When you’re a strong woman, it’s tempting to think that you can control your love life the way you control the rest of your life. Unfortunately, grabbing romance by the horns is often a lot more difficult than directing your career or hobbies. While the great unknown of the dating world might be intimidating at first, this is why you should celebrate the chaos of love:
- You could meet your future boyfriend tomorrow. Save your tears and stop freaking out, because you could honestly meet the right guy tomorrow… or at least soon. When you worry about anything in your life, you’re anticipating a super negative outcome that might not even happen. Rather than doing the same with dating, too, so you might as well have hope that you’re going to find love sooner rather than later.
- You could meet him a year from now. Things could work out totally differently and you could be single a bit longer, but this isn’t actually a bad thing. Just think how grateful and happy you’re going to be when you finally meet the right guy. You won’t care how long it took; you’ll just be thrilled to have him in your life.
- You don’t want to miss the magic. It may sound super cheesy to think of falling in love as magical, but there’s a reason that movies, songs, and books depict it as being pretty much the best thing ever. Why would you want to know exactly what’s going to happen in your love life? Some of the best parts of falling in love are completely unexpected, and those are the moments that’ll make all those crappy dates worth it.
- You know happy endings exist. We all know at least one person who was DONE with dating. She probably figured love wasn’t in the cards for her after being single for way too long. Then, out of nowhere, she met a guy. She liked him. He liked her. They started hanging out, and soon, they were in love. Just as she didn’t expect to be put right in the middle of her fairy tale, yours will find you in the same way.
- You’ve been wrong before. Remember that guy that you thought was totally The One? Yeah, how did that work out? You’ve been wrong before, and you’re probably going to be wrong again. It’s not always obvious which guys are worth the effort and which ones are jerks, but just as you’ve mistaken bad guys for potential soulmates, your Prince Charming might also be the person you’d least expect.
- You’re not psychic. You can’t actually tell from a dating app profile whether a guy is boyfriend material or even if he’d be a fun date. You need to be cool with the fact that you might not be able to judge a guy before you meet him. Sure, this means you’ll likely go on a lot of awful dates, but it also means that you’ll go on some really awesome ones. Why waste your energy worrying about which one it’ll be?
- You have to let go of your expectations. While it’s necessary to have standards, anticipating exactly what you think your love life will be like in the future is setting yourself up for disaster. Once you clear your mind, you’ll be open to new guys and new experiences. Best of all, you’ll be able to see potential partners for who they are instead of who you want them to be.
- You can’t change people. You might think that if you tell every guy you go out with that you would love to see him again, he’s going to jump at the chance to schedule a second date with you. Not happening. It’s not that you did anything wrong. You just can’t control how guys behave or what they want, and you have to just accept that if you don’t want to have a nervous breakdown after every date.
- You need to enjoy the process. If you keep trying to force things to go a certain way, you’re never going to have any fun. You may think that dating is never a good time, but that’s exactly why you need to embrace the unknown. The only way to enjoy the search for love is to chill out and think of it as an adventure.
- The best things are often unplanned. Even if you’ve followed a mostly straight path in life, you’ve probably encountered at least a few twists and turns. Sure, you’ve studied and worked hard to get where you are now, but chances are at least part of your success was due to a few lucky surprises. Your greatest achievements likely came about because you took a chance, made a risky choice, or got an opportunity that you never even dreamed of. So who’s to say the greatest love you’ve ever experienced won’t come at a time when you least expect it?
