or gotten a girl's number in damn near every situation you can do it. And the problem was, I wasn't ready to meet the right girl. At least I look back now and I say I wasn't ready. I was not the kind of person who was going to be a good teammate when I was younger. I thought about myself all the time. I often didn't pay attention to how I looked or presented myself. I was just a me person, which is okay when you're younger especially. That's how a lot of us are when we're younger. I'm 29 now, and I've been a me person for most of my life.
When you want to be ready, though, you've got to be ready to be part of a team. It's kind of like having faith in a religion, or faith in anything. You've got to give up some of who you are and embrace some of who you are as being part of something bigger, part of a bigger group. With finding the right person to love, that faith has to be able to be placed in the two of you together. My wife and I are one team. We're one unit. We are the two of us combined. That is who we are. That is my first identity as a person, as one member of that two-person team. I was not ready to be that way a lot of the time when I was younger, because even when I would date or get to know other people, all I ever thought about was what I could get out of it, what was in it for me. My wife was the first girl I met and truly felt that I was in it for what was good for us. It wasn't just about what I wanted or what I would get. It was about what she wanted and what she would get. That key part of the equation, being ready, that is the key component you want.
Getting Ready Means Looking the Part
There are some details to being ready. For example, if you want to be with someone attractive, or who looks a certain way, even if most people don't think that's attractive. Some girls are into guys who are really hairy, or have a lot of tattoos or something. That's what they think is attractive. Everyone's variation of what they think is attractive differs. The bottom line is, you want to attract and be ready to look good for the kind of person you want to be with. In my experience this is really difficult, because those things often are not matched up well together.
I was looking for more of a girl who was like the sorority president. By sorority president, I mean more of a geeky or nerdy girl with friends. And that's my wife, down to a detail. The problem was, the way I presented myself was not as likely to attract that type of girl. Until I was 21 years old, I always wore football jerseys and didn't take very good care of my appearance. I was a handsome young fella, but I didn't present myself very well, and my attitude went along with that. The problem was, the kind of girls I could attract were often not the kind of girls who really got me excited. I don't want to be demeaning or derogatory or anything, so I'm just going to say that the kind of girls who were interested in me were not often ones I was interested in, and the ones I was interested in often weren't very interested in me.
Finally, I asked a girl who was my friend. I said, "What am I doing wrong? What can I do better?" She told me, well, wearing those football jerseys all the time, that says you're a certain kind of guy. The person you present yourself as, wearing those football jerseys and not doing anything with your hair, just generally not having a good appearance about you, the kind of girls you want to attract care about those kinds of things. So if I would buy some nicer clothes. She didn't say I had to spend a fortune or anything. Just get some clothes that looked a little nicer, like some polo shirts and things like that, and wear those clothes. Do a little something with my hair occasionally. I already looked good enough that I just needed to polish the rough exterior up a little bit, so that more of the girls I would be attracted to would be attracted to me. And as soon as I did that, lo and behold, it worked.
I somehow missed the connection back when I was in ROTC. I always got the best response out of girls when I was in my army uniform. The funny thing is, I never quite put together that appearance was what was important. Then when I wasn't in ROTC, I could continue that appearance, something that worked in my favor. The same thing applies to you. You can do this with yourself. If you're a girl, it doesn't mean you have to spend three hours a day doing your makeup and your hair or anything. It just means you want to look ideal in the eyes of the person you are attracted to. If you don't know what that is, you could just ask them. If you see someone who looks like the kind of person you want to be with, ask them if they're attracted to certain things. You always want to ask more than one person on this kind of thing, because most advice is bad advice, but some advice is good advice. So if you ask people and see what they like, you could get some good feedback. Some of it might hurt your feelings. Maybe you'll get comments like you should grow your hair out, or stop wearing a favorite outfit of yours. Football jerseys were a favorite outfit of mine. I had worn them and loved them since fifth grade. So I had to be open.
