What is a good man or a good woman?

Many people find themselves in a place where they are looking for “a good man or woman”. They believe that the solution to many of the problems they have in their lives is based on finding and acquiring a good man or a good woman. Aside from the fact that it is never a good idea to look to others to solve your own personal issues, it almost never works. You should base finding your mate on the desire to give and share love and life experiences, rather than loneliness, boredom or unhappiness. The stronger you are emotionally, the happier and more stable your life is the more you have to offer a potential mate.


To ensure you are ready for a serious commitment you have to prepare yourself.  Think of the way a farmer, prepares the soil for an upcoming crop, he tills the soil to remove dead and decaying plants, he adds fertilizer to make certain the seeds and plants will have a healthy foundation. Getting your house in order may involve a similar level of dedication and effort. While it may not involve physical labor, the mental effort can be equally exhausting.  To ensure you maintain a healthy, positive frame of mind, preparing yourself will involve self examination, brutal honesty and hard work.

Sometimes before you are ready to start a new relationship, you can trick yourself into believing it's time.  It’s easy to simply say forget all that self examination crap and trying to understand what contributed to past failed relationships, to solely blame your previous partners and try to move forward.  But that is a dangerous tactic.  It is tempting to distract yourself with an externally focused objective like prematurely starting a new relationship. The more difficult the relationship is the more distracting it is to initiate and maintain so you can become very preoccupied with the relationship and all of its problems rather than your own internal issues. Not realizing those very issues may be contributing to many of the problems in the relationship. . It’s almost as though your subconscious realizes you want a distraction and points you to the partner that will create the most drama. So for many reasons, it is important, when you are in the midst of inner turmoil or have recently ended a relationship to take the necessary time to be by yourself to develop objectivity, context and heal.

Happiness in a relationship is based on your ability to understand what you want and need in your life focus your efforts on learning about the other person, understanding what is going on in the relationship, and knowing what you can contribute to be a good partner yourself.  The challenge is knowing what it is it about a person that makes them good for you. In terms of a relationship, the term good is really about compatibility; however there are universal qualities that you should strive to develop within yourself and look for in others. And, in the case of stable, healthy relationships, it means what enables a person, man or woman to be a successful candidate for romantic involvements.

When someone wants to purchase a car or a television they generally think about what they want and need then compare those requirements against what is available and come up with a match. However, when it comes to romance, people rarely take such an analytical approach. And that is natural because love and romance are based on feelings generally, not just thoughts and rarely analysis.  People consider things like, how does this person make me feel? The most someone may think as they are getting to know another person, is do I respond to them on a physical, emotional or spiritual level? As a result of dating services that sell compatibility as a key benefit, people are more sophisticated about dating and therefore likely to ask themselves more practical questions. But mostly people operate on intuition and their emotional reactions to people they meet to determine whether to move forward in a relationship. They assume most people they meet are good, but rarely break down the components of goodness to validate those assumptions against the persons’ thoughts, actions and behaviors.

But understanding what good traits are and what they mean can be useful. Qualities like integrity, honesty, kindness, compassion, self awareness, and generosity can be a blueprint for a good person. Knowing the answer to questions about the individual like ...How does the person live their life? How are they with their friends and relatives, children? Do they plan for their future?  Do they learn from past actions and mistakes? When they experience difficult times do they become negative and hard to be around for protracted periods, or do they maintain a positive attitude and react with tenacity and resilience? Are they frequently moody for no reason?  Do they have substance abuse problems that contribute to or exacerbate already negative behaviors? Do they support your successes and accomplishments or do they seem jealous or unnaturally competitive?

This is not to suggest that even good people won't have bad days or bad times, but how people react during those times is a very good indication of their personality and lifestyle.  To build a successful relationship with a person you have to be observant and patient enough to truly understand who they are and honest with yourself about whether they are compatible with your personality and lifestyle.  This can be most challenging when you are very physically attracted to a person that is not a good fit for you emotionally, spiritually or intellectually.  But try to be strong and resist the urge to give in to your passions, because it is to your advantage to find a person you can love with your whole heart, and to find someone who has the capacity to do the same for you in return.