Although destiny, timing, and Spirit have the final say in who attracts a partner when, there are a few ways to move yourself a step ahead in the field of potential love. These methods are tried and true, not just theories! I have seen them work in my own life, and that of close friends and clients.
You see, amazing partners don’t just fall from the sky…they are a result of inner work on your part, mixed with those other important ingredients of destiny, timing, and Spirit. Partners don’t come in to fix you or fix your life or give you a sense of meaning…they come in when you’ve taken significant steps of your own to fix yourself, your life, and have taken the reigns of your own destiny.
Partners are the frosting on the cake, not the sustenance itself. They are the ones that meet you in the celebration of life. They come in when you feel good about who you are and what you’ve created, and what your trajectory is. When these things are lacking, you are more likely to attract problem relationships.
If you feel your current singlehood as a burden, and like your life is on pause until the right person comes along, take a look at the following steps, designed to prep you for attracting something special and true for your life.
Here they are, the 4 steps to attracting a great mate:
- Get comfortable without one!
If you have gone through a painful breakup, or have struggled with being single for years and haven’t had much luck in partnership, the best gift you can give to yourself is to let go of needing a partner and feeling desperate about it. This doesn’t mean don’t date…it is more about your approach to meeting someone. Desperation and a sense of neediness around partnership can cloud your judgment about who/what might work for you, and rather than letting Spirit bring you the right thing, you can block the process by getting tangled up in unnecessary dramas with people who aren’t right for you in the first place. Inner feelings and limiting stories around what it means about you if you’re single, stories around self-worth, your level of attractiveness, etc, will also depress your attracting force and cause you to make rash decisions that come from lack, not fullness.
So instead of fighting what is and feeling shabby about who you are, take your single time as a chance to heal your relationship with the person you will always be with…yourself. Across the board, the friends and people I work with who do this type of work in their single time, have much more success in the next relationship they attract.
If you can relax the images around what life should look like, release the need for a relationship to affirm that you are worth something, and heal the patterns that come up just between you and you, you will be well on your way to attracting something really positive. This process cleans out the chakras, raises the soul vibration, brings ease to the process of attracting a good relationship, and raises the bar for the next partnership to be much better than the ones that came before.
- Throw out “the list”
Ah, the list. Some people swear by it. In my opinion, it is counterproductive. By the list, I mean the thing where you write out, or keep in your mind, images and descriptions about who you’d like to be with, who would be the perfect mate for you, what you think it all should look like. Things like,
– He’ll be between 30-40 years old
– He’ll have green eyes and brown hair (or was it brown eyes and green hair?)
– He’ll love animals, and small children
– He’ll have a certain spiritual practice that I think is the coolest
– He’ll want to have a spiritual relationship
– He’ll like the music that I like
– He’ll be gorgeous
– He’ll be talented
– He’ll be humble
– He’ll be funny
– etc
The wisest advice I’ve received on attracting relationship from a real, my-life-as-it-is-right-now-perspective, came from a mentor of mine. She said, and I paraphrase, “let go of all of the images. You need to focus more on the feeling tone. What do you want to feel in a relationship?” When I took this advice in all the way, my attracting force did a 180. Instead of focusing on an idealized picture of who this person might be, I focused on a very different question: “What do I want to feel in my life? With a partner? Coming towards me from a partner?” So the list changed for me, as did some of my idealized images of life. Instead of holding out for some perfect picture of a person like in the previous list, something else emerged. An energetic imprint came forth, one that life was able to respond to, because it wasn’t just in my head.
My “I want to feel list”:
I want to feel
– Loved
– Supported
– Cherished
– Attracted
– Like there’s humor between us
Notice the incredible difference! This second list is a living energy, something that you can actually feel and connect to when you read through it. The first list, on the other hand, sounds like a conglomerate of societaly-approved images, things we tend to feel attracted to in other people, things we think are cool, things we think are interesting, projections of things that we want for ourselves, etc. But there isn’t a living energy that you can connect to in that list…it’s a still picture. And it focuses entirely on the other person, not on your own energy or how you might respond to this fantasy person. More important than who we are with, is how we feel when we are with them.
