Thursday, May 31, 2012

10 Best and 10 Worst Cities for Singles


"Finding the best cities for singles goes beyond simply identifying the places with the highest percentage of bachelors and bachelorettes. Financial factors count, too. After all, you’ll want to meet someone who can afford to date, right?
To put together our list of best cities for singles, we took into account income and living costs. ..."
Read more: http://www.kiplinger.com/slideshow/best-cities-for-singles/1.html#top#ixzz1wRwbdDDT 

Kiplinger Magazine just published their list of the 10 best and worst cities for singles.  Two North Carolina towns made the lists, one in each.  It may surprise you which made it where.

  • Charlotte didn't even get an honorable mention, nor did any of the romantic beach towns of the Carolina coast.

Why would I take time out from talking about how to change adversity into advantage to natter about dating?  Because, the reality is that our romantic lives play a major role in our happiness and well being.

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Not satisfied your dating skills are what they could be?  
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Now, you might say, "Tom, you have been married for more than 30 years now.  You have been out of the dating scene so long.  What the heck can you tell me about dating?"

The answer may surprise you.  My church teaches that every couple should set aside Friday evenings as "Date Night."  The reason for this is simple.  The foundation of the family is the marriage.  The foundation of the marriage is the ongoing romance between the husband and wife.  The fact that I have convinced the same woman to go out with me and stay with me for more than 30 years is actually a testament to my skills in this area.

True, I am probably not the best guy to tell you how to capture a woman's heart or what are the best pick up lines and places.  But I sure can tell you how to keep a woman's heart, and how to make sure you stay caught yourself.

The foundation of a successful long-term romance lies in having a correct understanding of what romantic love is about.  I am not talking about sex versus romance nor am I talking about candlelight dinners or football games.  I am talking about understanding what makes the game of love really work.

I have a cousin who has five children with five different women.  I have five children with the same woman.  Which do you imagine is harder, suckering five different women to jump into bed with you once, or convincing the same woman to keep coming back for more, again and again?

And the first obstacle to a correct understanding is to get rid of Hollywood's and romance novels' destructive and false concept of "falling in love."

The reason it is destructive to talk and think about "falling in love" is because the phrase is programming you to believe that love is something that happens to you - an act of chance, not choice.  When the reality is quite the opposite.  Love is ALL about choice.

What really happens when you "fall in love"?

  1. Something "clicks" between you and that special someone.  It may pheromones, it may be hormones, it may be powerful physical attraction or something more subtle.  Whether it is chemistry or "chemistry" doesn't matter.  The fact is that the first step is attraction.  I will concede here and now that we often have little control over who is attractive to us.  Where the choice comes is in what we do about the attraction we feel.
  2. Having found an attraction to someone, you now have a choice.  You can run away or run toward the object of your desire.  This dash may be mental, physical, or both.  Think of the story from the Bible of Joseph in Egypt.  He was chief servant to Potiphar. Potiphar's delicious looking wife decided she wanted to bed him.  When she corners him, rather than succumb to the attraction, he opts to actually run away, even when she tries to stop him by holding on to his robe.  He gets out of the robe and out of the area where she is.  Of course, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. So, she turns the story around and says he was chasing her and he ends up in prison.  Joseph ran away rather than giving in.  Do you suppose that he laid in bed at night imagining how delightful it would be to kiss Mrs. Potiphar?  Not likely.  If he had let his mind dwell on thoughts like that, when the opportunity presented, he would have likely leapt at the chance to live out his fantasy.  Here is the key, he ran away mentally before the physical situation ever presented itself.  If you want to love or not to love, the choice is yours.  Just make a conscious decision to turn  your thoughts toward or away from the object of your attraction.
  3. If you choose to love, and let your thoughts and imaginings build up into fantasies and daydreams about being with this person, then sooner or later the actual opportunity to come together will present itself.  What happens next can be grand or gruesome.  Because then you have to see if reality is anywhere close to your fantasy.  And your partner in passion will likewise be comparing the real you to the fantasy you.  If the distance between reality and fantasy is too much, the budding attraction may die on the spot and like an ill-fated vampire, your emerging romance may find itself with a wooden stake through the heart.  BUT when the fantasy and reality are close enough, you can find yourself on a wonderful journey that can last the the rest of your life and grow deeper, broader, and more intense year after year and decade after decade.
Continuing to love is the key to the long-term romance.  Every day I make a choice to love my wife.  Every time I see an attractive woman, I let my thoughts run away from her and toward my wife.  And I make sure that they do that.  A wise man once taught me that I cannot control what enters the stage of my mind, but I have complete control of what I allow to remain on that stage.

Date night for married couples is all about making that choice to love again and again and to take active steps to keep romance alive and well, regardless of how many years ago we said our vows.

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Can't seem to attract the woman you want?  
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I have to tell you, my wife does her part in this too.  She does her best to keep herself attractive and desirable and she lets me know that she finds me attractive and desirable.  Often when I tell her, "I love you" and she whispers back, "I love you too,"  I follow that up with "I'm so glad you love me. I would hate to think I was in this alone."

It definitely takes two to tango and it takes both partners, working together to sustain a life-long romance.  If you both understand that love is a choice, not something you trip over or fall into, then you are much more likely to choose to love the same person year in and year out, decade over decade.

Tom Sheppard is the author of "Fire Yourself: Get the Job You Want" available from XLibris Press. Tom has been successfully investing in real estate since 2001 while working part time. In 2008 he left a six-figure job as an enterprise project manager with a major national bank to manage his real estate business full-time. His goal is to help 100,000 people find peace of mind by finding quality, affordable homes. He is currently looking to expand his network of funding partners who are helping him achieve this goal. If you would like to know more about how you can Do Well By Doing Good (TM), go to www.CharlotteWealthPartners.com

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Tom, I couldn't agree more with your comments. It seems that we, as a society, have gotten our priorities wrong. Why does it seem that being able to GET a boyfriend/girlfriend/mate (whatever you choose to call it) is more valuable than KEEPING a mate.

I too have been married to the same women for nearly 35 years. It's not always been easy. I tell people it's been 33 glorious years of marriage. We don't like to talk about the other two.

That is a humorous comment but it is also true there were years when it was truly a struggle. But, we fought and worked our way through those time and are now reaping the benefits. Our relationship gets better and stronger every day because we continue to work for what is valuable to us...namely each other.

I am afraid that there are many who will never experience the joy I do every day with my wife because they are not willing to work through the tough times.

It reminds me of the statement we have heard and probably repeated many times that in our careers and investing businesses we do now what other's won't so we will be able to do later what other's can't.

The statement is as true regarding relationships as it is in business.