The Secret to Finding True Love

“I want to, but I don’t think so.” I’ve lost count of how many women have repeated this mantra to me! My experience shows that, when we search relentlessly and never find someone worthwhile, everything leads us to believe that this object of desire is a mirage, an illusion. Instead of fantasizing about Brad Pitt, it’s better to lower the bar of expectations, as experts suggest in the book I launch this month, Successful Women Want Power… To Love (People). If you face the current man with your feet planted on the ground, it will open the range of possibilities in the pyramid of relationships.

When I was single, I went out with a friend who decided whether or not to flirt with the guy based on the shoes he wore. It reduced the chances, do you agree? It was 20 years ago, but not long ago I read a text by a journalist who despised men in sneakers. Is this really that important? Then you give better shoes to your chosen one, why.

Today, I observe that the obstacles for a woman to find her better half have become much more refined than liking or not liking the shoes. Overcoming the main one, in my opinion, requires a 180-degree turn: we need to mentally deactivate that ideal partner prototype built with mother and friends. Gone are the days when it was necessary to adhere to gender stereotypes, as the two sexes now alternate codes and roles more naturally. Trend sniffers from all over the world sing this ball when they detect that men and women mix more, that there is not the same social differentiation as before. I don’t mean to say they are the same. Genetics wouldn’t even allow it. But that the horizon is getting more unisex, oh, it is.

Men do this, women do that.

Went to sleep at your place and used your cream? Nor is it enough to draw conclusions about the subject’s sexual preference. As we remember much of what we heard from childhood, certain stigmas were really ingrained. But we live in different times: diversity, flexibility, partnership (we no longer want a provider, but a caregiver).

It is a danger for anyone looking for an affective relationship in the modern mold to repeat the retro discourse that “men do this, women do that; men are like that, women are like that”. Sorry for being frank, but the strict requirements of how the other should be or act are an invitation to spend the next Fridays alone watching penguins and dolphins mating at Globo Repórter.

In my house, my husband hates driving, I dominate the steering wheel. And there goes 15 years as chief driver! On the other hand, to this day I don’t know how to make coffee; he prepares the best in the world. And he buys cream-filled donuts to please me. I reciprocate with kisses.

Unfortunately, the contingent of charming, intelligent and warrior women struggling to find a romance to call their own is growing. It’s a kind of joint that has been leading the most cautious to not even try. And now? The challenge for each one is to love and be loved by this man who is there, closer than she imagines, also trying to “find himself”.

And what does he expect from the ideal partner? Psychiatrist Contardo Calligaris gave me the big clue: to give him permission to desire things he still didn’t suspect he wanted, to authorize things he forbade himself. Anyway, that leads you to want to be a better man. Ready for these new challenges?