I immediately get suspicious when someone tells me that their partner is perfect.  Knowing what I do about the relationship life cycle, I assume that the couple is still in their honeymoon stage.  They're infatuated with their idealized vision of one another.  They believe that none of the conflicts that happen to other people will happen to them.  Unlike others, they will never fall out of love, never argue, never break up…

It is a beautiful innocence, when a relationship starts.  It can feel like all of the dark burden of the past has been erased.  You're starting over with someone who isn't anything like your ex.  You've learned your lesson, so you aren't going to make the same mistakes.  This time, everything is going to go right.

Except, of course … it doesn't.

And it won't.  That's simply how relationships work.

Understanding this concept can save so much grief in relationships.  That's why I discuss it at length in the 2006 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men."

But the one idea that you can take away right now is that discovering imperfection in your partner is actually a wonderful thing.

It means he's real.

It means you see the person beneath the boyfriend … the person he is rather than the person you want him to be.

So when a relationship isn't quite perfect, it can mean one of two things:

1. It can mean that you're moving onto the next level in your relationship, when you're starting to see one another more realistically and are able to evaluate more clearly whether or not the relationship has staying power.
2. It can mean that intuition is telling you that something needs to change.  That something could be as simple as getting something out into the open (communication) or as extensive as rethinking your lifestyle.

When you get dissatisfied with a relationship, the immediate instinct is to blame him or to blame yourself.  Maybe you've been busy and stressed; maybe he's said some insensitive things.

But when you blame one another for a less than satisfying relationship, you don't add any positive energy back into the situation.  Nothing will get better because you've figured out whose fault it is.

The other instinct is to guess what he's thinking, wanting, or needing.  I always strongly counsel against trying to read your partner's mind.  Ask him.  Directly.

Then ask yourself, "What needs do I have that aren't getting fulfilled?"  Chances are that you feel something is lacking that you need to feel happy.  You know your own needs better than anyone.

That's the fantastic thing about feeling that a relationship isn't quite perfect.  It's a wake-up call.  It's telling you to be honest with yourself.  It spurs honest communication between the two of you.

If you can take positive action, you'll grow through the experience into a richer and more satisfying relationship (or take the steps to end an unhealthy situation).  If you get caught up in blame or feeling depressed, you'll find that your relationships always seem to take a nose dive at the first sign of imperfection.

You have the power to change a less than perfect relationship into something that fulfills you or to leave it.  Never forget it.

A while back, Sarah received a consultation from a woman who wanted to how her particular disability was going to affect her search for love.  I very much liked the way Sarah responded to the question, so I've included her response (edited to removed identifying details) below.

It's a difficult situation to have a "special need" (or whatever politically correct term is the current currency) and explain the implications of your need to a man who is considering making a future with you.  A physical disability that prevents you from enjoying the same activities he enjoys or prevents you from co-creating the kind of future he has always imagined can be grounds to end the relationship.

But luckily, a man who can see past the "dis-" in "dis-ability" is the most wonderful sort of man of all: a man who sees a woman's soul and falls in love with who she is, not what she is or isn't able to do.

As Sarah points out, though, the biggest challenge for persons with special needs is to avoid the victim mentality.  If you see yourself as a victim or as someone beleagured by an overwhelming challenge, you'll attract men who'll feed into your low self-esteeem and keep you in your victim state.

A wonderful friend of mine is in a wheelchair.  Certainly doesn't hurt him at all in his search for love!  He's such a positive person that his wheelchair serves as an ice-breaker and an attention-drawer.

Another wonderful friend of mine is blind.  Her resentment and pride pushes many men away.  But, at the same time, her passion for causes and acute sensitivity attracts other men.

In the end, it is our attitude about who we are that will affect our love life more profoundly than our physical or environmental conditions.  That's because relationships are about love … and none of us were born with disabled hearts.

From Sarah: 

I feel encouraged by your email and the way you describe yourself as attractive and self-confident, professional and well-traveled. It sounds as though you have filled your years with lots of life-changing experiences as well as life lessons, so that by the time you have reached "seniority" you can say you have lived well and have a depth of life experience. I myself am a firm believer that our lives are a precious gift, and a positive attitude is the key to unlocking life’s many treasures.

