Flaky Flowers
Welcome to Your Love Breakthrough! Get Real. Love.
In this edition: Flaky Flowers
Perspective – Passion that Blooms and Bombs Overnight
Practical Tactics – Avoid or Indulge the Fleeting Fancy?
Hooray for Everything!
Perspective – Passion that Blooms and Bombs Overnight
It's cliche, but we're all familiar with the scenario where the physical chemistry is so extreme, it ends with an explosion. So, some take a leap in logic to defining chemistry as negative in favor of settling for someone or something mildly winsome and "stable".
Mediocrity is the enemy of best. Most of us are wired for wanting a steamy physical romance that follows through in a lifetime of fulfillment, growing more in love through the volatility of life's roller coaster.
Yet when we are playing the field, sometimes we get played by our own vulnerability of desire. We don't have a reference for what meeting the right person should feel like, so we date like we're tasting wines and cheeses, instead of getting to know another, and how we work together with that person. We might know we don't want a one-night stand, but we think "Well, this first night could turn into a life time of happiness and a white picket fence, children, and a cute little Maltese dog."
We inevitably get hurt when our date ghosts us. Visions haunt us of what-could-have-been-but-won't-be.
Case in point: A former friend of mine (emphasis on the word "former") observed my dating struggles, and enthusiastically speculated that since I wasn't meeting Mr. Right, I should just enjoy romantic fleeting fancies. I looked up to her because she was married, seemed "have it together", with a seemingly outstanding marriage and five lovely children. Everything and everyone she encouraged me to pursue crashed and burned to my detriment. I learned the hard way that her "status" didn't qualify her to give sound advice.
Comparatively, I've had shorter-term prospects and projects that produced lasting benefits for me and others. These connections always also felt right.
Practical Tactics – Enjoy or Avoid the Fleeting Fancy?
There's no foolproof way to avoid getting hurt or even getting played. As I mentioned in the message March Forward on Solid Ground: you can try and calculate returns on investment (ROIs) and lean into what your gut might be telling you to do.
Before you take up with a possibly flaky flower, pause and ask yourself, "if I go through with [whatever], will I regret it or remember it fondly?" Or, even more: "What are the possible damages and what are the possible benefits that could come out of this?"
Not every pleasure is wrong. Not every banality is virtuous. They are seeds, and we can learn to identify more accurately what long-term fruit or thorns they may produce.
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