There are many people in this world who believe that becoming involved in an intimate relationship will be the precise thing that will make their lives all the better. They begin to invest a good chunk of their energy looking for someone out there to complete them or spend their lives with. In doing so, they place various personal ads out there on the Internet and peruse the dating sites daily looking for and hoping to meet “the one”. They continue to maintain a belief that there are plenty of fish in the sea where one of them is going to be the prime catch for themselves. As one date after another fails, or they get stood up, or conversations started online end up going nowhere, they get frustrated. Unfortunately, what they don’t realize is that the one fish they should be seeking and the one relationship they should be working on, is with themselves.
For the longest time, while I represented one of those fish in the sea waiting to either catch another fish or be caught in someone else’s net, I didn’t realize how much I was turning into a carcass rotting from the inside out. I had failed to see how I was seriously neglecting taking care of myself and working through all of my addictions and obsessions and character defects. Although my Higher Power was trying to send me blatant messages indicating this, I ignored all of them and maintained my fervent search and desire to be in an intimate relationship with someone else. I refused to allow myself to see the common factor in all those bad dates I went on, all those boring conversations I had with others from the dating sites, and all those failed short-term relationships I landed in. That common factor was always me.
In every case, no matter who I was pursing, I always found something wrong with them. What I didn’t realize is that each of them were a mirror to all the things I felt about myself. When I met someone I thought was ugly, it’s because I believed I was ugly. When I met someone I felt was boring, it’s because I believed I was boring. And when I met someone I thought droned on and on too much about their life, it’s because I droned on an on about my life with everyone else. The hard core truth is that each thing I judged in all of those fishes of the sea I had met were really things I felt about myself. All of them were only mirrors for the things I should have been working on healing from within myself. The simple fact was that although I had found sobriety from alcohol and drugs, I was still an addiction prone person living out a life of misery, self-pity, selfishness, and self-centeredness. The bottom line was that I really didn’t love myself just as I was and because of that, I was never going to find any success with any of those fishes I met in the sea of life. By not loving myself, I was never going to be able to unconditionally love and accept anyone I met and instead I would only look at each of them with a tainted set of eyes.
This is precisely why 12 Step recovery programs recommend a person like I once was, stay out of intimate relationships (if they weren’t already in one at the time of becoming sober) for at least a year. That is only to help them develop time to work on healing and developing that better relationship with themselves. I didn’t do that so I spent many years going from person to person, having tumultuous dating experiences, and occasionally falling back into some addiction based behaviors because of it.
Just to be frank, I know not everyone is an addiction based person who needs a 12 Step recovery program. But what I’ve found is that most people, regardless of whether they are addiction based or not, go from one fish to another finding something wrong with each of them solely because they haven’t worked through enough of their own baggage in life and usually don’t love themselves. Instead, they chase one fish after another, judging each of them until they finally land in an intimate relationship with one of them whom they initially really like. The relationship starts off like a drug that makes them feel really good but as time moves forward, it no longer gives them that feel good feeling it once gave them and they begin to see all the things in the other partner that they don’t like about themselves. Or maybe they start to get afraid of all the good qualities the other person has that they don’t have. Either way, they begin sabotaging it until it ends with them being back in that pool with the plenty of other fish that exist, starting the cyclical process all over again. Until they become willing to look in the mirror, face their baggage, and begin to love themselves a lot more, they will continue to repeat this pattern of not liking something about every fish they meet. And sadly, some of those fish they meet are people they could spend the rest of their lives with, except they won’t see that because they’re blinded by their own disgust of themselves.
If you are relating to any of what I’ve been saying and have been finding no success in the dating realm, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and realize that maybe the Universe has been trying to send you a message. Are you able to go right now and look in a mirror and tell yourself that you like what your seeing? Have you worked through a lot of your own baggage and inner demons? Can you honestly say you truly love yourself unconditionally? If you answered “No” to any of these questions, there’s a good chance that while there are plenty of fish in the sea, none of them are ever going to suit your fancy because your fish of a life has been slowly turning into that carcass and rotting away for years. So maybe it’s best to take some time away from the dating realm and start working on being able to answer “Yes” to each of those questions. As maybe then, the Universe will guide you in a current straight towards another fish, who will end up being the one you mate with for the rest of your life.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson