Mar 5, 2014

What You Can Learn About Love From Watching 'The Bachelor'

People are inherently lazy.

We want to do as little as possible for the promise of maximum results achieved.

Work out once a week and get ripped. Get rich while you sleep. Find your dream partner in a day.

And while all of these things are certainly possible, they tend to require an initial push of energy in order to get to those results.

So is it possible for you to find your dream partner in just a few days or weeks of concentrated searching? Absolutely. But you have to put in the work before you meet them.

the bachelor

Why Dating Will Always Be A Numbers Game

It is a widely held belief that finding your one true love is all about getting out there, playing the field, searching through countless relationships, until one day you stumble upon your honey-boo-boo.

And I don’t buy it.

You see… dating will always be a numbers game. But the numerical component isn’t about how many frogs you’ve tried kissing until you’ve found your prince or princess.

No. The number that matters is what level of person you are in terms of what your ideal partner sees as valuable. Did that make sense? Let me break it down or you.

Since you are likely reading this post from some sort of electronic device, I can fairly safely assume that you were born into a situation that made you luckier than a decent percentage of the global population. For arguments sake, let’s say that when you were born, you might have been a 1/4 person. That is to say, if your ideal partner were given four random options from across the world and you were one of them, you had a high chance of being picked. You were seen as the most valuable partner out of four random choices.

Using this example, my point is that you would want to become an increasingly valuable member of society throughout your lifetime so that you eventually surpassed the 1/1,000,000 mark of desirability to whoever your ideal partner would be. That is to say, you would be chosen first over a million others.

Want an even more tangible example?

What The Bachelor Teaches Us About Modern Partner Bonding

Have you ever seen the TV show The Bachelor (or The Bachlorette)? Don’t worry… you don’t need to have seen it for this example to make sense.

Basically, 25 men or women vie for the attention of an especially high value and attractive partner and they become nasty and competitive in order to win the affection of said person.

The show speaks to a very important truth in attraction. The “Bachelor” or “Bachlorette” in question is always an exceedingly high value and likeable person.

I have watched every season (ahem… for research purposes only) and every year the Bachelor is an intelligent, driven, well groomed, polite guy who is a stellar conversationalist and all around hunk. They are never out of shape, broke, rude, or boring.

Do you think that the show’s producers sort through their thousands of submissions looking for a certain type of guy? Of course they do. They look for someone that not only the contestants will desire, but someone who the millions of people following along with the show will also fall for. They find a one in a million man because they can safely assume that he will win the hearts of all who see him in action.

the bachelor

How Exactly Do You Become A More Valuable Partner Romantically

So now that you see how dating is (and always will be) a numbers game, how do you increase your value as a romantic partner and make yourself that one in a million level candidate?

1. Ambition and Self-Awareness

One of the first things that women are prone to listing as an attractive ingredient in their future partner is that he is goal-oriented.

A man who knows himself and is going somewhere in life is very attractive to women. The majority of women want to go on an adventure with you… they don’t want to BE your adventure.

Figure yourself out, decide on what you want out of life, and then start sprinting towards those goals.

2. Conversational Ability

Attractive suitors have the ability to communicate on many levels.

They are masters of rapport, praise, subtext, and establishing trust and connection.

Watch any of The Bachelors communicate with anyone else on the show and try to NOT fall in love with them. They are always courteous, well-spoken, and good listeners.

3. Know Yourself Emotionally

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” – Rumi

If you have heaps of old emotional baggage that you aren’t facing or sorting through (often from your relationship to your parents or your former lovers), then you will continue to attract low value, needy romantic partners.

Go to a therapist, read some books, ask your friends for honest feedback, or talk to me and figure out your emotional patterns. Whatever is holding you back, the responsibility falls squarely on your shoulders to work through it.

4. Skill Building

People have needs in relationships. The more of those needs that you can help fulfill the better.

Regularly invest in yourself by becoming a more self-aware, knowledgable, and handy partner. I realize that this overly action-oriented way of perceiving your value as a partner is very western in it’s ideology, but there is value in your internal and external value as a partner and they should both be considered. You are both valued as a human being and a human doing.

Start off by taking a massage class, learning to cook well, or becoming a capable dancer.

For the advanced level skills the sky is the limit. What would your ideal partner find attractive? Your ability to fly aircrafts? Your ability to survive in the wilderness? Your ability to do basic repairs around the house?

Keep investing in yourself and you will continue to increase your value as a potential partner.

5. Physical Appearance

I believe that as men our primary sexual ornamentation (the things that our potential mates find attractive) is our mind. It is our ability to converse, entertain, and emotionally connect with others that is the most attractive.

But that doesn’t mean that our physical bodies and appearance should be ignored.

Think of the state of your physical appearance (fashion, fitness, grooming, etc.) as a form of communication. Whatever you are presenting to the world is what you would want them to believe you to be.

So even the choice of “I don’t want to put effort in to my clothing because that seems shallow and my ideal partner won’t care about that” is still a form of communication in itself. Really, I think it’s a cop out because of a lack of a willingness to compete. It’s much easier to sit back and be indecisive than it is to be vulnerable by making a hard choice and putting yourself out there (which is actually my theory on why tattoos are so attractive to some people… tattoos are indicative of someone making a concrete decision and being willing to show themselves as aligning with a certain subset of society).

So if you think that putting some time and attention in to the physical state of your appearance is shallow, then I would push you to dive into those beliefs. Why exactly is it shallow? Is focusing on physical appearance shallow in the same way that many religions think that physical pleasures (sex, masturbation) is less noble because it applies to our experience in the physical realm? Give me a break.

Become A One In A Million Partner

If you feel yourself resisting the idea of actively putting work into yourself because your ideal partner should just love you for you, then you might want to reconsider your position.

Our minds are experts at resisting change… especially if that change means that we have to put in hard work.

The most surefire way to get married to your ideal partner (while building up heaps of self-esteem) is to get on the path of becoming the kind of person that you would proudly present to your dream partner. If you don’t, you run the risk of settling for someone that doesn’t put the fire in your belly, or worse, not allowing yourself to go for your dream partner when you do meet them due to your inner feelings of unworthiness.

So lean in to your process my friend. I’ll be here if you need me.

Dedicated to your success,

Jordan

Jordan Gray
About Jordan Gray

Jordan Gray has been a sex and relationship coach for over 15+ years, with his work reaching over 200 million people worldwide. His writing has been featured in Vogue, GQ, The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, and countless other publications around the world. When he’s not working with 1-on-1 coaching clients or writing a new article, he’s most likely to be found reading, chopping wood, or spending time with his wife on a little island off the west coast of Canada.

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