I Settled for "Good Enough" and Got Married..

In my last post I talked about a client who broke up with her boyfriend of ten years and is now happily married.

What was the hardest part for her?
Breaking up with a partner of ten years? Finding a spouse afterward?
Neither. The hardest part was finding a reason to break up with someone she had been with for ten years.

And honestly, this isn't just her problem.
Looking back, the thing that struck me while working through Ideal Type Design was, "Wow, I'm someone who has always been good at settling for reality."

Even after breaking up with a boyfriend of three years, when I went around asking friends to set me up,
I went on about four blind dates, and what I remember thinking was
"Four blind dates is already a lot, isn't it? I should just go with the best of the four."

Then, while going through Ideal Type Design, I counted how many dates I would actually need to go on to meet someone I liked,
and good grief... the conclusion was that I'd have to go on about 15 before meeting even one person I actually wanted.

That's when it hit me. I had been settling my whole life.
"Let's just meet them and see," "Well, at least they were a nice person"—those were probably the phrases I said most.

At this point you're probably wondering,
"So what on earth is this Ideal Type Design thing?"
Ideal Type Design is, literally, designing the ideal type you want to marry.
Normally when someone asks "What's your ideal type?"
we say things like... um, tall, a puppy-like face, a sweet personality... that sort of thing.
But did describing it that way ever actually lead you to meet such a person? For most people, no.

"An ideal type is just an ideal. Who actually meets theirs?"
Why can't we ever meet our ideal type? Because, to begin with, that person doesn't exist.

Even if Gang Dong-won is my perfect physical ideal, if I actually met him, there would surely be things about his personality or lifestyle that don't fit me.
Or, even if the ideal type did show up, most of us aren't prepared to make that kind of person fall for us.

We think about who our ideal type is, but as for whether that ideal type would actually want to meet us,
nobody thinks about that part.

Ideal Type Design was created to fill those gaps.
For example, if I want to meet a lion? I should go to the zoo.
I shouldn't go to the aquarium and settle, thinking "Oh, a sea lion? That's close enough to a lion, right?"
So is going to the zoo all it takes?
To get the lion to come to me, I have to bring meat. If I bring grass or vegetables, the lion isn't coming.
In the same way, Ideal Type Design means deciding whether the person I want to meet is a lion or a tiger, pinpointing where they tend to show up,
preparing in advance what attracts them, and planning all the way down to actually going to that place.

So what's the benefit of doing Ideal Type Design?
Through Ideal Type Design, we gain criteria for deciding whether to go on a blind date at all, just by looking at someone's looks and specs, before ever meeting them.
It prevents the classic mistake of "Well, I should at least meet them three times."

Think of it as a map for finding the person you want to meet, built so you don't waste energy, time or money.
Thankfully, the client who broke up with her boyfriend of ten years and is now happily married also found her future husband within three months of the breakup and made it to the altar quickly.

In the next post, for those curious about Ideal Type Design, I'll bring you information on what items it covers and how you can try it yourself.