My last post was about the importance of knowing what you want when starting a dating relationship. ‘Honour’ made an interesting comment on this post, “the hard part is how do you figure out what you want”. Well, I want to give you some guidance on how to figure this out.
Long life goals are good. They can give you vision and purpose. They don’t always help you figure out short term goals though. So, rather than ask yourself, “what do I want?”, ask yourself, “what do I want right now?” For example, a lot of men I talk to say that they eventually want to meet a really great woman and settle down with her. This is a great long term goal. This, however, does not necessarily lend itself to short term action. You may eventually want to find a great woman, but may feel that you want a lot more general dating experience. A short term, right-now goal that addresses this might be to casually date 3 women. Now, you know what you want right now.
By thinking in terms of what you want right now, this frees you from the worry about if this is really the right thing, or if you are making the right decision. You can change what you want right now all the time. You can decide tomorrow what you want, and do the same again the next day. If your long term goal is to settle down with a great woman, that doesn’t mean that has to be your short term goal as well. If you eventually want to date a lot of women, you may decide that right now you just want one girlfriend, to get the experience of being in a relationship.
There is no right or wrong answer.
You can take this further, and apply this idea to every woman you meet. If you meet a woman out at a bar, or out grocery shopping, or at a party, take a moment to ask yourself, “what do I want right now with this woman?” It doesn’t have to be the same thing for every woman. You may want something fun, casual, and physical with one woman, and a close, caring, intimate relationship with another.
Here is a way that I figure out what I want right now. I imagine it. I picture it. I imagine the type of relationship I want to have a with a woman. Then I picture another one. Then another one. Chances are, one of these will stick out to you. You will know which one. Now, here is a very important step to this. Forget about what other people think. It is really easy to get caught up in this pattern of “proving yourself” by dating a lot of chicks, or getting a lot of “notches on the belt”, or proving that you are a good “pickup artist”. This should be informed by one thing and one thing only. What you really want for yourself.
I hope this helps. I have to give credit to Lance of PickUp 101 for this idea. I first heard it verbalized by him, and it became a very useful tool for me.
