Looking to find and date a high quality partner? You’re in luck!
I recently wrote a piece over on Elephant Journal called “Marry A Man Who Knows How To Love Hard.”
I described a man who is there for all of the inevitable what-if’s of life… who lovingly listens to how his partner’s day went… and who understands that love is shown through the little things. From my vantage point, nothing outlandishly extraordinary… and yet, a lot of commenters weighed in on the post with consistently surprising reactions.
The two most common questions that showed up across the comments section were…
a) Does this kind of man actually exist?
b) If these men do exist, where can you find such a man, and what can you do to attract him?
Note: I wrote the piece about men because the majority of the people who follow Elephant Journal are heterosexual women, so I framed the piece in a way that would appeal to the majority of their readers. I’m going to switch to a more gender neutral stance for the rest of the article since the following advice applies equally to both men and women.
On to the good stuff…
Now, there is no such thing as a universally high quality partner because every person on the planet has a different definition of what they find uniquely attractive in their romantic partners.
So for simplicities sake, I’m going to define a high quality partner as someone who has a high degree of success/efficacy/awesomeness in their physical, financial, emotional, and spiritual realms.
A high quality partner is someone who has a high degree of success and aptitude in all of the major areas of life that most people believe to be universally appealing. They’re kind, generous, honest, considerate, funny, smart, and exceptionally loving. These are the kinds of people I’m talking about.
By contrast, a person who has a lot of money but is awful to be around because they’re negative, argumentative, and are quick to judge and shame you would not qualify as a high quality partner. Excelling in one of these areas does not overcompensate for a complete lack in several others. They have to be well-rounded-ly fantastic.
A high quality partner is someone who the vast majority of a randomly selected sample of a population would all deem as “a catch.”
So the obvious place to start is with the first question…
a) “Do these kinds of people even exist?”
Let me say, without a shred of doubt or hesitation, that YES, these people absolutely exist.
Not only do they exist, I actually wrote many lines of the aforementioned article based on real men that I know who love in exactly the way that I describe. These men are not fictitious. They are people who I see, on a weekly basis, loving their girlfriend, wives, and partners in precisely the way that I describe in the article that raised so many skeptical eyebrows.
Not only do I have these kinds of men as friends and colleagues, these high quality men also make up the vast majority of the client base of my private coaching services.
It’s not uncommon for the people that I work with (male and female) to be self-employed and financially successful, in exceptional physical health, and in the top 5% of the most kind hearted, generous, and loving people you’ve ever met. Not only that, but they also live their lives with an admirable level of intentionality… i.e. if a problem comes up in their relationship/business/with their health, they have the overarching mindset that it won’t stay a problem for long. They’ll do whatever it takes to work their way through the block and get back to a peak state of being (in whatever way that means for them).
Are these people perfect? Are they flawless human beings? No, of course not. There’s no such thing as perfection when it comes to people. But they are ridiculously high functioning, amazing, well-rounded people that the vast majority of people would feel blessed to be in a relationship with.
So it begs the question… if I’m so confident that these people exist (and believe me, they do – I’m not just hallucinating hundreds of amazing people)… why would the majority of people doubt their existence so passionately?
I could deep dive into this piece of the answer for 3-4,000 words by itself… but the main reason/short answer is that it’s easier to discredit the existence of something than to put in the necessary work in order to achieve that difficult task. Speaking of putting in the necessary work… on to the second question!
(CAUTION: hard – but necessary – work ahead!)
b) “Where do you find an exceptionally high quality partner?”
The answer to this question has the potential to have the most nuance to it because how you define your high quality partner varies compared to how anyone else defines their high quality partner… but the action you can take is the same.
The highest leverage action steps I can give you to answer this question are the following…
1. Write down a list of anywhere from 10-50 character traits that you want to have in a partner. And then force yourself to select the absolute core FIVE that mean the most to you.
It’s easy to get carried away at this stage. And if you do, that’s totally fine. Write it all out to your heart’s content. But you still have to narrow it down to your most important five at the end of writing down your big list.
For example, some of the 10-50 traits that I personally enjoy in a partner (but that are not mandatory for me) are things like “likes the same kind of music as me”, “prefers not to spend hours cooking meals and would rather eat something simple”, and “has chubby thighs.”
Whereas my core five points include things like “has something that she is passionate about outside of our relationship,” and “takes responsibility for herself, her emotions, and her sense of growth and fulfillment.”
For the vast majority of people that I’ve taken through this exercise, the five core traits that they seek are almost always all internal, character-based traits (as opposed to external/physical traits).
2. Make it your set-in-stone, I’m-really-going-to-give-this-a-shot intention to fully embody the five traits you listed as super important.
That’s right… become your must have’s list.