No matter what age or depth of life experience we achieve, we all have our stumbling blocks.  Rather than viewing divorces as setbacks, I encourage people to use them as opportunities for growth. No matter who you have experienced life and love with, there is the opportunity to learn something about them, something about life, and most of all the opportunity to learn something about yourself.

A disability can be seen as a special challenge; however, it is only a challenge in as far as you wish to make it. Sometimes our focus on our weaknesses and faults can result in our fears becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. The person who thinks they are fat will eventually let their weight or body image prevent them from meeting men. I converse with people who have a range of challenges or issues that they believe present difficulties in their search for love. Even people without physical challenges can have internal challenges they need to overcome such as depression, self-esteem issues, and shyness. They are only challenges if you choose to make them that.

If you have a disability, remember that this is an aspect of you that may be different to the norm, but it makes you no less special or capable of nurturing and developing relationships.

When we start out as teenagers loving boys and hiding our crushes with blushing smiles, we're acutely sensitive to whether they like us back.  Teenagers can be cruel.  The most popular boy in school may not know that we exist, but that's better than confessing our feelings and hearing him laugh in our face.

As we grow older, we find out that our adult lovers may be more tactful, but their rejection doesn't hurt any less.  In my work with Save My Marriage Today!, I hear stories about partners who are trapped in a cycle of hurting one another, building walls of silence and indifference to defend themselves against the person who's supposed to be their ally in love.

None of us like to think about the painful consequences of loving someone.  But when we have feelings for someone, their critical opinion can wound us like no one else's.  Healthy relationships require us to understand our own reaction to such criticism.  We must learn to develop a healthy response to wounding words.  Otherwise, those rejections will carry over to future relationships and negatively impact our interactions with a loving man who doesn't understand why his casual remarks trigger such anger.

Recently I've been reading a novel by my favorite romance writer Nora Roberts, and one of her female characters illustrates this point perfectly.  In Suzanna's Surrender, the main character is a single mother who's been recently divorced from an ambitious corporate lawyer.  He constantly told her that she disappointed him and couldn't measure up to the other society wives.  She accepted the humiliation because of her love for him.  It took years – and his infidelity – before she could recognize what their marriage was doing to the children and her self-esteem, and escape.

We'd all like to believe that those experiences – if we're aware of them and how they've affected us – won't carry over into our future relationships, because we know enough not to make the same mistake again.  But they do.  We develop habitual patterns of reacting to abuse or rejection, and those instincts kick in whether or not they're merited.

In Roberts' novel, the main character learns to grow out of her past through the healing love of a man who shows her just how much he needs, wants, and admires her.  But not all of us are that lucky.

We don't leave the past behind every time we enter a new relationship.  Every new relationship is affected by the ghosts of past relationships – his and yours.

And, sadly, what sticks with us most about past relationships are often the parts we disliked or that hurt us the most. 

It's funny that I still remember the guy who told me that everything about me was perfect except for my personality.  Or the man who told me that I didn't look like a model, "you know."  Both were men I cared for deeply, and those critical comments stuck with me longer than all the loving compliments they'd given me.

If I review my relationship history, those incidents are anomalies.  Almost all of the men I have been with have been loving, complimentary, and appreciative.  But I can't remember any compliments as clearly as I remember those two criticisms.

I'm not unique.  Studies have shown that negative experiences are better remembered than positive experiences.  When an experience carries a strong emotional charge, we remember it more vividly.  When something someone says hurts us in a powerful way, it sticks in our memory in a way all the "I love you"s in the world can't.

So what do we do about it?

First of all, don't accept hurtful criticism or abuse in silence.  If you can tell your partner that you felt hurt by his comment in a calm, un-accusatory way, then there is the chance that the emotional impact of the situation can be defused.  A situation that started out with angry words might evolve into an honest discussion.  The key is to express how you feel with "I" statements rather than hurling "you" statements in self-defense (e.g., say "I felt hurt by your comment" rather than "YOU hurt me when YOU said that").

