The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible (29 page)

              On top of that, sex is a pathway to higher consciousness and ecstatic communion.  The Eastern sages have worked for millennia to figure out how to get the most out of it.  Sadly, in spite of the abundance of information available on sexuality, most people remain undereducated on the subject.  That is why we’ll soon offer the booklet
The Tao of Sexual Ecstasy
as an introduction to Eastern and Western practices for enriching your sex life.  So now, not only do you have my full permission to get really good at this, you no longer have an excuse not to. 

              There's a difference between skill and experience.  To use an analogy, you can play tennis with a lot of people, but unless you get some proper instruction, there's no guarantee that you'll be any good.  On the other hand, you can gain a lot of skill from a little bit of instruction, putting you head and shoulders above others who may have had more partners.  So don't feel as if you need to sleep with a bunch of men to gain sexual skill.  And if you've already slept with a bunch of men, don't feel as if that means you can't stand to learn more.  Be open to the idea of real development in this area of your life.  Anything worth doing is worth doing exceptionally well, especially when it's this much fun.

GENTLE REMINDER!

It has occurred to me that some of you may not have downloaded your digital bonuses yet, so I thought I'd give you this Gentle Reminder. That supplemental material is just as much a part of the learning experience as the book, and the guided meditations are
dynamite
, if I may say so myself. So take a quick break and go get them here while it's still fresh on your mind. Afterwards you'll be glad you did:

TaoOfDating.com/goddess

Part IV

Have

Chapter 12. Have: Making Relationships Last

How to keep a man worth keeping

             
"How do I keep him?" is the second most common question I receive from women readers (after "How do I get him?").  Well, that's a question about maintaining a relationship once it's established, and this book is more about dating.  Still, I'd like to share with you some brief suggestions on making relationships last, and then refer you to the experts in that domain, especially the excellent work of Professor John Gottman.

              The good news is that the way of the Tao is the way of effortless flow, the path of least resistance.  So by continuing to do what you've been doing so far, you've gone a long way towards setting up a lasting relationship without further tweaks.  Physics talks about the importance of initial conditions: the way a reaction is set up determines what course it's going to take over time.  If you think of dating as one big reaction, then how you set things up determines how the rest unfolds. 

              And you've done a lot so far.  You've instilled the right beliefs in yourself so you're coming from a place of self-sufficiency, abundance and goddess-consciousness.  You've been practicing the right attitudes to give you the best results.  You're clear on what kind of relationship you want.  You've been going to the venues where you can find the right kind of man – the Good Guy with whom you can have a three-chakra connection.  You use your body language strategically to get the interaction started.  On a date, you project attentiveness and devotion and are a master listener.  You make him feel 10 feet tall and inspire him to greatness.  Your teasing skills drive him wild while keeping you empowered.  And, in the end of it all, you're phenomenal in the sack.  Now exactly what kind of fool would want to leave you?

              That paragraph above pretty much summarized the entire book, and it represents a fair amount of work.  But once you do it, you're in the
wu-wei
zone.  There's no more deliberate doing, struggle or striving involved.  You
are
where you want to be.  And where you are is
always
a journey – there is no destination in life, ever.  You are constantly moving, unfolding, growing – remember
anatta
or no-self. So the way to
keep
the guy (the 'destination') is the same as the way to
get
the guy (the 'journey'):  Listen.  Pay attention.  Connect on the three chakras.  Make him feel great about himself.  Treat him exceptionally well, while leaving him wanting more (stay tuned for the upcoming
How not to be taken for granted
section). 

Connect at three chakras for a lasting relationship

              I'd like to elaborate a little on this topic that we introduced in Chapter 10.  If you want to have a relationship that brings you lasting fulfillment, find a man with whom you can have that three-chakra connection of mind, heart and body.  A couple that grows together stays together, so you want to be able to grow at all three levels with your man.               To emphasize the importance of having a strong connection at all three levels, let's do a little thought experiment to see what happens when you're with a guy with whom you connect on only two levels:

• Head and heart: The conversation's great, you absolutely respect the guy and love him deeply –
like a brother
.  Sexual chemistry's weak, and you find yourself perpetually distracted by men out there who fire your loins in a way that Mr. H&H simply can't.  You feel as if you need to be the aggressor to get anything started, getting too much into your masculine.  You are frustrated and unfulfilled.

• Head and body: The conversation's great, and you're physically all fired up for each other, so the sex is great, too.  But this is just not the guy who can own your heart, and you crave that deep connection of spirit which you suspect he may never be able to share with you.  Without that, you feel as if you can't fully give of yourself or allow your divine feminine to flourish in receptivity and nurturance.  You are frustrated and unfulfilled.

• Heart and body:  You love this guy, and the sex is great.  But he's kind of slow to catch on and can't really hold up his end of the conversation.  He feels intimidated by your intellect and thus never can stimulate you in that department.  Since you're one wicked smart cookie, you are frustrated and unfulfilled. 

