How To Become Someone’s Life Partner

There are a whole lot of articles out there that list the qualities that one must look for in a partner, in order to ensure this person is marriage material.

But, are YOU marriage material?

We all have different desires of what we envision as the perfect partnership, including perhaps not being limited to a monogamous arrangement. We all have a dream of what would bring us absolute happiness. In all of the fantasizing, have you ever considered whether your focus is so much so upon the perfect other, that you have perhaps forgotten to take a look at your self?

In keeping this in mind, there are three important questions to ask yourself.

1) Would you be emotionally, companionately, spiritually, and physically attracted to you, if you met yourself for a date? How so? How not?

2) In looking at the ways you wouldn’t be attracted to your self on this date, what would you need to change in order to increase your attraction to your self, and what would “they” need to change? This question will tell you a lot about what personality traits you are expecting from a potential life partner, and how much responsibility you place on your self to be attractive, versus on the other to be a certain way to find your attractive. In terms of who you would have to change in to, in order to be attracted to your self, is this a reasonable change process someone might have to go through, or a reasonable set of traits you are expecting from someone in order to be attracted to you?

3) What would you find absolutely dysfunctional about the ways in which you deal with communication and conflict, as well as emotional and sexual intimacy?

These three questions will give you a lot of information about what kind of person you are expecting to come into your life, and if this standard is actually reasonable, given how much you are offering in terms of positive and negative traits. Additionally, these questions will help you get real with yourself about whether you have yet resolved certain patterns that make it difficult to interact with you in regard to intimacy and conflict, that might prevent you from knowing how to form a sustaining, long-term partnership/relationship.

I see many clients who could recite traits of their ideal partner, yet on the flip side, are not anywhere close to the ideal being that partner for a sustaining, healthy, long-term relationship.

For instance, if you have been trying to manifest a lifelong partner for you, yet you are terrified of intimacy and run when the other person gets too close, no matter how perfect your life partner is in your mind, your will actively destroy the relationship. It is a pretty high expectation for you to require someone is ok with the fact you run every time they get closer to you, and to not eventually react with anger or a behavior that pushes you away (either temporarily or permanently).

Or, in another example, if you want to be sexually attracted to your ideal life partner, yet you have not created anything physically attractive about your self, and you actually put no effort into your physical appearance at all, it is unreasonable to expect a very physically attractive person to completely overlook your lack, for the entirety of the relationship. Chances are, they do a lot to take care of their body and appearance, and there will be a big mismatch of values, if you are not taking care of your body and hygiene, and appearance. Eventually, this mismatch, will likely lead the relationship to end.

Asking the above questions of your self, will not only reveal to you how you are not yet ready to be a life-partner to someone, but will also help you see the level of self-love and confidence you have. The level at which you possess these two qualities: self-love and confidence, make a major difference in the type of partners you choose (i.e. are these partners tending to be Narcissistic, codependent, or abusive?), as well as your perception of hope for the future, your courage and empowerment to commit to doing work upon yourself, and also how you perceive your own worthiness of love and satisfying partnership.

If in asking these questions, you find yourself feeling hopeless, worthless, and as though you are too flawed to be loved, it may be a very good idea to seek a therapist or coach, to begin to work on your self-love and confidence. As, you quite literally will not attract that ideal life-long, functional partnership if you do not love yourself or have confidence.

It is of course, important to hold a balance between objectively assessing your own readiness or worthiness or being someone’s life partner, but ALSO very important to assess for whether your own issues with self-love and confidence actually prevent you from attaining the life-partner status you desire.

We all deserve to be loved and accepted as we are. There is ALWAYS someone out there for you, no matter your level of self-love and confidence. However, the overall sustainability and health of your relationships, and the chance of them becoming an ideal, healthy lifelong partnership, are very much based on your being honest and accountable with yourself about your capacity to be a life partner, and about how the way you feel about your self, impacts your partner selection as well as your ability to sustain a healthy relationship.