Second, if your feelings seem out of proportion to the situation, ask yourself whether you're responding to the particular person you're with, or whether a past experience is haunting you still.  Sometimes simply becoming aware that we're sensitive about an issue because a previous partner used to criticize us is enough take away its charge.

Finally, forgive yourself for not being perfect.  It's okay if you don't look like a model or aren't perfectly compatible with someone else's idea of the perfect woman.  You're you.  And that's all you need to be for the right man.

Sarah shared this with me the other day, and I'd like to reprint it here.  If you're struggling with accepting being out of a relationship, or if you're looking for ways to change yourself so that you'll become more attractive to men, then this message might just come at the right time.

The first key to finding love is to believe that it will happen. Believe that you are single at the moment for a reason, and that destiny is trying to teach you something about yourself at this time. It might be to feel comfortable within your own company, or to celebrate being an individual and having control over what happens in your everyday life. But now that you are looking for more, the belief that it will happen will enable you to start to attract your reality.

You may be looking for things in your life to change so that you can attract a man. This is perhaps a misguided way of looking at finding love. The key to finding genuine love is to identify what the person inside you really is, and to celebrate being it. Don’t be the version of you that you think you need to be in order to find the man of your dreams. If you are able to be yourself and love being that person, your genuine nature will attract genuine men to you.

Remember that like attracts like, so if you are looking for genuine love you need to celebrate the genuine you. That way the men who are drawn to you are attracted to the real you.

If Sarah's message spoke to you, you'll love the 2006 Edition of "How to Be Irresistible to Men" (available August 1).  It's an incredible program that will bring out your inner, genuine irresistibility without making you into someone false that you're not.

Raise your hand if you've never been cheated on and you don't know anyone who's been cheated on.

Did you raise your hand?  If so, you are very lucky.  You still have that beautiful innocence that so many of us once had, when we still believed that what men told us in the heat of the moment was fact and not passion.

In the innocence of our first relationships, many of us would have built a future on a man's words, simply because we believed the literal truth of what he said.

Later, many of us experienced the hard lesson that a man can tell you that he loves you with all of his heart and that you're the only woman for him … but what he is expressing is the degree of his emotion at that moment through the inadequate vehicle of clichés that he knows you want to hear. 

We women know that words come more easily to us than to the average guy.  We're brought up to communicate, express our feelings, and connect through words.

Words don't come that easily for many men.  For many, their actions speak louder than their words.  A man who truly loves a woman will often show her how he feels through what he does for her, more so than through what he says.   But others see words as tools to achieve a purpose.  They know the words that women want to hear and can use that knowledge to their advantage.

It will always feel like a terrible betrayal to believe someone when he tells you that you are his one and only, that you occupy the entirety of his heart, and that he wants to be with you more than anything … and to find out that he's told other women the same thing.

It leaves us thinking that we can't trust any man with our hearts.

But things are rarely that simple.

There are many situations where it's clear to everyone but the woman involved that the man is cheating.  She could see the signs herself, but she refuses to look.

That's because we so often see what we want to see.  We hear what we want to hear.

There's no way to predict whether a man will cheat, but there are ways to minimize the chances of it happening.

1.  Make sure your expectations and intentions – and his – are clear from the start.  Don't assume monogamy is a given.  If you haven't spoken about whether you're exclusive, then assume you're not.

2.  Don't let the first flush of romantic love (that potent combination of infatuation and lust) blind you.  He is who he is.  If he enjoys the attention of other women, has had lots of casual flings in the past, and is a "bad boy," then don't assume that the love of a good woman will transform him.  Remain as realistic as you can.  If you can't see him clearly because of the power of your emotions, then ask your friends or people who've known him a while to give you an honest assessment of the situation.

3.  Don't assume that because he treats you like a princess, he isn't treating another woman the same way.  We often feel so flattered, pampered, and happy when a man spoils us that our reasonable self goes out the door.  Reason's caution lights get blinded by lust's neon glow.  We can't imagine that anyone who would treat us that well would be capable of doing it for more than one woman.  Remember to keep your head on straight even when your heart is racing.