              I went through that whole academic exercise to drive home a point:
do not settle
.  If you're after a long-term relationship, go for the guy with whom you connect on all three levels. 

              Another very important point: get rid of the notion that you will ever
train
a man into the image of what you want him to be.  That goes against the Tao – you're wishing the world to be different than it is and trying to shoehorn it into how it
should
be, which is the original formula for pain.  As amazing and wise as you are, and as transformative the power of your love, teaching turtles to fly remains a losing proposition.  Believe me, the guy who's already where you want him to be is out there waiting for someone exactly like you, so do both of you a favor and find
him
instead.

Select the man who's already where you want him to be instead of trying to train one who may never get there.

Depth in a relationship vs. direction

              One of my teachers said that the feminine principle in a relationship is its depth, and the masculine principle is its direction.  As such, you the woman are in charge of deepening the relationship, while the man determines
where
it's going.  This reflects in society at large where men ask the women to marry them, not the other way around.  So pay attention if you find yourself taking over the direction of the relationship, since that's the
masculine
function. 

              Asking for commitment prematurely would be an example of such a thing.  One of my favorite chapters of the
Tao Te Ching
is number 36:

That which must be shrunken
Must first be allowed to expand.
Whatever is to be weakened

Must first be strengthened.

That which is overthrown

Must first be raised.

If you want to take something,
You must allow it to be given.
This is called subtle understanding.

The soft overcomes the hard.
Flexibility overcomes force.
Keep your inner workings to yourself.
Let your results speak for themselves.

              You can't
take
commitment, but you can allow it to be offered.  You do that by being the woman that any man would be silly not to commit to (and if he doesn't – don't you have better things to do with your time than hanging out with silly men?). 

              Of course it's less about whether or not the guy is silly than whether or not there's a fit between the two of you.  If you are deepening the bond between you and there is a good fit, the rest should flow without further
doing
and effort – remember
wu-wei
, not-doing.  And if you're not getting the fulfillment you want out of the relationship, it's probably not a good fit, and you can (and should) move on.

Leave the cage door open

              The Eastern sages remind us that all things are temporary, and relationships are no exception.  Even the best ones end in death or divorce.  So keep a light grip on things. Think of a relationship as a handful of sand: if you hold it with upturned, relaxed hands, you get to keep it.  If you squeeze the handful, you'll lose it all. 

              Squeezing the sand is a metaphor for attachment.  The more tightly you try to hold on to something, the more likely you are to lose it.  If there were a concept of sin in Taoist thought, attachment would be the biggie.  So go ahead and love without attempting to possess. 

              Loving someone means wanting the best for him, and sometimes that means letting him go.  That's why it's important to leave the cage door open, otherwise you'll never know when someone's sticking around under duress or of his own volition.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to insist on keeping someone around who doesn't really want to stay.  So let a man know that he has his freedom.  It's the only way to keep him sticking around.

How not to be taken for granted

              One of the main factors contributing to the demise of long-term relationships is being taken for granted.  All those things that made you wonderful, interesting and special when you two first met are now simply accepted as standard features.  It can even reach a point sometimes where just a small lapse from wonderfulness is held against you.  Unfair, right?

              Well, actually, this is completely normal and expected.  There’s nothing sinister about it.  In fact, it’s a demonstration of
habituation
, one of the main features of all nervous systems and a cornerstone of adaptability.  As computer scientists would say, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature, and it’s not going away.  So learn how to work with it, not against it.  Be like water, as the Taoists say.  The obstacle's there, so instead of trying to topple it, figure out a way to go around it instead.

              To optimize survival, the nervous system has evolved to notice change and filter out the background.  It happens in all of your five senses: eyes notice moving objects and not static ones; you stop noticing the refrigerator’s hum after a few days; you stop smelling something after five minutes.  This is called
habituation
, and there are mechanisms operating at the
cellular
level to make this work.  In other words, you’re better off understanding it and working
with
it rather than struggling against it (the Tao again).  And the proper way to circumvent habituation is to deliberately introduce salient, unpredictable stimulus, better known as
change
.  In other words, be a little unpredictable.

              There are infinite ways of being unpredictable, but here I want to give you two techniques derived from behavioral psychology and animal training. 

              The first is deliberate unpredictability, especially when it comes to doing nice things for your partner.  Behavioral psychologists and animal trainers call this implementing an
irregular schedule of reinforcement
.  Let’s say you’ve been training a dolphin to jump, and you’ve been rewarding it with a single fish each time.  The fish is the
reinforcer
– something that increases the chances of the behavior happening in the future.  Now if you keep up the one fish-one jump regimen, after a while the dolphin will stop jumping as high.  This is not because the dolphin is temperamental or evil – it’s just the way things work neurologically.