Hello everyone! It’s Valentine day!!
Do you feel that the love is in the air?
(Sorry for the cliche opening, love is inside your brain, the feeling of dopamine rushing because you met someone. It's not in the air)
Anyways, for this blog post, I decided to share something that might be useful yet casual. What else, other than advice!
I am not that good at sharing advice but it’s the one kind of writing that I think people can take if they want to and leave it if they want to. At least my reader got something useful, which is why I love sharing advice.
These are advice only, they are not rules to oblige to, so take it lightly y’all!
OK so here goes…
14. We look for similarities and familiarities in relationships. However, do not let this blind you.
Simply to say, you may find someone you love that is super familiar and similar to you. However, if this person doesn’t make you a better person, not a good partner, or even worse...cheats on you, do not rely on similarity. Keep your sight objective and do the best you can. Either stay and try to improve the relationship, or walk away.
13. Ladies, if someone is so mysteriously attracted to you to the point you have to google “signs a man attracted to me”, chances are : he is not worth your time.
If a man really likes you, he won’t make you go figure. And worse, if a man treats you this way, maybe he is not a good life partner to begin with?
12. Always have self boundaries.
In Mark Manson’s “The Art of Not Giving A F*uck”, When you are in a relationship with no boundary, each person will probably solve others’ problem to make themselves feel better and then go on to abandon their own problem. When actually each person should be solving their own problem to make themselves better. Sometimes when the situation really needs help, of course they should help each other. But each person should never expect the other to solve it for them always or expect themselves to solve the other person. Each person can only support the partner to solve their own problem, not obligatorily solve it.
11. Always open for criticism and accept your partner’s got to say. No matter how truthful/hurtful it is.
Criticism is always avoided, we all hate it, right? At work, at family, at relationship. But criticism is what makes us better. So when your partner gives you a critique, it might be that your partner just wants to make you, or the relationship, better. This means he/she loves you so much they care about your improvement or want to save the relationship.
10. For men, to escape from friend zone is to be bold.
If you are stuck in a friend zone you always hate it to be, it is not because you’re too nice , or that bad guys are attractive. It is because you’re not clear enough. Just like men are not mind readers, so are women. So if you like her, tell her. If you did confess and the woman says that she just wanted to be your friend, trust me, this is not a good relationship to begin with, at least not the right time. So be bold, say no thank you and walk away. You deserve a woman who loves you the same way you love her!
9. You will never find the perfect partner. So don’t try to search for it.
According to Alain de Botton’s talk at Zeitgeist in 2017, you can never find Mr./Ms. Right. Well the thing is, a loving and ideal relationship is all about accepting your partner’s bad traits and thinking “ yeah he snores so loudly when he sleeps but I still love him no matter what” . Ladies and gentlemen, that’s love.
8. If you’re single and looking for love, try list it down this way.
First, name all the core values they must have. For example, I definitely can’t accept a liar, so this man must be an honest man. List down the values that if not fulfilled, it’s just unacceptable. Second, list down some optional values that are nice to have, for example nice to have if this man has the same music taste as me. This value is optional, he can not have it, but it’d be better if he does. And the third, list down some bad traits you can compromise with and that you can think of. For example, I don’t mind if a man doesn’t like movies. This last list is probably the hardest to think of, right ? But this tests your compromising behaviour, so try to find some, but not too much (have a little respect for yourself too)
7. Never be afraid of conflict.
In a family, conflict is so often you don’t even calculate it. Let alone with a stranger! Merging life together with a stranger is bound to have conflict. Conflict is healthy if resolved healthily. Don’t be afraid of conflict and problems. It helps you both to grow and be a stronger partner. Sometimes we might think “but this friend of mine doesn’t fight with her boyfriend often, they looked happy all the time!”, well you don’t live with them, you don’t 24/7 being in the same car with them, of course you won’t know if they ever fight. And the absence of fight sometimes might indicate a problematic communication (means either party is not being outspoken/honest), so never ever base your relationship on the standard of others’ relationship and accept your conflict the way it is.
