The Fourteen Dating Traps
A “dating trap” is an unconscious relationship choice that
results in an unsolvable problem in a relationship. Getting out of the trap
often means leaving the relationship.
When you are single, you can do a lot more than you realize
to avoid these traps and prepare for a lasting and successful relationship.
1. Marketing Trap
You believe that you need to make yourself more appealing to
attract and ‘sell’ yourself with an attractive packaging and presentation. When
you fall into the Marketing Trap, you fear that nobody wants you as you really
are. By marketing’ yourself, you risk disappointment and relationship failure.
So when the excitement and promise of the ‘sizzle’ conflicts with the reality
of the ‘steak’, one or both of you are
left feeling disappointed and angry.
Solution:
Authenticity. You will attract compatible people when you
show them who you really are: “Birds of a
feather flock together.” Just be yourself. Don’t present a fake you.
2. Packaging Trap
You focus on outside packaging – such as someone’s body,
looks, job, wealth, material possessions and overlook the reality of the person
inside. The Packaging Trap is the opposite of the Marketing Trap: instead of
seeking to sell yourself with attractive packaging, you focus on the packaging
of others.
Solution:
Look beyond the outside packaging to areas of real
compatibility. This doesn’t mean you should forget about chemistry, but put it
into perspective, understanding it is only one element of what you require in a
successful relationship.
3. Scarcity Trap
You believe there is a limited supply of possible partners,
and therefore think that you have to take what you can get or be alone. The
Scarcity Trap results in relationship failure because there is a temptation to
settle for less: you believe you can’t get what you really want because there
is not enough to go around. Unfortunately it is a self-fulfilling prophecy
because when you expect less, you get
less. As well, you will always be on the look-out for someone ‘better’- just in
case.
Solution:
Define your first choice of what you really want and
persevere. Trust that if you apply yourself you can get what you really want in
your life. You must be able to say “No”
to what you DON’T want, to be available to say “Yes” to what you DO want. You
have the power to choose who, what, where, when, and how, and can get what you
really want if you make effective choices aligned with your Vision and
Requirements.
4. Compatibility
Trap
Assuming that if you have fun together and get along well,
you are compatible and a committed relationship will work. This results in
relationship failure when discovering the vast difference between a
fun-focused, recreational dating relationship and a serious, long-term committed
relationship. The process and criteria for choosing a recreational relationship
needs to be very different from choosing a Life Partner.
Solution:
When you are ready for a Life Partnership, define your
Requirements and use them to scout, sort, screen and test potential partners. Do not try
to convert a recreational relationship into a committed one, unless 100% of
your Requirements are met.
5. Fairytale Trap
Passively expecting your ideal partner to magically appear
and live happily ever after without effort on your part. Believing that finding
your soul mate will just “happen.” This results in disappointment when the
frogs that happen to jump into your life don’t become princes/ses.
Solution:
Take personal responsibility for your relationship choices
and outcomes. Have effective scouting, sorting,
and screening strategies. Initiate contact and be the “Chooser,” don’t simply
react to people that choose you.
6. Date –To – Mate
Trap
Becoming an ‘instant couple’ as if giving each person you
date an extended test drive. Believing that
if you develop an exclusive relationship with someone you are dating, a
successful committed relationship will eventually happen. Other terms for this
are ‘Serial Monogamy” and the ‘Mini- Marriage’. This approach is a costly use
of time and emotional energy. The inertia in this trap is pressure to make the
relationship work, attempt to resolve unsolvable problems, and fit a square peg
in a round hole because breaking up and being single again is an undesired
outcome.
Solution:
Date a variety of people and have fun without being
exclusive. When you are ready for a
committed relationship define your Requirements and use them
as tools to scout, sort, and screen potential partners. Make a careful
relationship choice and consciously use a “pre-commitment” period to determine
if this is the right relationship for you.
7. Attraction Trap
Making relationship choices based on feelings of attraction.
Interpreting a strong physical
attraction to someone as a sign that the relationship is a
good choice and ‘meant to be’. This
approach results in relationship failure when unsolvable
problems surface because you ignored the red flags while infatuated.
