A lot of women I meet want to hear stories of how couples met. So today I am sharing one woman’s story of finding love after years of casual dating. She took an approach that started with putting herself first. She made a conscious effort to take a year to focus on her personal life. She made it a goal to reconnect to what was important to her and as a result, what she wanted from a relationship. She did some traveling abroad, rediscovered her faith, worked as a docent in an art museum and spent more time with friends. The 20’s are definitely a time to have fun and explore relationships but if you get to a point where you want more don’t default to just dating the guys that ask you out. Get to the place where it’s about “do I want this?” rather than “does he want me?”
“I decided I really wanted to work on my personal life. I had a great job and was enjoying it but I realized I wanted to meet the right person and potentially have a family. I thought maybe I needed to make a big change in my life. In the past I had mostly met people at parties and more accidentally. I met people to date but it was sort of haphazard. I realized I needed to think about what really defines me. One of the things that had been important in my life was that I was raised Catholic and at least wanted to have faith. A lot of people in San Francisco were agnostic or spiritual but not in a religious sense so I consciously found a Catholic young adults group and got involved with that. Which was very different than other things that I’d been involved with in San Francisco.
Through that I hosted a fundraiser at a bar. My now husband happened to be there. He wasn’t there for the party he was just meeting a friend. I had a silent auction and he ended up getting a ticket and won opera tickets. I saw him walk up to get the tickets. He was dressed really nicely. Everyone is so casual on the west coast but he had a tie and nice shirt. I thought, this guy is really cute! I was in an outgoing mood and thought well I’m the host of the party so I just walked up to him and said, “I noticed that you won those opera tickets …you should take me.” He was like whoa. Then we were bantering back and forth all night. We ended up just hanging out on that evening. So that’s how we met.
We dated and there was some of that typical back and forth where we got really serious and got a little scared. But we went through good discussions. You know you get through that. I think I was more connected to what I wanted and could be more open. It was opening myself up, changing things up and being open to new possibilities.”
The more you can do in your 20s to get to know yourself the better able you will be to tell if he’s the one and if that is even what you want. Not everyone can travel the world but try to expose yourself to things that are not of your world. It often casts a light back on who you are. 40:20 perspective says travel if you can, get into your interests, volunteer, find some sort of spiritual release. Do things you truly enjoy doing and that enrich your life.