Falling in Love with His/Her Potential
By Jeanine Austin, Ph.D.
We’ve been there, we are there or we could go there, and fall in love with his/her potential. Please heed my warning, “Look out girlfriend!!”
The tricky bit about this challenge is that we all have great potential. Some people realize a only a small bit of their potential, some people realize a good deal of it and some people are actualizing most or all of their potential. We are all capable of greatness~this truth lies latent in all of us.
We may have the awareness, and we are right, that a guy/gal could really show up beautifully in the world if s/he would make manifest his/her potential. We may see that s/he is very bright but maybe s/he doesn’t use his/her gift to his/her or other’s avail. Maybe s/he is physically beautiful but is arrogant and conceited about it. S/He may talk in a convincing way about how much s/he wants love in his/her life and even how much s/he loves you, but treats you and others in an unloving manner. Maybe s/he talks about making it big financially but takes little or no action. Maybe s/he tells you, you are special, but s/he is a recalcitrant flirt. S/He might be an addict, who says s/he can control his/her addiction(s), but clearly doesn’t have a handle on it. S/He may talk about the importance of spirituality or God in his/her life, but s/he lacks the earmarks of someone on a serious spiritual path such as kindness, compassion and generosity of spirit.
Women are often helpers and support people in this world. In fact, many of us are in the helping professions. We may get a buzz or a high from helping others. However, if we choose a partner because s/he is “our project” or our goal is to help him/her manifest his/her potential, we may end up with a man/woman that may choose never to actualize themselves. Self-actualization may be important to you, but it may or may not be important to them! Our good faith attempts to help this person may end up being disempowering for him/her and just plain exhausting for us!
Of course, most of us are not enlightened masters and we are in relationships with others, in part, that we might learn to become all that we can be. We are here to help each other actualize. But if the man/woman we have our eye on is stuck in some nasty behavior and seems contented to stay in that place over a substantial period of time, (coaching tip: listen to the actions not the words) do we really want to fall in love with his/her potential?
We may want to seek a partner that is already at cause in their life, not a perfect person, but someone who is really trying as we are. If you are dating someone who you know “deep down” is a good person except that ______ (nasty behavior here) try to imagine how you might negotiate that undesirable trait five, ten or twenty years down the road. If we already are in a partnership, perhaps that is a different story, but if we are contemplating starting a relationship with someone~we may be able to dodge a bullet!
©Copyright 2008 by Jeanine Austin. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry.