time for a clean slateIn the part one and part two of this five part series on compatibility, ‘type’, and ‘common’ interests, I have explained how these three things that our choices in men and relationships are based on are often at the heart of why our relationships are floundering. Many of you are pursuing a ‘soulmate’ and chasing a ‘feeling’ rather than putting everything together and looking at the bigger picture of your relationship to see if the relationship is actually healthy and making YOU happy.

In this part, the focus is on compatibility, a word that I hear a lot from people who are struggling to find a mate or are involved in relationships that aren’t working.

According to Cambridge’s Advanced Learners Dictionary, the definition of compatibility is:

“able to exist, live together, or work successfully with something or something or someone else”

And this is where the concept of how ‘right’ someone is for us and our compatibility falls down completely when you consider our involvement with Mr Unavailables and assclowns.

You are only able to ‘exist’ together if you play by their rules and dance to the beat of their terms.

Many women who have been involved with emotionally unavailable men and assclowns don’t know who they are anymore, what they want, what they need, what’s inappropriate, and even what ‘healthy’ looks like.

We’re too busy worrying about what men want, need, like, don’t like, and making them the centre of the universe, and whichever man is in the frame at the moment, we bend, yield, adapt, and make ourselves compatible with their behaviour.

We’re so busy trying to be compatible with the latest guy that it hasn’t occurred to us to ask whether he is compatible with us.

These relationships, dalliances, pursuits are not working. Many women are unhappy with the very choices that they claim are catering to their compatibility, type, and common interests.

Whilst the basis of the dysfunctional relationship between women and men who end up detracting from their self-esteem and catering to the negative beliefs about themselves, love, and relationships works for them, it’s not in a positive and successful way.

This ultimately goes back to asking yourself why you keep throwing yourself into oncoming traffic and wondering why you get run down? This is the relationship insanity of being involved with men that you’re really not that compatible with.

Part of the reason why we keep flogging a dead horse even when the relationship and him are showing very little signs of life is because it caters to these beliefs and in sticking with these men like glue, we don’t have to look too closely at ourselves and change our behaviour because we’re too busy obsessing about him, his problems, his everything.

The dysfunction works because the thought of changing and putting the focus on ourselves is incredibly uncomfortable and seemingly scary, and so we stay in the comfort zone of the familiarity of the uncomfortable relationships and behaviour from these men that we’re comfortable with and we call it ‘compatibility’.

But really, whilst it ‘works’ on some levels for you, in the overall grander scheme of things, i.e, the bigger picture, this doesn’t work for you because you know it’s screwed up so you end up lying down on the sacrificial alter trying to change the very man and the relationship that you claim is symbolic of your compatibility.

In fact, you often internalise the behaviour of these men and the struggle to get them to behave how you want or give you the relationship you profess to desire, and you blame yourself, obsess over him and the relationship, riddle yourself with self-doubt, and then try to change yourself in the hope that he will finally see how amazing you are and how your love is the best one for him, and accept you, validate you, and give you the relationship you want.

If you have to keep changing, throwing your boundaries out the window, and eroding at your self-esteem to be with the guy you claim to be sooooo compatible with, you really aren’t very compatible…especially when the onus of change seems to lie very squarely with you if you want to be with him.

Let me ask you all something, what has he done for you lately?

What is so wonderful about this man that you are compatible with the idea of being with someone who’s not actually compatibile with you, a toxic type, and may share some ‘interests’ but who is fighting being in a relationship with you and loving, respecting, trusting, and caring about you?

If you have been habitually involved with emotionally unavailable men and/or assclowns you are compatible with bullsh*t, illusions, and false promises.

You’re compatible with lies, inaction, the smoke and mirrors of words that carry very little weight, contradictory behaviour, ambiguity, denial, drama, frustration, pain, devastation, and placing yourself with men in relationships that offer the least likely possibility for yielding commitment and happiness.

These relationships don’t work for you. The behaviour of emotionally unavailable men and assclowns doesn’t work for you.

Compatibility isn’t about composing a list of things as if you’re filling out a profile on a dating site, ticking boxes. Look at the bigger picture – are you both together working together successfully on your relationship or has at least one of you got at least one foot out the proverbial door?

If you both share a love of music, art, travelling etc, that’s wonderful if aside from these things, he’s a man with values that are compatible with yours that result in you being able to share in a relationship where you both have both feet in, and there is the common ground of each other, and respect, love, care, and trust.

I know people who are really happy together who don’t share lots of the same interests, but they work. Successfully.

Working dysfunctionally and being unhappy to boot is not the same thing.