4.  Always keep in mind that whatever he says to you, he has probably said to another woman in the past.  It is so hard to recognize that we aren't our boyfriend's first and only lover – or, at least, the only lover that matters.  All of us want to believe that he's never experienced this with another woman, that we're teaching him new depths of love and passion.  But if you're going to be realistic about a relationship, you have to recognize that you're both adults with histories.  You also both have personal goals and beliefs about what you want out of a relationship that might not be compatible – even though the relationship feels oh so right.  Have the courage to leave a relationship that isn't mutually respectful, no matter how great it might feel.

If you have been cheated on, remember … the proper response is not to distrust all men.  It's not to say that all men are liars.  Rather, just be wiser the next time around.  A bit more realistic.  Eyes a bit more wide open.

It's sad but true that relationships don't just take love.  They take smarts, too. 

I discovered the following poem in Wayne Dyer's book, The Power of Intention.  It's by Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet and mystic.  It is so beautiful that I want to share it with you here.

You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust.
You were born with ideals and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.

– Rumi 

I've been looking for a new place to move.  A week ago I thought I had found the perfect place on paper, a amazingly-priced apartment right in the heart of the city next to the gardens, only to walk through it and discover that it was cold, dank, and had paint peeling off the walls.

Then, towards the end of the week, I found an ad for another fantastic-sounding place.  A friend and I drove past to check it out, and he recognized the apartment.  He'd spent quite a bit of time there with a former fling.  It was incredible, he told me.  Huge, sunny, recently painted, with a marble fireplace.  I wouldn't find a better deal in the entire city.  He even drew me a map of the floor layout.  I had to take it.

"Don't get me too excited!" I told him, laughing.  "I don't want to get my hopes up."  I called the rental management agency and made an appointment the following Monday to see it.   For the rest of the afternoon, my friend gushed about the apartment, how it would be perfect for me, how he could see me living there, how he'd help me move.

Monday came around.  I hadn't been able to sleep the night before, and my friend was more excited than I was.  Then, early that afternoon, the rental agent called up.

"I have bad news.  The current tenant has decided not to leave."

And that was that.

What does this have to do with relationships?

Not much, at first glance.  It has more to do with how we act when we don't get what we want.

When we decide we want something – a boyfriend, a new apartment, a new job – we feel so excited.  We embark on the hunt with energy and enthusiasm.  We pursue all leads, we don't dismiss any possibility out of hand, and we solicit other people's advice.  We're fired up with the vision of getting our dream.

But then one promising lead after another pans out.  We get our hopes up about a particular man/house/job, and then get our hopes dashed again.  Friends aren't much help with their reassurances.  "That's such a shame; that would have been perfect for you."  "Keep trying."  "Things will get better."

What happens?  We fall back into the trap of feeling bitter, or feeling like it will never happen for us, or feeling like we're destined for the doldrums.  Everyone else seems to get what they want with a modicum of effort; why not us?  Maybe we're just unlucky.  Maybe the universe has something against us.

And then we stop looking … or we look out of a sense of duty, without any real sense that we'll find something.

People who are truly successful in life know one thing to be true: when life knocks you down, get up again.  That's all there is to it.

If you've been looking for a relationship, or for some highly anticipated change in your life that doesn't seem to be materializing, remember that each missed opportunity doesn't doom your search to failure.

So what if you found a guy that seemed to be great but ended up having some major flaws?  At least you know what to avoid next time!

So what if you found what appeared to be "the perfect guy" and he wasn't interested?  At least you know guys like him are out there!

I have to admit … I did feel really discouraged yesterday.  I'd allowed my imagination to run wild about what I would do if I got the apartment before I actually got it.

But now I know better.  I know that apartments like that are out there.  Now, I just have to find one for myself.

Happy 4th of July to everyone!  I hope you're planning something special.  This is the time of year when I get most nostalgic for my childhood, when the Fourth of July seemed like the longest and most exciting day of the year (after Christmas, of course).

