Bad at Love? Lucky You!

As a love and attraction coach, I hear some interesting comments from people: I’m too fat to be in a relationship. I’m too busy to fall in love. I’m too picky to get a guy/gal. As if fat, busy or picky people all spend their lives alone!

In fact, I’ve had clients who were all of these all at the same time—and still found themselves in great relationships. To be accurate, they didn’t find themselves in great relationships. They put themselves there.

And you can too.

Now let’s consider being “bad at love.” I’ve heard this countless times. What does it mean to be bad at love? I can tell you what many people think it means.

People who claim they’re bad at love say they don’t know the secrets and tricks of making someone love them. (Pay special attention to words like tricks and making.) They believe they’re not enough: smart enough, sexy enough, thin enough, cagey enough, experienced enough, sophisticated enough, wealthy enough, etc.

Sound familiar? There are about fifty more attributes I could have added, but you get the point. People think they are not enough.

Except when they think they are too much.

Too fat, too smart, too dumb, too poor, too wealthy, too sophisticated, too picky, too distrustful, too much to handle, too busy at work, too close their family, or their friends, or their hometown, or….

And some people believe they’re both too much and not enough. “I’m too brainy and not sexy enough” is the frequent cry of women, while men seem partial to the “too honest and not rich enough” lament.

What’s yours?

Come on, I know you have one. Which is not to say you whine a lot or to everyone. It may be a thought you keep to yourself, repeating it regularly in the privacy of your own mind.

As a hypnotist, I feel compelled to point out that the frequent repetition of a thought or set of compelling words so that they seem true to you is, essentially, unintentional self-hypnosis.

Couple that with a mental picture (i.e., you sitting alone in your old age with no one to love you, keep you company, etc.) and you’ve made that negative hypnosis even stronger. Not so great if your desire is to have a partner, right?

So watch what you think, and especially, what you think repeatedly.

If you want to learn intentional self hypnosis so you can use it properly, and to positive effect, that’s a great idea. But this accidental hypnosis, not so great.

Now let’s concentrate on the idea in the title of this article: being bad at love is somehow good. Surprising, isn’t it?

But there is something to it, depending on what it means to be bad at love. I asked a few of my love-seeking clients and the general consensus was that being bad at love could mean two very different things:

1. You are a nasty person to fall for because you have only your own interests at heart. You use people to make yourself feel attractive and valuable, with little thought of how it might affect your partner.

You never become emotionally intimate, and when you recognize that your current partner is growing attached and committed to you, you rarely admit that you don’t feel the same.

You use the relationship for your own needs, with little concern for your partner’s needs or feelings. That is surely being bad at love.

But there’s another time of person who is bad at love, and a the same time, rather lovely—

2. This bad-at-love person is untutored in love relationships and therefore is anything but slick. He or she is straightforward and genuine, if a bit naïve. Perhaps this person has little experience, few expectations, and not many hard and fast rules about what a love relationship must be.

Sometimes a woman has been shy and warned away from men at a young age. Now in maturity, she doesn’t have confidence in her ability to attract or interact with the opposite sex. But she would like to.

Often a man who is less experienced with flirting feels, well, awkward about approaching a woman. To those women who want to be flattered and swept off their feet, he is not immediately appealing.

But treated with kindness and honesty, he could be a wonderful partner not in spite of—but because of— his disingenuousness. Be understanding with him, and you may have a partner for life, unhardened by negative experiences in the past.

Of course, there is also a middle ground, which most fall in to.

These people have had the experience of better relationships and worse relationships, and are continuously forming a view of what they desire. They are beginning to know what to pursue and what to avoid, and being quite human, are learning, making mistakes, and improving their decisions along the way.

They have been both bad and good at love, but mostly, just human.

If you can relate to this, there’s a large category of people waiting to meet you. They come in many sizes, colors, genders and sexual orientations. And most important, they prefer and deliver genuine not slick, human not perfect, forgiving not disdainful, and earthly not angelic.

You’re likely to find them where you live. All you need to do is look, listen, and feel with your heart. ©2008 by Wendy Lapidus-Saltz. All rights reserved.