Recently, I was asked to do a guest post on one of two topics. They were “how far should we look for love” and “how blind can we be in finding love?” It was a hard choice, but the one I chose for the guest post was the latter of the two, and mainly because it corresponded to my new book, The Three Month Plan. Since then, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the other question and felt inspired to answer it. After all, it’s a great topic that most of us can relate to.
So, the question is, how far should we look for love? As a 'hopeful' romantic, my answer is quite simple. I don’t really feel that we should be looking for love, but rather that it will find you. Have you ever lost something before, and searched high and low for it only to not find it? Yet, the moment you stop searching it magically appears? I feel love is the same way.
We spend so much time creating check lists about the type of person we are looking for. We have physical descriptions that we tend to not stray from, measurements on a financial scale that we compare our prospects to and of course, we look at potential marriage material. Okay, not everyone looks right away at all of that, I mean there are some people just looking for a hookup. But, the majority of the dating population who is actually looking for something a little more meaningful bases their search on at least a few pre-requisites. Doesn’t this seem sort of shallow and one-sided when you read it? It doesn’t seem that way at all when we are doing it, but that’s because we don’t notice we are. We, as humans, practice self-protection especially if we have been wronged before and that’s a hard thing to realize until someone points it out. The problem with creating these lists is that we are excluding so many people who may potentially make us truly happy.
After all, isn’t our goal in life to be happy? To find someone who can make us laugh and share our experiences with us? I hear a lot of people say they just want someone who will take care of them. Relationships shouldn’t even be about that. You don’t need anyone else to take care of you, but you should want to take care of the other person. Loving someone else more than you love yourself, because you like how you are when you are with them.
So, ask yourself a question. How successful have you been in looking for love? If your answer is filled with regrets and bad decisions, maybe the answer of how to improve it is right in front of you. Maybe, you should stop looking for it altogether and let it find you. Once you truly are happy with yourself, and stop trying so hard maybe someone will cross your path that was meant to. There are after all, different types of love and I’m a firm believer that people cross our paths for a reason. Some are here to help us learn to love ourselves, or to teach us to be better people and learn from our mistakes. Others may be exactly what we need to balance ourselves. If you aren’t open to it, you close yourself off to experience something that could be what you’ve been looking for all along. So many couples have met that way, unexpectedly and knew from the minute they did that their lives had changed forever. True love has no boundaries, limitations, knows no distance and prevails over everything when given the chance.
In my new book, The Three Month Plan, Kelly Callahan has been looking for love in all the wrong places. She has dated various types of guys and always played the good girl role. She decides that maybe her lack of finding love is based on the fact that she doesn’t break out of that role. She spends so much time searching for that connection, that she doesn’t see what is right in front of her. It’s a perfect example of how we waste so much time on planning on own lives, that we don’t see the real plan that’s been laid out for us.
So, the question is, how far should we look for love? As a 'hopeful' romantic, my answer is quite simple. I don’t really feel that we should be looking for love, but rather that it will find you. Have you ever lost something before, and searched high and low for it only to not find it? Yet, the moment you stop searching it magically appears? I feel love is the same way.
We spend so much time creating check lists about the type of person we are looking for. We have physical descriptions that we tend to not stray from, measurements on a financial scale that we compare our prospects to and of course, we look at potential marriage material. Okay, not everyone looks right away at all of that, I mean there are some people just looking for a hookup. But, the majority of the dating population who is actually looking for something a little more meaningful bases their search on at least a few pre-requisites. Doesn’t this seem sort of shallow and one-sided when you read it? It doesn’t seem that way at all when we are doing it, but that’s because we don’t notice we are. We, as humans, practice self-protection especially if we have been wronged before and that’s a hard thing to realize until someone points it out. The problem with creating these lists is that we are excluding so many people who may potentially make us truly happy.
After all, isn’t our goal in life to be happy? To find someone who can make us laugh and share our experiences with us? I hear a lot of people say they just want someone who will take care of them. Relationships shouldn’t even be about that. You don’t need anyone else to take care of you, but you should want to take care of the other person. Loving someone else more than you love yourself, because you like how you are when you are with them.
So, ask yourself a question. How successful have you been in looking for love? If your answer is filled with regrets and bad decisions, maybe the answer of how to improve it is right in front of you. Maybe, you should stop looking for it altogether and let it find you. Once you truly are happy with yourself, and stop trying so hard maybe someone will cross your path that was meant to. There are after all, different types of love and I’m a firm believer that people cross our paths for a reason. Some are here to help us learn to love ourselves, or to teach us to be better people and learn from our mistakes. Others may be exactly what we need to balance ourselves. If you aren’t open to it, you close yourself off to experience something that could be what you’ve been looking for all along. So many couples have met that way, unexpectedly and knew from the minute they did that their lives had changed forever. True love has no boundaries, limitations, knows no distance and prevails over everything when given the chance.
In my new book, The Three Month Plan, Kelly Callahan has been looking for love in all the wrong places. She has dated various types of guys and always played the good girl role. She decides that maybe her lack of finding love is based on the fact that she doesn’t break out of that role. She spends so much time searching for that connection, that she doesn’t see what is right in front of her. It’s a perfect example of how we waste so much time on planning on own lives, that we don’t see the real plan that’s been laid out for us.
About The Author:
Horses were one of my first loves, and writing soon followed. As a child, I spent hours writing poems, and short stories (about horses). My parents realized that I was horse-obsessed and decided to buy me one after taking riding lessons for two years. I think they hoped that all of the hard work, and hours spent mucking stalls would help me give up this expensive hobby. They were wrong. Writing is still a passion of mine, although now I primarily write fiction. My first novel, Red Rock, was published in 2010, and big surprise, there are horses in it. My second novel, The Three Month Plan was released August 2013.
Other Loves: My family, yoga, skincare and makeup, sushi, and raising money for pediatric cancer. I have two rescue dogs and would have more if there weren’t zoning restrictions. I’m always trying something new, as I tend to get bored very easily. Thankfully, my love of driving around with the gas light on fuels some excitement. I love novels with happy endings, and am a hopeful romantic. My latest obsession is browsing Netflix, and I can name all 50 states in alphabetical order in under 30 seconds. Do I feel a wager coming on?
The Three Month Plan Website: Www.thethreemonthplan.com
Kinberley’s Website: Www.kimberleypatterson.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Redrockbook
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Kpatters
Amazon
Horses were one of my first loves, and writing soon followed. As a child, I spent hours writing poems, and short stories (about horses). My parents realized that I was horse-obsessed and decided to buy me one after taking riding lessons for two years. I think they hoped that all of the hard work, and hours spent mucking stalls would help me give up this expensive hobby. They were wrong. Writing is still a passion of mine, although now I primarily write fiction. My first novel, Red Rock, was published in 2010, and big surprise, there are horses in it. My second novel, The Three Month Plan was released August 2013.
Other Loves: My family, yoga, skincare and makeup, sushi, and raising money for pediatric cancer. I have two rescue dogs and would have more if there weren’t zoning restrictions. I’m always trying something new, as I tend to get bored very easily. Thankfully, my love of driving around with the gas light on fuels some excitement. I love novels with happy endings, and am a hopeful romantic. My latest obsession is browsing Netflix, and I can name all 50 states in alphabetical order in under 30 seconds. Do I feel a wager coming on?
The Three Month Plan Website: Www.thethreemonthplan.com
Kinberley’s Website: Www.kimberleypatterson.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Redrockbook
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Kpatters
Amazon
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