Finding a soulmate or even choosing the right companion can often feel like secret code for only the lucky few to crack. Singles today often experience collective frustration, citing flakiness, lack of connection and bad dates with matches who aren’t relationship-ready as the main offenders. Unfortunately, meeting the one is more than feeling ready for love, being marriage-minded or hopping on a few dating sites. There are several key elements needed in order to make relationship progress that most singles today are missing.
Outlined below are three fundamental ingredients for success on the journey to finding a partner.
Working with an Expert
When it comes to health, wellness, education and home repairs, common sense says ‘hire an expert.’ Why does the modern single believe they have all of the tools and expertise required to manage their own love life? Historically, finding love was a community effort – from yentas and matchmakers to arranged marriages, with friends and family heavily enmeshed in the selection-making process. Until more recently, community was a core aspect in how important life decisions were made. This not only gave singles support through the highs and lows of dating, but also gave them generations worth of knowledge and insight to take into their own dating experiences.
Today, the modern US single is more likely to make dating and romance decisions based on self-seeking motivations and desires. While the idea of marrying for love (and not based on how many sheep your father can give or get) is now standard practice and not something to regress on, the modern single is missing out on the support and expertise required to date successfully.
Working with an expert at Tawkify allows singles the benefits of both. A personal matchmaker helps singles uncover core values, which are true matching points for relationship success while maintaining the neutrality of an outside perspective. Holly McCusker, a dating expert at Tawkify says, “When a client comes from a place of core values, it’s a game-changer. They no longer place emphasis on rejection because they understand it is simply a redirection.”
Dating with an expert helps singles turn the focus towards goals in order to be better equipped to reach them, while date coaching offers real-time guidance for situations encountered along the way.
Chemistry and Connection
A big hole the modern single is falling into is that of checklists. “Individuals who are most likely to be successful are the ones who trust themselves and don’t need a checklist to figure out if there’s a connection,” says McCusker. When a person goes into a dating situation already in their head about the way their match should look or the hobbies and personality traits their match should have, that person isn’t set up for success. Picking a compatible partner based on a profile doesn’t work – if it did, every person who’s ever downloaded Tinder would be married and dancing in the sunset by now. True relationship success comes from chemistry, connection and the shared values that lead to long-term compatibility.
What is this elusive chemistry and can Tawkify matchmakers predict it?
Helen Fisher, Ph.D., author and human behavior researcher, found a scientific basis for chemistry and the brain response in the human body. In her studies, she found four styles of thinking that were linked with a specific brain system: dopamine, serotonin, estrogen or testosterone. Interestingly, those who were serotonin or dopamine-dominant tended to gravitate to those similar to themselves. People who were testosterone-dominant gravitated towards those who were estrogen-dominant and vice versa.
Of course, everyone has traits from all four systems and “only when you see the full combination of traits in both partners can you begin to predict their compatibility,” she says. That intangible feeling of chemistry is a brain response based on innate traits.
“When I’m screening a potential match, what I’m really looking for is how they answer questions, how they think and how quickly they talk. I envision how their conversational styles might compliment each other,” says Nicky Gordon, Tawkify matchmaker and certified life coach.
Kelly Campbell, Ph.D, a professor of psychology and human development focusing on couple relationships has a term for this conversational chemistry. It’s called reciprocal candor. “When this is present, people feel as though they can say anything to one another and not be judged,” Campbell says. That feeling is a much more practical evaluator of chemistry and relationship potential than a checklist or profile.
Relationship-Readiness
Relationship-readiness is more than just feeling ready for love, it’s the knowledge of being ready for a commitment and the inevitable effort necessary to maintain that commitment. It’s also the ability to trust – not just the trust created in a loving partnership, but the trust one has in themselves.
“I was coaching a client who thought she had to have an Ivy League educated partner. With only .02% of the population, she was seriously limiting herself. We discovered the core of what she wanted was someone who shares her values and ambition. She recognized that she had to be willing to trust herself more, so she could be present on dates and discover that connection for herself in real time.”
Relationship-readiness is the ability to live in the present moment, while being self-aware and keeping core relationship goals in mind. As McCusker says, it’s “coming from a place of abundance, not scarcity.”
How can someone tell if they are truly ready for a long-term relationship?
It’s a matter of doing the work. The one guarantee about dating is that everyone has a past and baggage that comes along with it. When said baggage isn’t properly dealt with, it can lead to self-sabotaging behaviors such as projecting past wounds onto present experiences. Being self-aware means understanding triggers, where they come from and the information that those triggers are working to convey. Only then can past experience become opportunities for growth which translate into relationship readiness – and the learning never stops.
