I was recently asked, “How come my girlfriend doesn’t do the things to me that she used to?” To which I replied, “Ah, the menu.”
The menu is responsible for more clients walking through my door, than just about anything else. When it comes to relationships. And what is troubling, is that both men and women do it equally. You know, that first 3-6 months that is glorious. The sex, the long walks, the good morning texts and the list goes on and on. Enter month 7 (give or take), all of a sudden you’re wondering what happened? The intimacy slows down, the courtesy isn’t there and the expectations of the first 6 months are all but gone. The menu strikes again.
Be Yourself Helps Creating a Good First Impression and Is a Key to Long Lasting Relationships
This is what I tell everyone. Be who you are, so you attract the person that you don’t have to live a lie for. Men, if you’re opening doors, buying flowers and holding hands, in her mind, those are the things she will be expecting from here on out. It’s on the menu. Women, if you’re doing things sexually that you wouldn’t normally do, saying you’re into sports or telling him that it’s okay to go out with his buddies, in his mind, he believes that those are on the menu. See what I am getting at? Just be real.
When we present things that typically don’t resonate with us, we are misleading the person we are with. In other words, it is false advertisement. You walk into a restaurant and order your favorite meal because you saw it on the menu. When you go back, they say they ran out, or don’t have the ingredients. You go back a few more times, and each time there is a new excuse. How many times before you stop going back? 2, maybe 3? Maybe a handful? The same holds true in the dating world. You can’t pretend to be something and then slowly stop being that person. That is a classic case of bait and switch.
Never start a relationship on a lie. It’s not that people don’t change, but people lie. I once had a women show up in my office for this very reason. She wanted to know if it was okay to drop a man that she had only seen 3 times. She met him on a dating site, and his profile picture was of a handsome 40ish age man. When he showed up for the first date, he had no hair (not that it was a deal breaker), and was almost 20 years older than he led her to believe. When she asked him how come he didn’t have a current picture up, he just laughed, and said he hadn’t gotten around to it.
Be real about who you are. I get wanting to make a good first impression. But to mislead to the point where you are actually pretending to be someone else, is just wrong. So, if you’re showing someone the menu, make sure that you can actually deliver what’s on it. You can thank me later.
For counselling and coaching, book a one-on-one session with Vance Larson here.
