By Tristan Coopersmith — Written on Jan 09, 2012
All too often I hear from clients that they wish they had time to date but they just don’t. My immediate reply is, “You are already in a relationship.” A puzzled look ensues.
It is true, I insist. You are already in a relationship. It might not be with a man, but it is with something. Something is consuming your resources making it difficult and oftentimes impossible to make room for a romantic relationship.
Here’s the thing. Subtly, we sometimes sabotage potential relationships by simply overloading our lives with other things so that we literally don’t have the emotional, mental, physical or just plain time bandwidth to accomodate love. We blame our crazy job and bitchy slavedriving boss. We blame our kids and their high demands. We blame our expansive social life or are family’s needs. We blame, blame, blame, pointing the finger at everything that is actually NOT the problem and skip over what is.
Yes – I’m talking about ourselves. Take a moment to look at the way you spend your time. Each day, each week, each month. It might help to actually map it out. Look at how you have divided your energy among work, friends, family, “me” time, hobbies and even wasting time checking facebook. That’s right – you might be dating Facebook! Once you examine how your time is spent, you will begin to notice how much time you could be spending on building a happy love life. If you find yourself still saying there is no room, begin dissecting WHY you need to devote so much time to various parts of your life which dominate. Questions what would happen if you scaled back a little. Plenty of research shows that when you are in a happy relationship you are actually happier and more productive in other areas of your life. So take that.
Just remember you are always dating something or someone… if it isn’t the someone you want it to be, look within to uncover why you choose it/him/her over what you say you really want. The answers are all there, you just may have to dig a bit.
Live and love largely,
Tristan
This article was originally published at . Reprinted with permission from the author.