Seekers, Settlers and real love

Our generation is fucked in the love department. Everyone born before the 2000's has grown up watching Disney animations and all sort of romantic flicks with perfect couples and happy endings. Those Utopian fantasies, subconsciously, crash against the reality we see around. Divorced parents, domestic violence, switched gender roles, the ever increasing race for financial or intellectual success, or the pursue of success in general. All this has led most people to take part of two toxic groups when it comes to approach their romantic lives. I call these groups Settlers and Seekers.

Settlers are the conformist side. Whether they are helpless romantics or extremely rational characters, they have the same factor in common: they always go for the wrong partner and stay with them. They may choose them for all “the right reasons”, like good financial situation, interesting hobbies, nice physical appearance, passionate career, and a long list of etceteras. Or, on the other hand, for many of the wrong reasons, from mommy/daddy issues to sexual fetishes, savior complex or fear of abandonment. Whatever the reasons are, none of them is enough to have a healthy relationship with.

No matter how unsatisfying, frustrating or even hurtful things are, Settlers will do everything they can to stay together with their partner. Why? Causes vary and may be very different to every person, although it is easy to detect the main problem for them. They just can't or do not want to be alone. The thought of getting old; peer, cultural or social pressure; insecurity and a large number of reasons, plus the obnoxious feeling they get when exposed to romantic stimulus while single. All of that leads to desperation, and desperation leads to the need to fill the empty space in their beds and lives with someone, regardless of this person provides what they require to actually satisfy their emotional needs or not.

On the opposite side of the scale we find the Seekers. They literally won't settle with anyone. The search for them never stops, because they are looking for Perfection (yes, capitalized). It's because, most of the times, Seekers are highly successful or remarkable people. Intellectually, financially, career wise and even physically; Seekers appear to be flawless, and that's exactly what they seek. They are after a partner as good as they think they are, or better. In the meantime, they'll try out different options, quickly moving on to the next one after finding the first flaw in the other person, as minimal as it might be.

Even though these two groups are very different, they are not as apart one from the other as it seems. A frustrated Settler, after things finally go to hell, can become a Seeker for a while or for good, not to suffer with the same mistake again. Or a Seeker, in a rough path of their life or just tired of the never ending search, can simply settle with the closest partner they'll find.

Nowadays, it's really hard not to fall in one of these two groups. Emotions have been replaced by individuality, and romantic relationships look more like business partnerships than selfless unions. But there is a third group that doesn't even need to be named; they are the people with healthy relationships. Not perfect, not ideal, not Disney-like. With flaws and up and downs, fights and disagreement, struggling every now and then. You'd hardly see their stories told in a movie, because they can be considered boring or too complicated to tell. They are real, and reality is not something attractive.

If you find yourself caught in any of the two toxic groups, don't feel hopeless. As you can switch from Seeker to Settler or the other way around, you can also step out that vicious circle and turn to the third group. Almost everyone there was like you. Stuck in a frustrating, life-sucking and unfulfilling relationship, or in a exhaustive search for Mr or Mrs Right. In any of those cases, always with the same consequence: failing to get what they needed.

I myself was a Settler. Spent years and years in an unhappy relationship, and after breaking up, became a Seeker. I was decided to get my life back, not wasting another day with the wrong person. Only dedicated my time and effort in the search for “the One,” jumping from one girl to the other and not getting attached with anyone. What changed? I met an imperfect person who was perfect for me. I realized that none of the approaches I had taken before in my love life were right. Either settling for someone who seemed perfect or looking for somebody perfect, none of those ever gave me what I needed. In fact, when I finally gave up my expectations and fears and just let myself enjoy and be surprised by the virtues and kinks of my girl, I fell in love. Real love.

Nobody is perfect, yet we feel forced to constantly look for or to create perfect romantic relationships, and to demand perfection from our partners. Truth is Perfection is just an illusion, product of decades of self-help books, consumerism, movie love stories and ever evolving technology. Once you understand that, pressure to be perfect fades away. Then you only need to connect with your own feelings and emotions; that'll help you comprehend yourself better and to figure out what you want and need. After that, finding a partner that meet your necessities and for whom you'll do the same, will be an easier task. Happiness will be yours and love -the real kind- will come naturally. Guaranteed.

