by Deb Garraway
March 31, 2011

How to Get a Guy Who’s Not Wrong for You

Yeah, I know, the title of this post is a mouthful of clashing words. I

Wait to get a man who's right for you

could have just called it How To Get A Guy Who’s Right For You,

but I’m playing off the title of a book called How Not To Marry the Wrong Guy: A Guide For Avoiding the Biggest Mistake of Your Life by Anne Milford and Jennifer Gauvain. See the article and book review here: Is he the wrong man?

In it Milford talks about how she called off her own wedding 17 years ago. She writes, “Even though my fiancé was a very nice man, he was not the right man for me. Deep down, I had known that from the very beginning of the relationship. Why did a smart and capable woman get engaged to the wrong guy? I knew if I talked to enough women, I would uncover a pattern.” (more…)

by Deb Garraway
March 16, 2011

Settle for Mr. Right Now?

Mr Right Now wins second place

I just read an article I want to share that really got me fired up and provoked some strong emotions in me!

Lori Gottlieb is an American author of a new book called Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. She’s interviewed in this article by Amy Willis, a writer for Telegraph, an online dating service in the UK. Gottlieb claims that women who have failed to find their perfect partner by the age of 30 should give up their search for Mr. Right and settle instead for Mr. Right Now.

Wow! When I read the first few paragraphs of this article, I was stunned that someone would actually assert that women over 30 should settle for less than their expectations in a man.

(more…)

by Deb Garraway
December 29, 2010

Self-Power Tools for Negotiating with the Man of My Dreams

The love of my life is really annoying me

This post is dedicated to women who are in new romances with their potential “man of my dreams”

and also those in committed relationships or even married. Having an M.B.A. background, I’m always interested in relating what I learned in business school to romantic partnerships. I’ve just finished reading an outstanding book about how to negotiate agreement without giving in called Getting to Yes by Fisher, Ury and Patton. Based on a Harvard study and written in 1981, the method, described as “principled negotiation”, is still very applicable today.

I believe this method would be very useful if applied to our personal and romantic relationships. The premise is that mutual agreements in any conflict can be achieved without getting angry or ending in a win-lose proposition, in which one party feels they were taken advantage of or perhaps compromised too much. (more…)

by Deb Garraway
December 22, 2010

Will I Find My Soulmate to Be Mr. Perfect?

Your perfectly imperfect soulmate

Whenever I hear anyone say, “no one is perfect” or “no relationship is perfect”, I get a little annoyed.

It’s not that I disagree with the literal meaning of either statement, but I wonder why anyone would even want to be with Mr. Perfect. I’ve been in relationships in which I thought I did find my soulmate and wanted to believe he was perfect in every way. Well, I got over that fantasy eventually.

Perfectionism—in this case meaning extremely high expectations in someone or for everything to be smooth-going with no rough spots–is an unrealistic illusion.

Perfection in My Soulmate

Perfection has many different standards to everyone, including some of the unrealistic expectations we put on ourselves for what we think we should be or become for a man. (more…)
by Deb Garraway
November 10, 2010

Free Falling to Find True Love

Is this the only way to find true love?

Remember the song Free Falling by Tom Petty? This song can be interpreted in so many ways,

everything from he’s happy to be free from a woman he just broke up with, to the other extreme that he’s addicted to drugs and leaves her because she’s a good girl he doesn’t deserve. He has his freedom, but he feels like he’s free falling from a drug high to the ground. Sounds like a very scary thing, like jumping out of an airplane with no parachute. Hear it sung by John Mayer here. http://budurl.com/freefall (more…)

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