For example, if you tell yourself that you need a partner to help you relax and stop you from being such a workaholic… then become the force in your own life that allows you to slow down, relax, and take downtime from your work. Or if you tell yourself that you need a partner to provide entertainment for you (because you just can’t live without fun and excitement) then work on creating all of the fun you could possibly handle and become a master at entertaining yourself. Or if you tell yourself that you need a partner who is able to help you open up to your sexuality, start putting in the work to open yourself up to your own sexuality. You get the idea.
Something magical happens when we start to give ourselves the exact things we tell ourselves we need from our romantic partner. We’re happier, we more fully become our authentic selves… and we start to meet and attract the people we’re meant to be with with ease.
This step is also the way to eradicate any overly needy energy that you might have broadcasted to potential mates in the past. I don’t love the word “needy” because we all have healthy, normal emotional needs in our relationships… but, in the negative sense, needy just means people can feel that you aren’t taking care of yourself to a healthy extent and you need them for your emotional fulfillment to an exhausting degree. So get your owns needs met first. It’s within your power to do so.
3. Go to the places where your best self goes and live your most highly-aligned, exceptional life for three consecutive months.
There’s likely a few places in your life that you know that you either want to start going to or wish you went to more often (examples: the gym, yoga, playing your favourite sport with friends, the movies, the theatre, book club, the park, etc.). There are also some habits you wish you were cultivating that you’ve been slacking off on. Or friends that you wish you saw more often.
How do you figure out if there are things you wish you had more of in your life? Either…
1) Start listening to that nagging voice in your heart/gut/mind that has been telling you for months to do it, or…
2) Complete the sentence “If I truly allowed myself to do the things I wanted to be doing, starting today, I would start…” twenty times in a written format and then carry out all of the things that you have written.
Is three months really necessary to meet and attract your dream partner? No. In fact, it’s probably overkill. It’s very likely that if you follow the above steps to the T, you won’t have to wait that long at all. Why is that? Because you will be embodying your best and truest self. You will be emitting the radio frequency of YOUR unique form of happiness into the world which will then make your most highly aligned partners notice you with that much more ease.
When you begin to see and honour yourself for who you are and live a life in alignment with your authentic self, it will be that much easier for your most highly aligned romantic partners to spot you in a crowd. They will pick up on your radio signal and feel the deeply compelling urge that tells them, “Woah… THAT one!”
F.A.Q. On Finding Your Ideal High Quality Partner
I’ve been interviewed on this exact topic so many times, and from so many different angles, that I feel like I could go off on it for hours… but here are some final thoughts that I think are all relevant. I’ve put these ideas in a kind of F.A.Q. format because I have received each of these questions at least a dozen times each in the past month.
Is it easy to attract one of these high quality partners?
Yes, and no.
It can be easy to attract one if you happen to run into one (and you’re lucky), but if you haven’t done your work in terms of facing and removing your emotional blocks to love, falling in love with your life, and living your life with a high degree of intentionality, then it isn’t likely that the relationship will last for any length of time.
For most people, in most cases, in order to date a catch you have to be a catch. And that isn’t something that you’re born into. Sure, you might be born into money or good genetics, but you aren’t necessarily born into being kind, compassionate, loving, intentional, and emotionally fulfilled in all areas of your life… the majority of those things take hard work… work that most people simply aren’t willing to do (which makes it that much easier to stand out from the crowd if you ARE putting in your real, challenging work).
What do these high quality people look for in a partner?
A lot of things… and they totally depend on the individual. But the most common ones that I see/hear from my friends and clients that fit this mould are…
– Someone who has multiple pathways to their own emotional fulfillment outside of the relationship. AKA they enjoy their life’s work, they have friends that make them happy, they have hobbies that bring them joy, etc.
– Someone who takes full responsibility for their happiness, their emotional responses, and themselves in general. For these kinds of high achieving/super-intentional catches, intentionality is in and victimhood is out.
– Someone who is growth oriented as opposed to having a fixed mindset. AKA they want partners who believe that any limitation can be affected, improved upon, or moved through entirely with the right education, persistence, and experience.
Are there any things that these high quality partners are turned off by quickly?
– Victim mindsets
– People who are quick to judge, blame, and criticize others
– Overly limited thinking or any overarching beliefs that show a fixed-mindset (i.e. “People never change”, or “My grandpa died of lung cancer so I’m probably headed for it too… so it doesn’t matter if I smoke or not.”)
Whatever your reasons for wanting to be in an intimate relationship with someone who has their life together to an exceptionally high degree, just know that it does generally take a lot of work to be able to get to a place where they can feel mutual respect for their partners. They have high standards for a reason, and it’s worth it to become the kind of person that can easily date one of these high quality partners.
Do your internal work, get fulfilled in your own life, spend time where your best self wants to be spending time, and you’ll meet your ideal, high quality partner in no time.
Dedicated to your success,
Jordan