Afternoon kicked off the Independence Day parade, where my brother and I would race out and collect candy from beneath the hooves of beribboned horses.  Later my family would have a bonfire on the beach and eat s'mores and light off fireworks on the smooth sand.  When darkness fell, the real fireworks display started.  We snuggled beneath old sleeping bags, and I remember watching the reflections of light on my parents' faces.  The rare occasion of all of us spending a day together was just as important for me as the parade and fireworks.

All that changed when I became a teenager.  I became too "cool" to collect candy.  Instead of watching the parade with my parents, I wandered up and down the parade route with my best friend to watch for cute out-of-town boys and hope I'd be noticed.  At the beach that evening I met up with school friends and only returned to my family when it grew dark.  And on a secluded corner of the beach one year, I had my first real kiss.

Looking back now, I feel a bit sad to remember just how important popularity and success with boys was to me – and all of us, really – at that time in my life.  Like most teenagers, I believed that my social status with my peers was more important than time with my family.  If someone would have told me that what boys thought of me didn't matter, that I was going to be successful in life whether or not I got noticed by boys, and that what I would miss most someday would not be the social status but rather that precious time with family, I would have thought they were crazy.

It is so easy to forget what's really valuable and important in life.  We may have friends and family that love us, but instead it's tempting to focus on our lack of a guy.  We may have wonderful activities to share with people we care about, but instead we find ourselves tempted to look for opportunities where there are single men.

Sometimes it's nice to stop looking and just enjoy where we are in life.  It's nice to remember that our success in life isn't judged on whether we have a boyfriend/partner/husband or not.  It's nice to remember that we can do or be anything we want without being penalized for being single.

Our civilization has gone a long way in the past fifty years.  Every day, women around the world get more opportunities to fulfill their dreams.  We know that a loving, lasting relationship should – and will – be part of our lives, but it isn't and won't be our entire life.  Life is much bigger than that.

This Independence Day, I'd like to ask you to remember one of the greatest blessings of all: our ability to take charge of our lives and change what we don't like.  It's a blessing bestowed to all of us.  No matter how impossible something seems, or how great the odds, we still have the opportunity to do something about it.

Let your life reflect conscious choices.  You don't have to be noticed by boys, get lots of attention, or have the perfect boyfriend to be successful.  You get to decide what will make you successful.  What will you create?

I've been so excited recently.  Not only is Sarah about to bring her bundle of joy into the world, but I'm about to bring my creative "baby" into the world.  Sarah's stepped back and let me do a lot of the development on the 2006 edition.  Oh, wow … it's going to be incredible.

You see, several months ago we were sitting down and thinking about the ways in which we could really get people to go out there and take charge of their love lives.  We suspected that there were women who were going out there and getting all the information they could about men and dating, but not actually taking the next step of changing the way they acted around men.

Why?  Why would we learn and learn about relationship skills, but not actually use it on the real-life men around us?

Here at 000Relationships.com, my team members and I brainstormed some reasons.  Perhaps these women felt that there wasn't anyone around them they wanted to practice on.  Perhaps the fear of failure kept them back.  Perhaps they felt it was too much work.  Perhaps they felt it wasn't "them."  Perhaps they preferred to hold onto old habits – even if they weren't working – rather than face the risk of trying something new.  Perhaps the knowledge just seemed too theoretical in an ebook.

The last idea really struck me.  Often, one reason that we don't do things is because it just seems too foreign when we're reading it in a book.  It is one thing to read an ebook and think about the ideas.  It is quite another to feel inspired and motivated enough to go out into the world and actually apply those ideas to your own situation.

So we decided that we were going to make the 2006 edition much more immediate, inspirational, and individualized.  Instead of writing another edition of the ebook, we were going to create a video course with a panel of special guests.  We were going to talk to you about how we wrestled with the ideas and applied them to our own lives.  And most importantly, we were going to take every opportunity to motivate you and inspire you to throw off your old ways of acting with men and emerge transformed and completely irresistible.

Not all of us learn best by books.  Some of us are visual learners.  Other learn best by hearing.  So that's why the 2006 Edition provides all three.  You won't have any excuses for accepting a second-rate relationship when you're capable of so much more!

