During a conversation on Google+ today,this comment was made about the successful method of finding a partner:
It’s more about how aware each person is of what it is they’re looking for and how honest they are with themselves about the willingness and ability of the other person to fulfill those desires.
To which my reply was:
Why should awareness and willingness to fulfill your partner’s desires be required? The answer is because the differences between the partners requires that one be aware and willing to fulfill the desires of the partner–it is due to the lack of natural affinity.
And so that philosophy follows the traditional advice to slowly learn to adapt and accept and appreciate the differences in our partners.
But it doesn’t work. There is a fatal flaw in that approach: We marry because of our similarities, but divorce because of our differences.
Willingness and ability to fulfill our partner’s desires (or have them fulfill ours) is the same as saying ‘love is a choice’, which means that you must decide to love the things you genuinely don’t love. If the two people were truly naturally aligned, then they would naturally, effortlessly fulfill each other’s desires. Awareness and willingness would not be required.
We’ve been trying for a very long time to promote learning to fulfill, awareness, adapting, appreciating. What is the crowning achievement for all that work? A 50% divorce rate that’s been going on for decades.
Of course you must be aware of what you’re looking for as a beginning. But most people don’t know the difference between what they want as opposed to what they need. Just take a look at Sandra Bullock’s selection of Jesse James! That’s where the Mirror Effect comes in: finding a partner deeply alike you (a mirror) is the only way to discover a relationship with true, natural affinity at its foundation.
Once you begin forging a new, precise understanding of what you need in a partner (a mirror), then every step along the way will be different:
Only when you diverge from the traditional path do you have the chance to avoid the traditional outcome.
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