My dear Jil, if you keep cancelling dates like you do, nobody will take you serious. Even the man who’s very much into you and wants something with you will have to give up. Why, you ask. You cancel dates at the last minute, even dates agreed on a week earlier. You blow off guys. Something always comes up – though not always totally unjustifiable. But it all adds up. It shows the regard you have for people and hints at a self-centeredness, and even selfishness. It’s insensitive.Diaries are cleared for you – the man is looking forward to spending time with you, only for you to cancel.
You create these problems by non-prioritisation of your dates and the over-loading of your schedule. Something has to come up in such a scenario. Overloaded schedules assume an impossibility – perfect synchronicity. But it means you have no regard for the time of the other person. You don’t see the person as important enough. At first your attractive allure will keep the man interested in rescheduling the date, but at some point that will wear thin.
It’s the same thing with the issue of your lateness for dates. You take off from your office at the very moment the movie you’re supposed to see is supposed to start. There’s of course the disappointment about your behavior, and a substantial portion of the movie is gone! That movie date becomes a ruined experience, unless it’s rescued thereafter with a drink. Of course if you rush off after the movie the guy’s whole day is technically ruined. There’ll be a psychological inadequacy: you know you had a date but you wonder if you had a date. It won’t feel like a date, it will feel like something underwhelming and not enough.
You do want a husband but you’re doing everything to turn the men away. You make it difficult to love you. Yes, you’re a busy executive and all that, but if you choose to marry your work why then again want a man in marriage? I’m just saying you do self-defeatist things and then you wonder why the men won’t stay, or why they lose interest fast. And you’re not willing to give of yourself. It’s almost like you’re doing the men a favour. You can’t see your self-contained life is breeding you pain and loneliness. You can’t want to be in a relationship and only be thinking of yourself and your conveniences. I know you’re a wonderful person, but you hardly give people the chance to know who you are. If you give the impression you’re too busy for a relationship, any wonder the men will rather go somewhere else? No one wants to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t have time for them. What’s the point of the relationship if you’re secondary to everything in the woman’s life, he’ll ask! And so those who love you are at a loss as to you. Those who truly want you can’t fathom you.
As per wanting to be left to yourself and left to do your thing, that’s an unrealistic expectation in a marriage. What if we claim the same privileges for the other party, would there be a relationship? You’ll have to give up something in a relationship. You always have to. Both of you must give up some things. Relationship costs both parties. Both must sacrifice for the sake of being together. There’s always something the other person will rather be doing too, just as the “somethings” you’re always doing. You always have a client who shows up at the last minute… There’s always a family contingency… There’s always somewhere you have to go, someone you have to see, a contact you have to make… Even when you’re on your date there’s constant texting, constant phone calls, constant mailing…
Essentially you don’t have time for your dates, and then you get annoyed they avoid you after the first date, or won’t propose. How can they? They’re wondering whether you’ll have time for them in marriage, whether they won’t suffer emotionally. You have to be careful about this caffeinated lifestyle in other respects. It’s not healthy. A caffeinated lifestyle is a high-energy expending constant motion of an existence. You’ve got to take time to live. It’s almost as if you’re afraid of being still, like you have to be in constant motion, like a Newton equation. You’re like one of those wound up toys. As the winding slacks you wind up yourself with stress so you can keep moving. When are you going to have time for yourself? And for the things that really matter in life, like relationship? When are you going to settle down, to at least slow down to have a relationship? When you do settle down into a loving and affirming relationship you’ll realise what you’ve been missing.
As it is, you’re burning the candle on both ends with your constant busy-ness. One thing you need to realise is that work never ends. And client demands never end. And there’s always a new corporate goal, there’s always the threat of a looming competitor… There’s always a need for strategic revision, a re-evaluation of corporate objectives… Take time to breathe, and to smell the roses. Take time to smell the aroma of life. Your emotional state is being amended, and it’s being reconfigured by your over-devotion to work and stress. Because you’re in a constant warrior mode, you can’t have a civil courtship – a basic relationship. Your defenses are always up, your tone harsh, you come off hard. There’s always tenseness in your voice. This guy doesn’t want to take a corporate executive to the movie, he wants to take Jil. And when you transpose the emotional status of a corporate executive into a relationship it just doesn’t work.
Why don’t you for once cancel that extra meeting you booked that took out that date you agreed to go on earlier? The world won’t come to an end if you don’t go for that extra meeting. Stop imagining you’re indispensable to the world, or your corporation. Whether you like it or not, at some point age will render you redundant, even to your organisation. Long before that however, life will make you realise how much you need that guy you treated badly by cancelling that date. Wisdom is the ability to know the things of primary importance in life, and the things of secondary importance. There are some things that should learn to wait, so the most important things in life can take their place.
Your mentor, LA
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com