I've been enjoying creating this edition with my colleagues so much.  I recently finished a beautiful 111-page workbook with supplementary material and exercises to go with each of the 12 lessons in the the two-hour video course.  It gives you a chance to think about the ideas and really apply them to yourself.  We want you to succeed!

Since I know that not everyone has a high-speed internet connection, we're making the video lessons available in a variety of formats, including audio so that you can play it on your iPod. 

In the next few weeks, we're going to pre-launch the 2006 edition to a few select people to get their feedback on how we can streamline and improve it.  Then we're going to release it to you.

I'll keep you posted!

Thanks to everyone who entered our Readers Story competition.  Congratulations to Noël Christianson, our first place winner!  Her determination not to lower her standards in her search for love is a valuable reminder for all of us.

"Will Date for Food" 

by Noël Christianson

"Mom, you live like there’s no tomorrow." Obviously, my son was dizzy from seeing me fold clothes, watch CNN with the phone to my ear while adjusting leg weights for final reps. I never did take living for granted. My mind’s eye carries along a rhythmic hour glass, dribbling sand with every heartbeat. It’s my reminder of this world’s short gig. Really, if I have any excesses, blame my Dad. He had a way of delivering quips that made you think. My "life’s short" attitude began incubating lap-side when he said, "You know, you start dying the moment you are born."

Whether it was his voice or teacher’s demeanor he dragged home each night, his dinner time talks made you listen. Truth had a place at our table. But life with a teacher is not always easy. At home there are no recess bells to free you from the lecture sure to come over any topic. Teachers are well-read and are trained to explain everything. There is a sure-fire system, a root to the problem, a cause and effect and historical reference to all of life’s foibles. I now know to settle in real comfy when talking with Dad.

None of his children are complaining about those dinner times. Mom scurried around tending to boiling pots and our needs. The warmth from that kitchen, conversation and good times jelled our sense of self, preparing us for the future. Unfortunately my new cynicism causes me to peer suspiciously through the clouds of steam those meals brought. Little did I know, my Truth would be "This ain’t the way your family life is gonna be."

On the Eve of my divorce anniversary (is there a Hallmark card for that?) I continue to analyze what went wrong. My sister and I share the common bond of not having good luck with men. Goodluckwithmen. It sounds like a Bavarian cookie. Well, these cookies crumbled all right. On the outside, our marriages looked pretty good but the real stuffing showed up when lifelong promises were tossed aside, fell and splattered. After kicking around the pieces through therapy, self-help books and Anything Anonymous meetings, Sis, I think I have the answer. Those Great Depression boys are the best.

Our parents talked often of The Depression. Hard Times was the hub of their adolescent lives and the spokes from that era radiated into their futures. We heard stories of hard work, no work, no food, big fear. It seemed grimy. The Dirty Thirties. Families struggled to survive – together. Did my relationship-sensitive ears hear through the bleakest days of this century there was commitment?

But as my Dad would say, "Things could be worse."

At that time, he did have it worse. Orphaned in the middle of The Depression, he later lucked out to marry my mom who held the same belief in family covenant. They survived The Depression, never quite shaking off the residue, causing them to cling to Family and Faith. Strong ethics helped assuage their new Gripes of Wrath: illness, clamoring kids, penniless days.

So maybe I have been going through this husband-hunting thing all wrong. I could run a personal ad looking for some down-trodden war refugee who escaped famine, floods, a POW camp, hungry for hearth and home. Beaten down from survival uncertainties, he would be content to have me clang a tin cup along the boards to announce dinnertime and serve the man some gruel. Add a warm bath and he would think he was in heaven. Repeat after me, "I will learn commitment."

16^th century George Herbert spouted, "One Father is more than 100 school masters." Think of the mathematical ramifications the impact this father-school master’s talks had on us through the decades. We girls listened. It’s been challenging for us to pursue relationships without testing and grading each man against our standards without lowering the curve. So when I gnash my teeth in frustration over the men I meet who aren’t strong, smart or in any way committed to family, I just blame my Dad.