Sometimes the feedback you get is going to be hard to hear. Well, stop wearing the clothes you like to wear, and start wearing some clothes that the people you're attracted to want to see you in, that will make them check you out. That can be hard feedback. But being ready to meet the right person means doing what it takes to be ready to meet the right person. If you just want to do it your way, that's fine. But you're just going to get your way out of life, right back at you. If you don't present yourself well, if you don't look attractive to the people you want to attract, then you shouldn't be disappointed or surprised when you don't get a positive response out of it. So when you are looking, and you're ready, that gives you the best chance to find the right person to love in your life. Because usually the appearance thing is just the tip of the iceberg. Appearance is one of those simple-to-see qualities that people put a lot more stock and faith in.
And if you can't buy new clothes, or you can't cut your hair, or grow your hair out, or whatever, it all starts in your mind. It could be exercising a little more, losing some weight, especially if you're heavy and you're attracted to thinner people. In my experience, you're likely to need to exercise some. So you can focus on what you do have the power to do something about, and it starts in your head, having a positive mindset about yourself when you look in the mirror.
It starts with the mirror
Now, you're probably never going to be exactly perfect in your own eyes. But if you look in the mirror and you see something about yourself that you know you could change, you would be able to be ready to attract the kind of person you want. If you look in the mirror and say, you know, I would feel confident in myself if I did this. And you can only do what you can do. You can't do what you can't do. So if you have some horrible disfigurement or something, well, you probably can't just get that magically fixed. But just look at yourself in the mirror and say, what can I do that would make me feel happy about how I look? And focus on what you can do.
And it doesn't have to be a huge thing. You don't have to say, well, I need to lose 200 pounds, or I need to grow my hair out ten feet long. It can just be something simple. What can I do today that will feel better about my appearance? Maybe go for a run, if you're big. Or just take a shower, if you're dirty. Do your hair, if it's all a mess. Look at yourself and say, what can I do to feel a little bit better? You don't have to make a grand gesture. You just have to keep doing the little things that will make you feel a little bit better about yourself. When you collectively put all those things together, that will help you be ready to be confident and attractive to the person you want to attract.
I have to give women a little bit of credit in this department too. Men tend to be very fixated on more of the concrete physical details, and you can put whatever reason on that you want. Women tend to be very good with looking at a guy and picking out, that guy is confident, that guy knows what he's doing, that guy is sneaky and he's a creep. Women tend to be very good at picking those things out. I've rarely met guys that were quite as good at looking at a girl and making the same kind of snap judgment that women do.
A lot of the little things you do, and the attitude you have in your head, are what other people find attractive. So if you want someone that's confident, and feels good about themselves, and is ambitious, you need to be the kind of person they want to be with. They often will want the same kinds of things. Maybe not everything, but they are likely to want a person that's confident and happy about themselves. And you can change. If you're not confident and happy about yourself, you can start working towards being that way. It doesn't take a grand gesture or a huge move. All you have to do is look in the mirror and say, what small thing, what little thing can I do right now or today, to make myself feel better about who I am? If you do that every single day, you will soon enough feel how you want to feel. And then you'll be ready to attract the kind of person you want to attract. That's all it takes. You've got to look and be ready.
The third key: discretion
But there's a third key part, and I highlighted it some in the look-and-be-ready section. The third key thing, once you look and you're ready to find the right person, is that you have to beware of accepting less than both of you deserve. So it's look, be ready, and then discretion. This is the hardest part. Because once you've gotten into a mindset of I'm looking, and once you've got yourself prepared to attract the kind of person you want to attract, making the right choices is the most difficult part. And this is where people go wrong the most.
I always looked at good-looking girls when I was younger, and the guys they were with, and I would always ask, how, out of all the guys who want to be with you, do you choose that loser? Any guy can look at him and say he's a loser. How do you, who all the guys want to be with, choose that loser to be with? The choice element of this, once you've got the first two of these down, making the right choice, is the hardest part.
