Session Notes

Good Men Project

It was ordinary. Not fluffy, not overly romantic. Real. The kind of real I coveted in couples who married shortly after high school, in wrinkled older spouses walking down the street, still holding hands. I had wanted “real” so badly I often wondered if I had given so much power to the fantasy relationship that I couldn’t hack it, that I sabotaged it so I could never have it for myself.

What I missed when assessing other people’s relationship was their reality. I saw sugar topping the cookie, not the month-old flour involved in the baking.

Psychology Today

All of us are attracted to a certain type that stops us dead in our tracks, be it a physical type, an emotional type, or a personality type. Let’s say that there is a “spectrum of attraction,” from 1 to 10; the people at the far end aren’t physically or romantically attracted to us at all, but those at the upper end are icons-they’re compellingly attractive, leaving us weak in the knees and triggering both our longing and our insecurity.

The Philosophers Mail –

When first looking out for a partner, the requirements we come up with are coloured by a beautiful non-specific sentimental vagueness: we’ll say we really want to find someone who is ‘kind’ or ‘fun to be with’, ‘attractive’ or ‘up for an adventure…’

It isn’t that such desires are wrong, they are just not remotely precise enough in their understanding of what we, in particular, are going to require in order to stand a chance of being happy – or, more accurately, not consistently miserable.