2651: Mindful Dating by Ira Israel on Authenticity, Integrity, Patience and Cultivating Greater Intimacy

[00:00:00] Hey, it's Justin from Optimal Living Daily. Before we start, I want to share a super powerful practice I use called NSDR or Non-Sleep Deep Rest. In just about 10 minutes or so, this Yoga Nidra practice leaves you feeling as refreshed as after a nap without actually sleeping. Experience it for yourself on our guided podcast. Search NSDR and look for the one from Optimal Living Daily.

[00:00:25] Now, before we start, you might want to check out our other podcasts covering topics like personal development and minimalism, money, health, relationships and more. So to optimize your life in other areas, just search for Optimal Living Daily in your podcast app. Now onto the show. This is Optimal Relationships Daily, Mindful Dating by Ira Israel of IraIsrael.com. Quote,

[00:00:53] Man's greatest labor so far has been to reach agreement about very many things and to submit to a law of agreement, regardless of whether these things are true or false. That's by Friedrich Nietzsche.

[00:01:06] In our crazy busy adult lives, dating has become extremely speedy and contrived, with people penciling in business-like Starbucks rendezvous that are not dissimilar from job interviews or writer-directors auditioning actors to play the leading roles in their screenplays entitled, This is What I Think My Life Should Look Like. After college, take note, So,

[00:01:28] Organically getting to know fellow humans outside of work, bars, and a few social activities is becoming extremely difficult. I recently watched the politically scintillating first season of The Newsroom, and was appalled to find that most of the egregiously dysfunctional romantic relationships portrayed on the show are between people who work closely together. I am quite certain that America's equivalent to Shakespeare, Aaron Sorkin, is familiar with the phrase, don't f*** where you eat.

[00:01:58] So, I'm wondering if this is really a phenomenon in contemporary offices, or if it's added for dramatic effect. In either case, the couples and troubles involved appear to work better together than stand a snowball's chance of growing old together. Some people feel as if technology is helping them connect, but it can also be argued that Facebook and Twitter delude people into believing that they're interacting when they actually are not receiving the tactile affection they crave,

[00:02:26] that people construct flagrantly inauthentic facades when social networking and dating online, and that 95% of communications are non-verbal. Thus, 95% of communications are lost through text messaging and emailing. What about Tinder? I hear you query. Right. There's probably no better tool to find a sugary sweet piece of arm candy or eye candy. But swiping left or right contingent upon someone's photoshopped headshot

[00:02:54] is probably as accurate a prediction of compatibility as the SATs are to college performance. Similarly, as Cindy Gallop posits, quote, Google has ruined a lot of first dates. End quote. At the risk of offending all, I shall not even mention Lori Gottlieb's provocative New York Times magazine article, Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less? wherein she argues that gender equality can be detrimental to a couple's life. Specifically,

[00:03:23] Ms. Gottlieb cites a study claiming that wives reported greater satisfaction when their husbands stuck to doing masculine chores around the house. I hope that someone conducts a parallel study regarding single people. Women obviously want gender equality and equal pay, and rightfully so. But when the man doesn't buy dinner, I wonder if that adversely affects the perceived chemistry between them. Hmm. Correspondingly, you may be familiar with the concept of the myth of romantic love

[00:03:53] as explicated by Robert A. Johnson in We, Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, wherein damsels in distress seek to be saved by knights in shining armor, and or soulmates believe that the apple of their eyes are the missing parts of them. Think Jerry Maguire. You complete me. Such myths would constitute matrices of assumptions that we all agree upon regarding the etiquette of courtship. In our post-post-modern information age,

[00:04:20] all of these assumptions regarding gender roles have been cast aside. Thus, it is unwise and often unprofitable to make assumptions regarding which partner leads when dancing, who's supposed to call whom, does anyone even use the telephone anymore, who pays for dinner, and who makes advances. In my mindfulness workshops and on my DVDs, I discuss what Mary Ainsworth called ambivalent insecure attachment and avoidant insecure attachment,

[00:04:48] observing that some of my patients have a difficult time trusting that others will not abandon or betray them. Thus, they sabotage their relationships before the other person can leave them, which would reopen their primal abandonment slash betrayal wounds. Or, they don't slash can't ever fully commit. Or, they learn how to create hardened facades, false selves, so that they can shrug their shoulders and say, whatever,

[00:05:12] as they continue to blame others and abnegate responsibility for their inauthentic ways of showing up as relationship after relationship implodes, or conveniently fades out. The problem is as follows. The most propitious tools for making relationships succeed, authenticity and authentic communications, may not be the most alluring traits when dating. For, it's highly probable that your authentic self is not as glorious,

[00:05:40] glossy and glamorous as the facade or false self you created in order to survive your childhood, which is the face you most likely choose to meet the faces that you meet on Facebook and Match.com.

[00:06:19] Also, and our own attachment dynamics, so that we can show up authentically, make honest commitments, communicate with the utmost possible compassion and integrity, and learn how to grow intimately with another human being over a period of time. And we also must know how to have fun. This is Mindful Dating. You just listened to the post titled Mindful Dating by Ira Israel of IraIsrael.com

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[00:07:19] And many thanks to Ira for another well-thought-out article. Really coming to love his work. And what he's talked about can certainly be hard to apply. Being so brave as to not try to present any inflated version of ourselves when we enter the dating realm. If you're trying to be more mindful of this though, both the version of yourself that you're choosing to present as well as the best versions of others that they're choosing to present start by accepting the inevitability of this.

[00:07:48] I think Ira's recommendations of learning about your own baggage and attachments is a great place to start. But it'll take a lot of time and practice to master this. Especially if you're like a perfectionist or really eager to seek out a long-term relationship. So be patient with yourself during this process. Focus on the work before the outcome. And use the content of this article to maintain realistic expectations. Both of yourself and potential dates.

[00:08:15] As you both warm up to the idea of letting your true self show up to the degree required for a healthy relationship. That's going to do it for this one though everybody. I thank you as always for joining me and I hope you enjoyed this post from Ira as much as I did. Definitely something that can be applied to all types of relationships. So take it with you and be sure to come back again tomorrow where I will have another post for you. That's where your optimal life awaits.