Unconscious choices usually result in repeating unproductive past patterns.
Attraction is like the radar that helps you find your target. But the
Attraction Trap occurs when you blindly follow this radar.
Solution:
Balance your attractions by defining your Requirements and
use them to scout, sort, and screen potential partners.
“Choose your life’s
mate carefully. From this one decision will come ninety percent of your
happiness or misery.” (H. Jackson Brown, Jr. from “Life’s Little Instruction
Book”).
8. Love Trap
Interpreting infatuation, attraction, need, good sex, and/or
attachment as love. “If it feels good, it must be love,” “Love conquers all,”
“All you need is love.” You feel so in love that you believe it must be a good
relationship. After the initial infatuation is gone, you spend the rest of your
time together just trying to get it back.
Solution:
Make conscious relationship choices by defining your
Requirements and use them to scout, sort, and screen potential partners.
9. Sex Trap
Focusing on the chemistry under the covers by interpreting
sex as love; using sex as a kind of compatibility test (if the sex is good then
the relationship will be good as well); or becoming emotionally attached and
considering yourself in a kind of committed relationship as soon as you have
sex.
Solution:
Make conscious relationship choices by defining your
Requirements and use them to scout, sort, and screen potential partners.
Understand that a relationship needs more than great sex to thrive.
10. Rescue Trap
Hoping a relationship will solve your emotional and
financial difficulties and bring you happiness and fulfillment, something like
winning the lottery. You avoid taking responsibility for your life challenges,
expecting to be rescued from them. Results in desperation, neediness, and
relationship failure when your problems multiply instead of disappear.
Solution:
Define your Vision for your life and relationship and “Live
your Vision” as a successful single person. Resolve emotional, financial, and
other problems prior to seeking a lasting committed relationship. Seek to be in
a position of “choice” and “want” rather than need.”
11. Co-Dependant
Trap
You expect someone to love you and give you what you want by
giving the other person what he/she wants. You attempt to earn love and
happiness by acquiescing, giving, and helping. You really want to be in a
relationship. You feel that you are not worthy as you are, and need to earn
love. You pursue relationships hard because you feel incomplete when you’re not
in one. You want to be the hero and therefore seek someone who wants to be
helped. But you learn the hard way that although it feels good to be needed,
someone who needs you is not necessarily able to give you what you need.
Needing to be needed often results in unconsciously attracting and choosing a
relationship with a person who needs you – but as you later discover is unable
to give you what you want or need.
Solution:
Define your Vision and Requirements and choose a closely
aligned partner. Learn to be assertive, identify and ask for what you want and
need, identify and assert boundaries, and develop the ability to say “No.” Be
the “Chooser” and cautious of people that choose you!
12. Entitlement
Trap
Believing that you deserve to be happy and get what you want
in your life without effort or changes on your part. Results in relationship
failure as you rely on your partner to bring you happiness and fulfillment.
This inevitably results in disappointment. If you continue to do what you’ve
always done, you’ll always get the same results.
Solution:
Take personal responsibility for your life and relationship.
Define your Vision and Life Purpose and live them when single.
13. Virtual Reality Trap
Believing that what you see is what you get. Making hasty
long-term relationship decisions based on short-term impressions and inferences
instead of actual experience and knowledge. Getting involved in a relationship
focusing on potential, hoping that some things that you really need to happen
will get better or change over time. Results in seeing what you want to see.
Relationship failure results when later reality doesn’t match.
Solution:
Assume “you don’t know what you don’t know” and stay in a
“pre-committed” stage until you have solid experience and knowledge that this
is the right relationship for you. Finding a life partner is not a race – it is
a journey. Don’t rush to win the booby prize!
14. Lone Ranger
Trap
You live your single life focused on your goal of finding
your life partner, believing that you don’t need anyone else in your life. You
evaluate people you meet for their relationship potential only and do not take
the opportunity to cultivate new friends. Results in isolation, perception of
scarcity of potential partners and risk of settling for less than what you
really want because you don’t want to be alone.
Solution:
Develop a support network/community of friends of both
genders and be supportable by enrolling them to scout for you.
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