My wife and I often joke that it’s a good thing we didn’t meet sooner than we did. We wouldn’t have liked each other near as much.
Why is that? Well, we were different people before we met. Our college experiences were practically polar opposites of each other. There’s no way my wife would have noticed me much in college. I definitely would have noticed her (it would be hard not to), but I wouldn’t have talked to her. We both had a lot of maturing to do. But time marches on and we both kept growing.
We met when she was 23 and I was 28. I needed a lot more time to get there than she did! But this isn’t about waiting until our future spouse is ready for us. It’s about making sure that we are ready for them. See I couldn’t have gotten my wife when I was in my early 20s because I wasn’t good enough for her.
This is so important and so missing for the single crowd today! Most of the single people I know are desperate to meet Mr. or Ms. Right. They want to find a great partner, and yet when they meet someone they’ll fixate on any little problem with the other person and focus attention on it like a laser beam until it catches fire and burns the potential future down.
The better question to ask: how can I become a better person? A better partner? Take me for instance.. it’s not terribly surprising to me that I met my wife when I did. I was a wreck in college - an uber-quiet, downtrodden nerd with low self-confidence who kept in the corner and only wanted to talk about Knight’s Tours. I couldn’t handle parties (and didn’t really care), didn’t know how to deal with girls (and only cared a little), didn’t think my interests were interesting, and didn’t realize that it was actually cool to be smart. To repeat: I wasn’t good enough for her.
I needed to gain some respect for myself, learn to navigate the social world better, and generate some goals and vision for the future. I finally started becoming a more mature and well-rounded adult as I went through my 20s. My interests grew and I became more social. I bought a house and built up my career path.
And then a very cute and very smiley friend of a friend just sort of appeared. Like magic.
The formula for finding your better half is very clear: make yourself better so that you’re up to the standard your future spouse will hold for you and get out of your own way. The very great benefit of this is that you likely will end up attracting people that think the same way and your relationship will end up being a virtuous circle where you build each other up rather than break each other down.