Safe......but sorry

I will be the first one to admit that being in your 20s is pretty challenging.

Ok....who am I kidding?  IT SUCKS!  Well...most of the time.  There are a few advantages for sure.  We are young, beautiful, wild, free, and quite frankly can be as selfish as we want.  The coolest thing about being in your 20s is the space and time to think about yourself, your growth, and your development.  I know I'm getting a little psychologist on all of your asses right now, but it's true.  This is the one chance we have at finding out who we are,  what we want, but most importantly what we NEED.

I've been taking a lot of time to think about ME.  Just me myself and I.  Not the me who who is tied to any relationships and the issues that came out of them, but just plain old me.  I basically pyschoanalyzed the shit out of myself and this is what I found........

I have played it safe in relationships. Every single one of them.  If I look back on my ex boyfriends and guys that I have pursued in the past, they all have one common theme.  They didn't challenge me.  Challenge might be a bad word.  They didn't INSPIRE me, MOTIVATE me, PUSH me.  They all were challengING, pushed me AWAY but they just didn't bring out the best in me.

My parents, family members, and friends have always told me the same sh-peel over and over again. They have kept telling me that I need someone motivated with big dreams.  I've heard this so many times that I just go to the point where I would nod my head and agree because deep down I knew this was what I needed to but I wasn't quite sure what that meant.

All the men I've dated in the past have been "safe" or at least I thought they were when I entered into the relationship.  There are differences in all of them but they all have this one common "safe" theme.  For example, my most recent ex. (ps. it's been over a month since we stopped talking!!)  was content with his place in life.  I vividly remember him calling me out one night about my motivation for beginning our relationship.  He told me that I started dating him because I thought he was a safe bet.  He was absolutely right. When we first started dating, he was infatuated with me, hung on my every word, revolved his life around me, blah blah blah.  Turns out though, he wasn't a safe choice.  He had a little of issues that he took out on me and ended up emotionally and mentally wearing me down.   My safety net backfired in my face.

I'm passionate about helping people.  Looking back, I've chosen to date guys that I needed to help but who weren't going to challenge me in any way. My self esteem level has never been high enough to go after those extremely motivated men who are leaders, have passions, goals, care about life.  Those guys have always intimadated me so I've played it safe.....and ended up sorry.

This realization has inspired me to dig deep and figure out what's been missing in my past. I've come up with two main things:

INSPIRATION-- It's just like the Fabulous song "We're a force when we're together. Baby I'm good all by myself but baby you make me better"  I really can't sum it up any better than that.  I want to be inspired by someone so I can strive to be a better person everyday and I want to do the same for them.

 PASSION--I'm not talking about hot sex, even though that's pretty essential too. I need someone who passionate about LIFE.  Passionate about what they do, their family, their friends.  I want someone who is genuinely happy to be alive and that can share my enthusiasm and positivity about the world.

Maybe these things seem like common sense.  Maybe they should be common sense, and for a long time I thought they were, but up until now those things were just words and not a reality.  I know that there are people in the world that are like this....like me. Now it's my job to set the bar high.

No more playing on the safe side,

C