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One of my consistent recommendations to people is to have an ongoing honest conversation with yourself and most of this comes down to asking questions and listening to your thoughts. We often bumble along through life unconsciously, not challenging our beliefs, not questioning our actions and the validity of some of our ‘big ideas’, so I want to regularly do little quizzes to provoke that thought process and to help uncover blocks to improving our self-esteem and our relationship habits.

The first mini quiz is about attraction and your beliefs around feeling and receiving interest from others. The more you answer ‘agree’ with the following statements, the more opportunity you have to address some ‘blocks’. I have been ‘guilty’ of 8 of these in the past.

1. I believe that there are certain types of people I could not be involved with.

2. If someone is physically attractive and shares some of my interests, that makes us compatible.

3. I believe in love at first sight.

4. I can tell very quickly whether a date has the potential to turn into a relationship.

5. If someone doesn’t reciprocate my interest, I feel more interested and more curious.

6. I believe that you can’t help who you’re attracted to.

7. I like and use dating sites because it feels good to have people interested in me.

8. Sometimes, even though I’m not really interested in someone, I need to know that they’re interested in me.

9. If someone isn’t interested in me, I feel I have to work harder to make them interested in me by proving myself to them.

Read on for the ‘answers’….
1. I believe that there are certain types of people I could not be involved with.

As long as those ‘certain types’ come under the headings of stuff like emotionally unavailable, red flaggers, and assclowns, you’re good to go. However if it’s based on anything else, particularly if it’s superficial or basically not related to shared values, or you think you can only be with a ‘type’, you are limiting your options. I’ll put it this way, if you have a type and you’re not happily in a relationship with it and never have been, you have a toxic type that you need to flush out.

I vowed I would never be involved with someone who is sports crazy (especially cricket), loves sci-fi, and is a Pisces. The boyf is all of these things…

2. If someone is physically attractive and shares some of my interests, that makes us compatible.

If I could press a wrong answer buzzer for you, I would. They can look just as you want them to and have a shared love of paragliding, high brow books, Argentinean steaks, and a love of dogs, but if you don’t share core common values, you are incompatible.

Shared values create a shared future and direction for the relationship.

3. I believe in love at first sight.

Not only do you give yourself so much credit that you believe you can love someone on sight, but it implies that love doesn’t ‘grow’, it just ‘happens’. If people have felt love at first sight and lasted, they’re the exception not the norm.

Until you get to know someone in reality, what you love is an image in your mind.

4. I can tell very quickly whether a date has the potential to turn into a relationship.

While sometimes you’ll be right, sometimes you may actually be being too hasty, especially if your reason for discarding the potential of someone is based in unhealthy relationship beliefs. Particularly if you have a ‘type’ and a ‘pattern’, I would re-evaluate your ‘hiring and firing’ process.

Remember there is no fire. The sky won’t fall down if you go on an extra date or two.

5. If someone doesn’t reciprocate my interest, I feel more interested and more curious.

Be careful. Disinterest is your ‘hook’ when actually disinterest should be the sound of alarm bells ringing and a signal for you to back off physically, mentally, and emotionally. The curiosity and increased interest is caused by the perceived rejection, which in you wanting to validate yourself via getting their attention causes you to feel the increasing interest the less attention that you get.

You cannot get everyone’s interest. It’s a pain in the arse, but it’s life. Keep the amount of energy, time, emotions etc that you invest in a disinterested party to an absolute minimum.

6. I believe that you can’t help who you are attracted to.

Yes you can, especially if you are conscious in your relationships instead of sleepwalking and being swept along in the wind. Don’t render yourself helpless. If what you feel you can’t help being attracted to is something that ends up detracting from you and is even dangerous, work on finding the root of the attraction and having healthier beliefs and love habits.

When you discover that walking in front of oncoming traffic causes you to get run down, you stop doing it and/or proceed with caution.

7. I like and use dating sites because it feels good to have people interested in me.

If you’ve ever had someone use you for an ego stroke, remember that feeling well before you click. Also remember that dating sites are already full of attention seekers cluttering it up that have no real intention of forging connections. Don’t let that be you! What you’re doing is ‘collecting’ attention and while we’re all human and like some attention, you may get hooked on getting attention instead of forging connections.

Remember, just because someone gives you some attention or is interested doesn’t mean you have to be interested or that they’re ‘right’ for you.

8. Sometimes, even though I’m not really interested in someone, I need to know that they’re interested in me.

Why? What does it tell you about you when someone who you are not even interested in wants you? Work on liking and loving you and more importantly validating yourself. Don’t be an attention seeker and focus your energies on forging real connections instead of temporary ego strokes.

9. If someone isn’t interested in me, I feel I have to work harder to make them interested in me by proving myself to them.

This is how you can end up opening yourself up to doing things that you may later come to view as embarrassing or even humiliating. If someone doesn’t share your interest, back off because you’re not a used car salesman and you don’t need to sell someone the concept of you. There could be all sorts of reasons why they’re not interested and it doesn’t have to be about you, but it’s the topline information that counts – they’re not interested.

Being in love with someone is something that you can do on your own, but a mutually fulfilling, loving relationship takes two.

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