Refuse the poison of perfectionism in your relationships

We all know that fairy tales in real life may not look like fairy tales as presented by Mr Disney.

Prince Charming may have a crooked nose, and your princess may have pigeon toes.

What am I wittering about? Being so fussy that you miss genuine relationship opportunities. I talked above about being too desperate, but it can work the other way. Expecting people to be perfect, then getting mad when their behaviour doesn't exactly accord with your imagination of how they should be is, frankly, nuts.

If people don't 'live up to' your self-made image of them, is that their fault? If you have too-tight parameters for how your love should be before you meet him or her, then you may be positioning yourself out of the market. Sure, there are things we all prefer, but some people are so specific:

"He must have green eyes (and two of them!)."

"He must wear designer jackets."

"He must have a body of a Greek god, the mind of Albert Schweitzer, and the car of a London financier."

"He must have a dollar-shaped beauty spot on his left buttock."

I kid you not; some people (usually younger people) cut off their own options to this extent.

They may defend this with: "Why should I accept anything less?!" But this misses the point that, so often, something can seem to have all the right 'parts', but when those parts are put together, you find they don't really work as well as expected.

What to do: Open your mind to the possibility that you could be mistaken in assuming you can only have a relationship with a person who fits exactly what you have imagined. And remember that you are having a relationship with a real-life person, not a phantasm of your own making.

To your relationship bliss,

#Mark Tyrell (my senior relationship coach expert) shares #Mikolinton cares

The oldest relationship mistake in the book?

I hope you like stories MICHAEL because there is an old Sufi tale that tells us a lot about a major relationship mistake.

It goes like this. Some villagers find an eagle, a bird they had never seen before. Because it was unfamiliar, they didn't feel it was like a 'real bird' at all. So they cut its beak, trimmed back its feathers, and clipped off its talons, at last deciding that now it looked like a 'proper bird'. Of course, it could no longer fly.

There you go, short and sweet, but rather profound I hope you agree.

Treating your new partner like a project that you need to work on, like something to 'improve', is disrespectful and can make the person feel like you don't appreciate them for who they are or even know them at all. Trying to get someone to wear more trendy clothes, go for the jobs you recommend, act how you think they should, begs the question: what did you see in this person to begin with?

What to do: Remember the story of the villagers and the eagle.

Dating someone new should be fun, exciting, and enjoyable. If you can monitor and influence your own behaviour during this 'getting to know' phase, then you have much more hope of getting to know whether you and they really will work together without needing to blame anyone if it doesn't work out.

Knowing what may be wrong can help us all understand more how to find what is right.

To your relationship Joy,

#Mark Tyrell (my senior relationship coach expert)  shares #Mikolinton cares