Because life is simple if there's one person that's eligible to date you. Either you're going to date them, or you're going to be single. There's no other options. You see how simple that is. Now look at it this way. A good-looking person in high school might have a hundred-plus people to choose from. With human beings, we all have rational limits. Most of us, when we have more than two or three choices, have a hard time forcing ourselves into these situations so that we only have a limited number of choices. Exercising choice when you have lots of options is hard.
How I made a poor choice with lots of options
Look how poorly I did when I went to grad school. I had hundreds of girls I could potentially date. My parents had just worked with me for almost a year on getting myself into being a loving person. I had worked harder. I was ready to meet the right girl. I already knew how to look, and I was looking harder than I'd ever looked before. And how did I make such a poor choice? How did I decide to get into a relationship when all I saw was disappointment the first time I met her? How did I make such a poor choice when I had girls from all over Tampa sending me messages, that I was emailing out with and saying, hi, I'm Jerry, let's spend like an hour to get to know each other a little bit and see how we feel about it? How did I make such a poor choice? And I literally just ended up in a relationship with the first girl I met.
Choices are hard. In my experience, the only way you can manage choices is you just have to follow your heart. And I eventually did break up. It was hard though. And it would have been so much easier to say no right away than it was to say no after I'd said yes for three months. You have to say no as soon as possible. As soon as possible, say no. And I know that's hard. No one wants to be single, and especially when you've got a beautiful person that has a lot of great qualities that's interested in being with you, it's hard to say no. But if you know there's something that's not going to work with it, if you know that right up front, then say no. Just say no.
Why would you want to waste some of the very precious, small amount of time you have on earth? Why would you want to waste anything of it? And you could say, well, anything that doesn't kill me makes me stronger. Yes. I wasted three months of my time in grad school, and I wasted her time too. I wasted that, and I'll never have that back. But thank God I managed to finally do it right. Only a couple months after that.
Say no as early as possible
The thing is, just say no as early as possible. I had done so good with that the rest of my life. I had always said no as soon as possible. If I went out with a girl on three dates and she didn't want to at least make out a little bit, I said no right there. I don't want someone that's that physically cold. I mean, I was ruthless with saying no when I was younger. If you didn't like the way you talked to your parents on the phone, or if I didn't like the way you flirted with my roommate or something, I would find any reason to not call a girl back, or to say, look, I don't want to go out with you again. I was direct. And I had very few problems with my past lingering, because as soon as I found a reason to say no, I just pushed them out of my life. And the harder they tried to get me to say yes, that would make sure that they would turn around and say no eventually. And that wasn't always pretty. But I always was willing to say no. Until I finally was so ready that I made a poor choice.
And that's what happens with a lot of good-looking people. I always think back to the great-looking girls in high school and college, and they weren't like that at all. They didn't want to be single or alone any more than you and I do. They often just made the first bad choice that came along. And the problem was, then what were they going to do about it? Whoever was there at the right moment, at the right time. And that's why guys would all try and swoon over them all the time, because they were just hoping to be the right guy at the right time.
And it's a balancing act. You have to look, be ready, and then make a good choice. It's a balancing act between keeping all three in the right proportion. If you're too ready, if you're looking too hard, or if you're not making good choices, you're going to have a low likelihood of finding the right person to love in your life. And I'm saying this from experience. But the best part is, you just have to do it right once. And yes, I know, I'm 29, and I know a lot of horrible things could go wrong in my life. But just being with my wife, I will always have and know that love in my life, and she will too. And that is something you don't forget.
Look, Be Ready, and Make a Great Choice
Love is something that's always there, once you've done it right. And I have faith that we are able to not get hit with some of the horrible things that just come down from the sky sometimes. But the thing is, doing it right is worth taking the risk of whatever could happen afterwards. So I want you to look, be ready, and make a great choice in order to find the right person to love in your life.
In my experience, when you are able to do all three of those things together, you will find the right person in your life. If you want to keep going deeper on this, I put together my thoughts on relationships and connection in my Dating playlist, and I hope you'll spend some time with it.
I appreciate you taking the time to listen today, and I hope this has been helpful.