Ah man, it sucks that relationship didn’t work out! I know you thought they were the one, but what did you learn from it?

What a tough question to answer when you’re grieving for someone who isn’t even dead!

What did you learn?

When a relationship breaks down and this doesn’t even just have to be a romantic one, you HAVE to walk away saying to yourself “well ok, next time I know from a process of elimination, here are the things I know I don’t want in my next person” rather than taking the approach of “here’s my super long list of tick boxes I want them to fill”.

Instead I think it’s better to add to a list of things we know we don’t want next time rather than sticking to a list of absolute must haves for our “perfect” partner (who won’t exist by the way because perfect is simply unattainable).

What have you realised you don’t want your forever person to be like, or what traits have you realised you don’t think match your own for whatever reason.

Here’s the benefits of finding your perfect match from a process of elimination rather than going off of a “must haves” list.

1. We might think we know exactly how we want our forever person to be in our minds, but when we experience it in real life it feels strangely different to our expectations.

2. Finding out what kind of person you want to be with from a process of elimination rather helps build you into who you are at the same time.

3. Until you’ve experienced what you don’t want, how will you REALLY know exactly what you do what with total certainty?

4. Creating a list of expectations for our perfect match to fill actually reflects more of what we’re missing from our own life than anything else, you want someone outgoing, confident and not scared of anything? Okay cool, but are you actually bringing that to the relationship yourself? Because if you’re not, how do you expect to attract someone like this?

5. As brutal as it sounds, getting your hands dirty will make you fully appreciate the final stop. So if I’m putting this in terms of dating, until you’ve dated some s**t heads, you’ll never fully appreciate the person you’re supposed to be with. See what I mean?

6. Dating is character building. Honestly it really is. You can’t expect someone who’s the embodiment of some list of “must haves” to show up without you putting in any effort. You have to get out there and experience some crappy relationships to realise what you ACTUALLY want because our wants from a relationship change as we get older.

So honestly. In learning what you don’t want. You’ll inadvertently learn what you do and that’s a far better way around of doing things because it sill help form you into the person that you are at the same time.