The other great thing about the second list is that it gives us a barometer to help us discover whether we are in right relationship with someone. For example, let’s say someone comes into your life that you feel an initial attraction to. He is drop dead gorgeous, 38 years old, has a spiritual practice that you think is cool, loves animals, and is multi-talented. Wow, the list has manifested! But wait, does any of that matter if you don’t feel loved, supported, and cherished when you are spending time with this person? Not really.
- Give away the timing
This one ties in closely with #1, getting comfortable without a mate. Practicing liking one’s life as it is means that relationship can find you when the time is right…not for you and your ego, but right for you spiritually. Many friends and clients I have tell the same story: “I let go of it, and it found me.” Spirit is funny in that way. The things we obsess over having, feel incomplete without, and think are the key to our happiness, have a way of evading us. Relaxing the grasp, accepting what is, and giving away the timing, brings flow and relaxation back to our energy field. We can laugh again, enjoy the moment, discover new things about ourselves, and feel the surprise/synchronicity element of life returning. Which, come to think of it, is the best flow for a relationship to come in on!
Many people who are in long-term relationships tend to look back on their single time and say things like, “Wow, I needed that time to develop myself.” “I wouldn’t have had the self-esteem to handle a relationship at that time.” “I was in a major transition and a relationship would have made it too complicated.” “I needed that time to heal a lot of past pain.”
Try asking yourself these questions to help relax the tension around timing: Why might there be a delay in finding the relationship you want? Is it because you’re still grieving another partnership? Are you busy getting a business going, or changing a lot of things in your energy all at once? Are you holding on to an image that relationship will give you an identity, that standing on your own is not enough? Chances are there’s a good reason for the delay and a message in it.
- Work on bonding issues
Sometimes people come to me saying that they want a profound, intimate relationship. But when we start talking about the bonds that they already have going in their life, there is a marked lack of depth and intimacy. Friends are for lunch dates and conversations are lightweight. There is a fear of opening oneself to already existing relationships. In life, the person is not setting the stage for a deep partnership.
All of the skills of intimacy are learned. They don’t just appear; they are cultivated. So, as a single person wanting partnership, there’s no reason not to start cultivating the skills you will need later. In fact, you’ll have much more confidence entering the next relationship when you already have momentum in the areas of sharing, vulnerability, problem solving, honesty, and communication.
So how do you start honing those skills? Practice with friends! Look at your closest relationships and find ways to deepen the connections that are already there. Perhaps that means planning meals together with more intention, picking a special recipe and setting the table instead of grabbing takeout like usual. If your friendships feel very lightweight and superficial, perhaps suggest a meditation to do together next time you meet, or join a process group where deeper intimacy is shared. One super-cool single friend of mine organized a singles meet-up in her area, where instead of going out and clubbing together or going on blind dates, they meet and talk about the issues, stigmas, and challenges they each face in being single.
If you can move your whole life vibration deeper, you will attract partnership from that deeper place you’ve cultivated. Many people working on this step see a lot of change in their relationships: they notice less intentional friendships falling away, and the ones with real juice getting much more interesting and meaningful. It’s a fun process that reveals a lot about you and what kind of relating means the most to you.
In Conclusion…
So, to re-cap, you can practice these four steps in varying degrees based on the areas that feel weakest in you.
1. The first, getting comfortable without a mate, is basically about practicing wholeness: “I am whole and complete as I am. I do no lack. I am enough.” This allows you to attract functional relationships where the partners contribute to each other’s happiness, rather than being the source of it with a lot of expectation attached.
2. The second step, letting go of “the list,” is about letting go of images and pictures about how your life was/is supposed to be, and reframing your position of attraction to a more visceral, felt sense of what would feel the best. Energy/Spirit/the Universe responds better to actual energies, not lifeless pictures.
3. The third, “give away the timing,” opens up your chakras and allows good feelings like peace, bliss, and acceptance to find you right here and now, and gives you a chance to attract in a very gentle way without pushing for something.
4. The final step, “work on bonding issues,” helps you to clean out old, outmoded ways of being in relationships, and gives you a head-start in developing the skills that healthy partnerships require.
You can revisit these steps throughout your life, as they are ongoing, and helpful even after you’ve found the partnership you’ve been hoping for. They will activate you and get you moving in the direction of more than just a partnership that matches you…you’ll find a deeper way of life, too. I wish you great peace and wholeness even while a part of you longs for more.