6. Honesty is your most valuable gift to your partner.
For some reason, in this modern day and age and in some cultures that I know of, honesty is considered an unpleasant gift by many. According to Mark Manson’s “The Art of Not Giving A F*uck”, when Mark travelled to Russia and met some girls, he was surprised that they are so honest and so upfront. He then realised that honesty is considered rude in his culture and many cultures that he know of. He then has this theory that it could probably be due to the political reason in several countries. When he discussed this to a teacher, he has this theory that “Having lived under communism for so many generations, with little to no economic opportunity and caged by a culture of fear, Russian society found the most valuable currency to be trust.”
And that in free western culture (and some countries that I know of and the country I came from) “...there existed an abundance of economic opportunity — so much economic opportunity that it became far more valuable to present yourself in a certain way, even if it was false, than to actually be that way.”. Understanding this, I feel that trust was once a really valuable asset that now lost its value due to economic opportunity. People now value white lies much better than honesty to the point honesty is like a rare gem stone that only few people can buy. Imagine how far more expensive it is than a sports car, or a private island. In my idea, honesty is the best and the most valuable gift to whoever you love.
5. If you’re still single, remember this : there are 2 general reasons why you’re still single. Either you love yourself too much or you love other people too much.
According to Alain de Botton’s talk at Zeitgeist in 2017, If you love yourself too much you’d be thinking “well I am the best person ever and no one deserves me!” when in reality you have to also at the same time compromise other people’s bad traits as you also have bad traits. If you love other people too much you’d be thinking “oh I am not that good, I have ugly face, no one will ever love me” and sometimes you’d even walk away thinking you’re not worthy of love. Think about it, have you ever found yourself in this kind of situation? And if you wish to escape the forever alone situation, maybe try to know why is the phenomena happening in the first place and try to either be confident, or being more compromising. You can do it!
4. Do you have the most critical friend? Lucky you!
According to Alexandra Redcay in her TED Talk in 2013, whenever you are in love with someone, ask your most critical friend’s opinion. You know, that kind of friend who always know there is something bad with anything. The one who says “yeah your boyfriend is good looking, buuttt..”. Everytime you are going out with someone new, ask their opinion. This might save you time and effort finding a good relationship!
3. Relationships based on feelings are bound to fail most of the time.
This is because feelings change many times. It is just like when you are a kid and you got this new toy, you’d wanna play with it everyday until 3 days later you just got completely bored with it and decided to play with another toy. If your reason to be in this relationship is because “it felt right, i don't know why”, my advice is you should really find out why.
2. How to tell if that person had moved on from their past relationship : There is no more feelings towards that person. No love and no hate.
So you had a nice date with this girl and you wanna know if she actually had moved on from her past lover? Ask how she feels about him right now. If she answers something like “ugh he’s the worst person ever, i hate him!” or “I feel like I wanna slap him in the face when I meet him”, this probably means she has not moved on. Hate burns just like love. Chances are if you hate someone, you might also love them.
1. Never be afraid of trying.
I always say this for everything in every opportunity. Whether it is at work, at family relationship, or even romantic relationship, never be afraid of trying.
It is so tempting to worry and decide “you know what, I’m not gonna do it!”. Don’t get me wrong, you should think that way when you can see that the risk is unreversible and extremely dangerous (for example : you might die, gotten an uncurable virus, going to prison, fired from a job), but I think you should be able to differentiate between high risk and low risks. The high risks are as per mentioned previously. Low risks are, for example, having your heart broken, this girl not talking to you anymore, being the hot topic by your colleague, you know, low risks. Something that probably will hurt temporarily and does not cost your life.
Here’s a little story. I used to be single for years thinking I only want a good, perfect, polished man. It got to the point it concerns my mom. Therefore, my mom gave me this advice to never be afraid of trying. Try and date, go ahead and meet many guys. Experience heartbreak as much as you possibly could. You might cry and weep the first few times you experience heartbreak. But when you keep trying, your heart’s going to be hardened and trained that you will get used to it. This applies to everyone, men or women. So, go out there and meet as many people as you could. Don’t let heartbreak stops you.
That is all the advice I could give in this post!
I hope you find them interesting and useful.
Thank you for reading and I see you guys in my next post!
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