lion and lioness

Hello there. This is Steve Barnes again with Life Writing Live, and I'm just going to continue this story that I was telling yesterday. As you may recall, my first marriage went the way of the dodo, and I ended up completely alone in Vancouver, Washington. I had the opportunity to begin my dating life over again and actually had a chance to date a lady who I had been extremely attracted to for years. I mean, she was, you know, in terms of what I'm attracted to, she was just about perfect. And let's just say things didn't go well. The nicer I was, the further she seemed to back away. And I just could not wrap my mind around what was happening. It's as if everything I thought I knew about relationships was wrong. From time to time in life, you get an opportunity. If you grab that opportunity, you've got it. If you don't grab it, it's gone. I'm just going to say that I then had one of the four or five, I think, best ideas I've ever had in my life. What happened is I was at a convention in Boston and I decided to try something different. I decided to ask myself the question, what if everything I thought I knew about relationships was wrong? I mean, a lot of what I thought I knew about relationships came from what people said they wanted, what men said they wanted, what women said they wanted. And I thought to myself, you know, what if there's a level, what if there's a layer of obfuscation, a layer of. Of politically correct, Whether it's to the right or the left doesn't matter. Something other than the truth about what men and women want. What if I'd fallen into that, gone to sleep, and now that I was actually trying to find a relationship again, I was simply using the wrong tools for the job. So I tried something different. I said, let me pretend that I'm an anthropologist from Mars. I don't know anything about men and women. Let me just sit in the lobby of this hotel, and I'm going to watch people as they walk through and see if there's anything that I see that is unusual, that is different. And I sat there for about four hours just observing men and women and couples, people individually and people who are paired, walking through that lobby. And about three hours in, I noticed something. And it shocked me because it was so unlike anything that I had ever been told was true. And I spent about another hour observing, trying to mismatch, trying to prove that it was wrong. And I couldn't mismatch it. The observation was this. The more beautiful the woman was, the that I saw walking through that lobby, the more likely she was to be with a man who ignored her. I was shocked. And because I couldn't mismatch it, my next thought was, is this something dysfunctional? All those thoughts run through my mind, maybe she's sick, maybe they're unhealthy, maybe the pursuit of beauty leads to emotional dysfunction, all that stuff. Once again, that is kind of politically correct. But then I thought, what if that's not the case? What if it is not a matter of something dysfunctional? What if I'm seeing something that's actually healthy here? What would that thing be? I mean, the dysfunctional aspect of it was obvious, but what if it was functional? What if there was something survival oriented in this? And I decided to take the position that a lot of beauty is the result of artistic temperament, self respect, discipline. I mean, yeah, sure, there's some genetics in there, absolutely. But a lot of it is being able to paint on a three dimensional canvas, knowing what clothes to wear, and knowing how to discipline yourself in order to present the best body to the world. I worked on Baywatch, and the women on Baywatch, people would talk about how they were naturally beautiful or naturally sexy. I knew in every single case that these women exerted tremendous discipline themselves. Everything that they eat, everything that they did, their exercise, their makeup, everything. Discipline. So what if I said, this is a kind of power? This is these women are in control of themselves. If that is true, what kind of a model in the animal kingdom might I look at? And I said, what about a lioness? They're like lions. They're like lioness. And the question is, well, what does a lioness want? A lioness wants a lion. It's not that difficult. Now, herbivores have their eyes set on the side of their heads, kind of looking for predators. But predators have their eyes in front looking for herbivores. So if she's a lioness in the full of her power, and she's with a lion in the full of his power, if his attention is on her, at that moment, he's stalking her, or he's an herbivore afraid of her, but when they're in public, they are a hunting pair, both of them, eyes set forward. Where are we going? What are we doing? We're on the hunt. It made sense to me. It made sense in a way that nothing I'd ever heard before made sense. Now I'm sure that when they were in private, she got all the attention from him that she wanted, but in public, they are a hunting pair. And that led me to back to that question. A lioness wants a lion. A lion wants a lioness. There has to be a balance between what we are and what we get in life and relationships. We don't get what we want. We get who we are. The good news is that that were capable of changing, growing, healing. Once I started and I evolved some very specific strategies to test this and to utilize it, and I found that some of those strategies began to resemble pickup artist stuff, the pickup artist stuff. And there is a feminine equivalent of that, which is to, you know, the male aversion of that basically is to hit the triggers that make a woman want to have sex. The female version of that is to hit the triggers that make a man want to pair bond. So there is dishonesty on both sides. And the dishonesty is based largely on pretending to be healthier, more self confident, happier than you really are in order to elicit these responses from people so they think that you're something different from what you are by using all these different strategies. I thought, what if that's crap? What if the real answer is to actually be healthier? The real answer is to actually be that person, be that lion, be that lioness. If that's your avatar, a lion, a lioness, your avatar might be an eagle, it might be a dolphin, I don't know. But whatever it is that you desire, you need to be the thing that could mate with that, the person that could mate with that, the thing that would gladden the heart of the partner, that would gladden your heart. I mean, once again, it's not that difficult. It's just, I think, hard for people to look directly at because we're afraid that we're not enough. But I ask you, and this is today's question, what if you are enough? What if you've always been enough? What if the illusion is that you're not good enough and you've allowed yourself to stay in that illusion rather than growing and changing and embracing how wonderful you are and how beautiful you are and how powerful you are? What if you've lived in that illusion and it's time to wake up? That's the question for today. Now, when we created the soulmate process, it was specifically to address this. And if you would like a free copy of the 10 rules of finding your soulmate, just go to www.soulmateprocess.com and get a copy. Once again, if you enjoy these little talks, especially if you enjoyed this one. Be sure not just to like it, but to share it. It is by the shares. We look at the shares and that tells us whether or not you want more of this type of talk. So this is Stephen Barnes, Life Writing Live, saying, february is the month of Valentine's. It is time to think about the fact that we would like a partner to move through life with, someone to share our hopes and dreams with. I found my partner, and I've been really blessed with the women that I've had in my life who've taught me so much and shared so much with me. And I would like that kind of success for each and every one of you. Someone to find, someone to walk that path with. So soulmateprocess. Com. Be sure to share. And this is Stephen Barnes for Life Writing Live, saying, talk to you tomorrow. Bye Bye.