how very lucky to be a girl

Jeffrey Platts generously shares his observations on dating, sex, and relationships.  His examinations come from a place of spirituality and connectedness.  His life experience as a yoga teacher, DJ and student of spirituality and growth come together in his blog to create a place that honors and promotes personal growth.

Hence Follow Your Own Groove.  A home of thoughtful, insightful words, encouragement, enlightenment, and development.  Jeffrey inexplicably seems to always have his finger on the pulse of what’s on my mind, whether it be my thoughts on social media, the paradox of choice in dating, refuting the idea of love being a numbers game, and reconnecting us with ourselves.  And he has a most amazing way of expressing these ideas.  Open, aware, kind, compassionate, honest.  Refreshing.

This post was no exception.  I’ve taken dating breaks before.  I believe firmly in them.  Jeffrey just happened to tweet a reminder of this post in a moment where I was full of doubt.  Reminding me of what I already knew.

Can Not Dating Improve Your Dating? (Abridged)
By Jeffrey Platts, Follow Your Own Groove

[If] your current vibe about dating isn’t exactly positive, rather than trudging through with more dates, you might consider a temporary, yet intentional, break from dating. I promise you, the world will not end and all the available singles won’t get snatched up by the time you decide to get back in the game. And as much as Hollywood would love to have you believe, you WILL NOT DIE without sex. (If anything, you might even recalibrate your brain chemistry.)

“But Jeffrey, I’m not currently getting any dates and nor am I getting any action, so why would I choose to keep that going?” A dating break isn’t about giving up or wanting to perpetuate your current reality. Rather, it’s a period of time where you deliberately take love/sex/dating off the table. It’s a chance to shift your focus for a bit and maybe even reconnect with the areas (spirituality, finances, friends, health, career, family, hobbies) that you’ve been neglecting in your continual pursuit of love and sex. It’s also a chance to take your mind off a subject that might be frustrating you and thereby let your overall vibe improve.

Deliberate intention is a powerful thing and is a very different energy than just reacting to your reality.  With one, you’re letting your reality dictate your actions. With the other, YOU are dictating your actions, regardless of the reality around you.

I’ve had several times in my life where I was single and I felt this pressure to continually put myself out there, keep a profile online, starting flirting with all the cute women I met throughout the day. But that honestly got exhausting really quickly. I felt like I need to be “on” all the time because “you never know who you’re going to meet”. My heart really wasn’t into this constant search. Not to mention that I often let that be my main focus, to the detriment of other equally important areas of my life. [My] getting involved with different women who I pretty much knew from the start weren’t going to lead anywhere just kept me from being available to a woman who could be a really good match for me.

Here are three suggestions to help make the most of your dating sabbatical.

1. Improve your vibrational story about love and dating. Maybe the reason your love life (and bed) hasn’t been rocking is because you’ve got some energy that needs to be cleaned up. Perhaps you’ve got some jealousy in your vibration that potential partners pick up on. Or you need to process through any lingering feelings for previous partners. Or you feel deep down that you’re not worthy of a relationship. A great exercise is to ask yourself: “The reason I don’t have _________ , is because _________.” Whatever comes after the “because” is likely a mental story (a.k.a. excuse, limitation) that is keeping you away from what you want. Remember, taking a dating break but keeping crappy stories in your head is NOT the intention here.
2. Update your intentions for a partner. Maybe with all these dates you’ve been going on you’ve lost touch with what the hell you really want in a partner. Unless you just want a warm body to sleep next to or someone to remind you to trim your nose hairs, maybe this is a great opportunity to look at what you really want. What qualities are most important to you in terms of health, money, kids, career, sex, travel, spirituality? And of course, whatever qualities you decide you prefer in a partner, make sure YOU are expressing those qualities, too. If you want someone who is reliable and trustworthy, then be reliable and trustworthy yourself.
3. Be flexible. A sabbatical is not about rejecting love or potential dating partners. It’s about CHOOSING to take a break from dating for your own positive reasons to move toward. Often times, during these breaks, when you’re not desperately looking for love anymore, your resistant state is gone, and you’re allowing other areas of your life to light up your energy, that’s when you’ll meet someone. So if you DO happen to meet someone really amazing during your break, for gosh sakes, hop on that train! This is also a practice in connecting to your heart and following your intuition!

And so I took my profiles down from Match, Nerve, OK Cupid, How About We, Plenty of Fish and Opposites Connect.  I am going to use this time to enjoy all of the things that being single in New York City mean to me.  All the freedoms that come with it.  I am going to have more time for me.  For my friends.  Time to be adventurous or lazy or industrious.  Time to catch up on all the things I’ve been neglecting when I’m busy dating.  Time to reflect on what I’ve done, achieved, learned and lack.  Time to recalibrate, redirect and reaffirm what I seek.  Time to be open and aware.  Of anything and everything in my path.  And to the idea that anything is possible.

I will walk this path happily on my own.  All the while open to the possibility that someone could wind up on that path before I expect or go in search of him.  That would be alright, too.

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