3 Rules You Must Follow To Find Your Mate

I’m so tired of hearing the same frustrated complaints over and over: there’s no one out there for me, I can’t meet anyone, nobody is serious, I give up. Let me rephrase that. I’m so tired of hearing the same frustrated complaints from men and women who aren’t making their best effort to change their situation and find the partner they say they so desperately want.

I’ve worked with men and women who invested enormous amounts of time and effort to achieve their relationship objective, and succeeded. It wasn’t easy and didn’t happen right away. In most cases it took at least a year, if not longer, filled with frustration, disappointment, and heartache. But they persevered and continued to work on themselves and make necessary changes based on feedback from advisors and mentors. They did not just wait for “true love” to tap them on the shoulder in Starbucks or approach them across a crowded floor at a black tie charity event. They opened themselves up and made themselves vulnerable by asking for help from anyone who would listen. They remained positive and steadfast in their quest. This post is not directed at them. They already know the points I’m about to make.

For all of you who just became angrier and more frustrated after reading the last paragraph, here are the 3 rules you must follow to find your mate. I’ve used my own story as an example (leaving out specific details to allow you to fill in your own).

1. Evaluate and Modify
Step one is to honestly and thoroughly evaluate your current situation. What kind of person are you looking for? Are your expectations realistic? Is the kind of person you are looking for in your current social circles or geographic location? In other words, are you looking for love in all the right places?

It took me a while to perform my own evaluation. It was a process. I took a long, hard, and brutally honest look at myself and my expectations and I started crossing off my wish list items that I accepted either were not realistic for me or not relevant to a happy marriage. Now, take a moment or more to think about what I’m saying and how it applies to your own situation. Are you an apple hoping to attract oranges? Don’t you know that apples and oranges don’t match?

What I realized was that the type of woman I felt that I needed to be happy probably did not live in my geographic location (NYC). Sure, there probably were some in such a huge population, but the odds were not in my favor. Probability and statistics were working against me. I then identified the place where I felt that my ideal woman was to be found. You must do the same.

If you’ve done your evaluation and found that everything was perfect as is, you haven’t done it right, so go back and do it again. Firstly, nobody’s perfect. Secondly, there’s a reason why you’re still single, so figure it out and modify.

2. Take Action
After evaluating and modifying, you must take action. It’s not enough to understand what’s not working. You need to take definitive action to implement what you discovered in your evaluation. In my case the first action I took was to move to the geographic location where I felt the odds of meeting my mate were more favorable. But moving isn’t enough. You need to actively seek out the object of your desire. For me that meant searching through the friends of my Facebook friends in my new location to see if there was anyone who caught my interest. Then I followed up with my friends to get more information on each potential to determine if they were “right” for me. Finally I chose one woman and contacted her, using our mutual friend as a reference. We went out on a date. A year later we were married.

3. Remain Focused
Once you’ve made it to the dating/relationship stage, don’t take your eye off of the prize. Remember, your goal is to eventually get married, not to date the person until you realize that he or she isn’t perfect and then break up and move on to someone else. It’s really easy to do that. The hard thing to do is to stay open and flexible, and focus on the good stuff. Don’t look for what’s wrong, look for what’s right. There will always be things that don’t fit into your idealized view of what you thought your mate would be like. Just accept that. If the important stuff is there, keep focused and go for the touchdown. Date for marriage, not perfection.

I’m pretty sure that if my wife and I had met at an earlier time in our lives we would not have seen our relationship through to marriage. We each would have gotten stuck on “stuff” that would have thrown us off the track and caused either of us to bolt. But we were ready and we stayed focused on the important stuff…and made the right choice.

Evaluate, Modify, Take Action, Stay Focused…and find your soulmate.

Don’t forget to download your FREE E-Book – The Jcoach Guide to a Winning Online Dating Profile – by subscribing to Jcoach. You can also to follow us on Facebook and Twitter