If you can’t communicate with your guy about the good, bad, the ugly and in between without thinking the relationship is going to go t*ts up because you haven’t said what he wants to hear, you really aren’t compatible.

If the only way that you can be with him is to throw away your boundaries and your values so that you can exist on his terms, you really aren’t compatible.

If being with this man means that you can’t love you and treat yourself with due care, love, trust, and respect, you are not compatible.

If you have to pretend that he’s more wonderful, interesting etc than he actually is, in fact, if you have to pretend full stop, you are not compatible.

If you want to be with him and he doesn’t want to be with you, or wants to be with you and other women too, you are not compatible.

If you’re the one doing a sales pitch on yourself constantly, trying to convince him that he should be with you, that your love/relationship is where he should be at, you are not compatible.

If you spend more time being miserable and trying to get him to be what you want rather than living and enjoying your life, you are not compatible.

If you have to sell yourself short so that his ego can get a good stroking, you are not compatible.

If your core values don’t stack up and you value different things, you are not compatible.

Compatibility is not about finding a perfect person that you’ve trumped up in your imagination or finding a mirror of yourself, or finding someone to fill a void within yourself.

Illusions yield relationships that are not rooted in reality.

Emotionally unavailable men and assclowns mirror the negative things that we believe about ourselves, love, and relationships – read my post on what our choice in men says about us.

Trying to build up our value by trying to find men to validate us and fill our voids is actually creating greater voids.

You know when you get those people that break up because one person wanted to lead the party life, travelling, having fun, and avoiding putting down roots, and the other wanted to put down some roots and build a life and have a family? Well those people invariably end up breaking up if they don’t find a common ground because they have different values and value different things.

Some people value their ‘freedom’, their security, their solodom, the lack of responsibility, and not dealing with their fears about commitment.

Some people are scared of solid ground, consistency, being expected, wanted, and needed from.

As women who want to be loved, we invariably value someone who doesn’t perceive being with us as shackles trapping them in the jail cell of a relationship!

We want to be ‘together’, cherished, have someone behave responsibly and not be afraid to be responsible for the impact of their actions on us or the relationship.

We do want commitment and when we deal with our own fears and issues, we will want someone who will put both of their feet in without being dragged their screaming and kicking.

As basics of a relationship, you need to be able to rely upon someone, expect, want, and need from without being punished by being called ‘needy’, ‘psycho’, or having them withdraw themselves so that they can manage down your expectations.

You need to be able to trust them.

You need to not be living in fear.

No matter how great the sexual attraction, how much money he has or doesn’t have, how good he is at his job, the fact that he likes reading, writing, is a poet, a musician, artist, good sense of humour, makes you laugh till your sides ache, big dick, medium dick, liked by his peers, got promoted recently, financially stable, ability to pull other women, how tall or short he is, whether he’s black or white, dresses well, absails, surfs, risk taker, likes gardening, climbs mountains, watches Columbo or whatever, what is the point in basing your compatibility on these things if you don’t get a committed relationship out of it.

If you have found yourself habitually involved with emotionally unavailable men and assclowns, you, so far, have been compatible with men that do not yield healthy relationships that leave you feeling good.

If you want to share the values of emotionally unavailable men and assclowns, then you’re compatible.

They value keeping themselves at a distance, living in lalaland believing they’re the best thing since sliced bread, getting an ego stroke, and any other fringe benefits that come in the package, as long as you don’t want, need, or expect too much from them or attempt to change the rules.

If you don’t want to share their values, trust me when I say that trying to turn a pigs ear into a silk purse by trying to get them to change and value you and your values is unlikely to yield you a return on your emotional investment, and may actually leave you emotionally bankrupt.

As always, take the focus off him and bring it back to you. Take care of yourself, learn to like, love, and value yourself by putting boundaries in place that reflect these things and teach people how to treat you and you will value different things because you’ll realise you feel a damn sight better.

As I said in part two, you’ve been chasing a feeling and focusing on how you’ve felt at those good times rather than looking at the bigger picture and ultimately, the incompatibility means that most of the time, you don’t feel that good at all.

It’s not an instant overnight thing. Many of us are impatient as if being compatible with assclowns and emotionally unavailable men is something that changes at the flick of a switch.

But it doesn’t actually take very long if you really do put them aside for some time, focus on you, build yourself back and focus on being compatible with yourself.

If you can’t like and love you, you will struggle to find love and be happy with it. You need to be able to exist with yourself and love yourself unconditionally so that no matter what happens, your sense of self stays intact, instead of you adapting and morphing to make yourself compatible with inappropriate men and situations.

Next up, I’ll be looking at type!

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