Wake Up Call: Match Yourself Well

I have discovered the secret to maintaining your self esteem and feeling beautiful whilst in a relationship: match yourself according to your own level. We all know the feeling of getting into a relationship only to find that we don’t feel good about ourselves anymore. Either we begin to feel stupid, or unattractive, or uninteresting. Alternatively, it is sometimes the case that we start to feel a heightened sense of superiority or become disrespectful towards our partner due to their inability to “get it”. They just can’t keep up to us.

Psychological studies prove that ensuring that our mate is our equal is a deeply important part of a healthy relationship. It begins with knowing oneself of course. Rate yourself on a scale of one to ten as regards intelligence, looks, world experience, adventurousness, curiosity, sense of humour, etc. It is challenging to do this objectively but necessary all the same. This is the moment where you must be brutally honest. Then take a look around you at some of the people you find yourself attracted to. See how they fare on the scale.

I find that with men, this situation is usually quite imbalanced. For some reason, men tend to have an optimistic view of their physical appearance. Some of them could use a wake up call. Time and time again I have witnessed somewhat attractive men setting their sites on super-model looking women who are usually half their age. Depending on the size of the man’s pocket-book and the values of the woman in question, sometimes they have luck, but it is generally for the short term and ends with the loss of a small fortune and a bruised ego. Statistics would argue that if the same man were to partner with a woman of his stature who is financially secure, mature, and of average looks, the duo would have a much better chance at making it in the long run.

A sorry example of this was brought to my attention the other day when a friend revealed his most recent horror story of a relationship. Frank is a forty-something, moderately handsome, successful businessman. He drives a new, sparkling sports car and dresses in Versace. He thought he had hit the jackpot the day he met Jzenia. Gorgeous, young, exotic, with a James Bond girl accent, she was a dream come true.

Three months later they were married. Frank had ignored all of the red flags. The fact that nothing he did was good enough, the fact that she returned her engagement ring because the larger one was “so much cuter”. On the honeymoon, Jzenia insisted that they change hotels as The Four Seasons did not serve the breakfast she preferred. Once they had transferred her 20-pieced luggage set to The Hilton and had re-settled in, she threw a tantrum that the view at the previous hotel was superior and insisted they move back. After being belittled and embarrassed one to many times, Frank threw in the towel. Three weeks later they were divorced.

I asked Frank over cocktails one night why he thought this situation had occurred, being that he had already been married twice prior. He responded that he never matched himself up properly. He always went after the sensual, gorgeous, Eastern European type with whom he shared little to nothing in common. Being a fairly straightforward Canadian man, Frank was selecting women he could not really relate to.

This brings us back to my earlier point. If you partner with someone who is fantastic looking and you are not, you are slowly going to feel less and less attractive. However, if your mate is unappealing, you might start to believe you are something special to look at when you are not. The same holds true for intelligence levels. Should you choose to spend your time with someone who is more cerebral than yourself, you will unnecessarily be putting yourself at risk of feeling thick. Whereas if your partner isn’t as quick as you are, you run into the problem of feeling overly gifted in the brains department. The same holds true for athleticism, worldliness, sophistication and so on. If you would like to feel terrific about yourself, find someone who matches your pace step for step. It is always fun to learn new things from our mate, but at the same time, we have to feel like we have the complete package the way we are now. This is the secret to a healthy relationship in which you are always feeling like the best version of yourself!