What Are You Really Looking For While Dating?

The following is Chapter Three from my book, Auditing Your Dating Patterns: So You Can Stop Dating the Same Men in Different Bodies. The book every woman should work through before her next date.

Are you looking for love, or are you looking for someone to distract you from yourself?

Wants and Needs.

Like most of us, I’m sure you can list off the qualities you want in a man faster than you can give your coffee order: “Tall, kind, funny, handsome, financially stable, emotionally available…”—and the list goes on. But when was the last time you really stopped to think about what you actually need in a relationship? 

Because listen, there’s icing on the cake, then there are things that are essential for your happiness, peace, and growth. And if you don’t know what you’re truly looking for, you’ll fuck around and find yourself caught up in all the things that only ever amount to bullshit situations.

To avoid that, you need to dig deep and figure out what you really want, and why.

Needs vs Wants. 

Think of your needs as your non-negotiables—the things that have to be there for a relationship to work and last.

So let’s bring back in your values real quick. 

If you value honesty, you need transparency. If you value peace, you need emotional stability. If you value growth, you need someone who isn’t stagnant and actually works on themselves. If you value money, you need someone who’s financially stable and responsible with it. If you value respect, you need consistency in how you’re treated. If you value communication, you need someone who actually talks things through instead of shutting down or disappearing.

Wants, on the other hand, are the extras. Like I said earlier, the icing on the cake. Nice to have, but not the be-all, end-all.

Maybe you want a man who’s tall, has a beard that connects (which, let’s be real, isn’t easy for every guy—so cut them some slack), dresses really well, is always down for a spontaneous road trip, and is into the same type of music as you.

Great. Now imagine you meet him. He’s everything you wanted (including fine as hell), but he lies about damn near everything, is inconsistent, blows you off every time you try to have a real conversation, and has the emotional maturity of an 8-year-old.

Could you build a happy-ass future with him?

No. The answer is no.

Okay now imagine meeting a man who’s everything you need, but he’s not taller than you, doesn’t have the same taste in music, and prefers planning over spontaneity. Could you make that work?

Yes. Of course you could.

That’s the difference between what you want and what you need. 

The Why Behind the Want

Once you’ve figured out your needs and wants, you have to take it a step further and ask yourself why.

Why do you want a man who’s financially stable?

Is it because you genuinely associate financial stability with security and partnership? Is it because you’ve got your own money and don’t want a man you’ll have to carry? Or is it because you don’t have your own money and you’re looking for a man to save you?

Why do you want a man who communicates well?

Is it because you’re honest and direct, and aren’t afraid of confrontation? Or is it because you’re not, and you want a man to do all the heavy lifting in that department?

Why do you want a man who’s romantic?

Is it because you genuinely enjoy thoughtful gestures and how they make you feel? Or is it because that’s what you think love is?

Now, you either read that and felt called out by the last lines in each of those examples, or you read it and thought to yourself, “Well, shit. I’ve never looked at it this way before.”

Either way, now you see why just making a surface-level list of what you want in a man isn’t enough.

Choosing Reality Over Potential

Now, look. I know a lot of the conversations, especially on social media, will tell you to never, ever choose a man for his potential. And for the most part, I agree… but with a caveat.

And that caveat is effort.

We can’t strip away the realities and complexities of what it looks like to navigate life as human beings. Period. Man or woman. 

Learning, unlearning, re-learning… these roads aren’t easy to travel, so we have to give grace to ourselves and others where it’s due. The key part there being: where it’s due.

This is where your discernment has to kick in and override your habit of seeing things for what you want them to be instead of what they actually are, and your conditioning that wants to be seen as a “good woman.”

It’s one thing if you’re with a man who isn’t where he wants to be yet, or even where you want him to be, but he is actively in motion and doing the work to get there because it matters to him. Think: communication, making more money, healing old wounds.

It’s a whole other thing entirely to get with a man who isn’t where he wants to be and is doing fuck all about it (other than feeling sorry for himself and wanting you to feel sorry for him too), and then staying with him because you believe he has potential—which, nine times out of ten, is really just you projecting onto him what you would do if you were in his situation, and bending over backwards trying to push him to step into it while he digs his heels deeper in his own mud.

There’s what you want and need in a man, and then there’s what you hope you can change about a man. You’ve gotta stop confusing these. 

“I want a man who’s ambitious!”

But the last three men you dated had no direction, and you were the one spending all your free time re-doing their resumes, calling in favours from your own network, and trying to build their careers for them.

“I want a man who’s kind!”

But you keep entertaining men who say out-of-pocket, mean-ass things to you, but then tell you that they’re “just jokes” and you’re being way too sensitive. 

“I want a man who’s emotionally available!”

But you’re still chasing after men who avoid their feelings and “don’t believe in therapy,” trying to convince them how much therapy would actually help them.

If you’re serious about finding what you’re looking for at some point in your life, then you have to start being honest about the men you’ve been choosing thus far and the patterns you’ve been repeating. Emphasis on you, because this is your dating life.

In the great words of Julia Roberts:

You say who.

You say when.

You say how much.

Learn to recognize when someone isn’t for you, and rather than taking it personally, just thank them for showing you who they are and move on.

Like I always say…

Next caller.

Now, if this excerpt made you rethink the way you've been showing up in your dating life, don't let it become just another thing you read on the internet and forgot by tomorrow.

Change happens when we actually do the work, not just read about it.

So do yourself a solid, click here, and... do the work.

You’ll go through twelve chapters, each one created to help you see yourself, and the men you’re used to dating, from a completely different perspective, followed by homework that pushes you to go beyond the conversations you’re probably used to having with your homegirls, your therapist… and yourself.

Oh, and not to mention, your future self will thank you so gawt damn much.

XO,

Cynthia B.W