To beard or not to beard?

I once let my beard grow more than I was used to, and just for fun I took a couple of selfies before and after shaving. I then posted those pictures to Facebook with the caption To beard or not to beard?. For me it was kind of obvious that the answer to my question, if I got any, was going to be “without beard.” I not only got surprised by the amount of comments I got, but also for the result of this spontaneous survey.

All the persons who responded to my Facebook status were women, and the bearded look was the most voted. On top of that, girls who went for the facial hair option were the ones I felt attracted to. Curiously, those who chose the “baby face look” were friends or ladies I wasn't interested in. So beard, according to this quick informal study, makes a man -or me- more attractive. Interesting, huh?

But it's not only my own experience that has a saying in this matter. Scientists all over the world had researched this as well. I mean, actual research. So I went through some of those investigations and found some refreshing facts. I specially found this study from the University of New South Wales particularly interesting, because they even defined a determined period of beard growth as the most attractive. But I wasn't satisfied. I needed to try this scientific evidence in real life, using myself as the test subject. I shaved and started to post a selfie everyday on Instagram with the evolution of my beard. Here's my story.

Day 0: I wasn't actually going to conduct this experiment. I was happy with my almost 2-month full beard. The only uncomfortable -and nasty- thing about it was the mustache that kept going into my mouth ALL THE TIME. After trimming it, I realized I looked stupid with an almost invisible mustache above the rain forest of hair on my face, so I had to make a decision: let it grow for a couple of weeks -looking horrible during the wait- or just get rid of the whole beard. Chose the second alternative. I like to go all the way, specially when I fuck up.

Being out in the open with a clean shave was weird. Hadn't done it for ages, which made me feel a stranger, even to myself. But apparently a sexy stranger, since I noticed more looks at me than usual by the opposite sex. The theory of beard sexiness wasn't proving right. Should I believe these scientists after this day?

Day 1 to 4: while my face became more scratchy, the ladies reaction towards me got colder. This proved the study right to certain level. My beard is not patchy at all, but density at this stage wasn't enough to show my masculinity -regarding instinctive attraction standards- to my surrounding female counterparts. Plus, in my opinion, the untidy appearance this unshaved look gave me just made me look more of a slacker than anything else. An unattractive slacker, that is.

Day 5: and I reached the fifth day of this experiment. Scientists used this stage of beard growth as the first measure to determine the level of attractiveness. I did notice some difference. Not saying I attracted much more attention than the previous days, but the bearded look was starting to take form. And it did, in fact, got noticed. My lady friend complimented me, without me even asking, and literally said the beard look was going well. If she says so, do I need any scientific evidence?

Day 6 to 9: pretty much like day 1 to 4. Not much variation in the level of attraction to my beard or my person. Started to feel that science did have a point when it comes to sexiness after all.

Day 10: the day had arrived! “Where them girls at?” I asked myself while walking around in the city with my perfect 10-day, heavy stubble beard. Reactions? Not many. To be honest, after day 6 o 7, the beard didn't have a significant growth or change. Still I got a couple of compliments by my special lady and a female friend, but only after I pointed the fact I was letting my facial hair, slowly but surely, take control of my face. Though, despite the cold reception my so awaited beard had reaching the supposed boiling point of sexiness, it did reinforced the conclusion I had a few months before, when I did my Facebook experiment. Girls do prefer me with a beard, as they would with any other man with a bushy face. I was right, scientist were right and -hating myself for saying this- hipsters were also right: beards rock!

Bonus study: Instagram Reaction.

If you head to my Instagram account @edoherto, you'll see nothing but selfies. I, as an amusement and a self-esteem booster, use this social network to show the world my ever growing beauty. To leverage the reach of my precious face in this app, I use two cocky hashtags: #beard and #latinlover. I always got likes from random girls or even dudes. So, since I wanted my experiment to be unbiased, I created a new hashtag for it, #SexyBeardExperiment. But, as a little trick, I also used #nofilter, to see if I could attract any attention. Didn't work. No likes whatsoever.

Do you also wanna be part of the experiment and help in the follow up article? Shave and post your progress to Instagram everyday, or in days 0, 5 and 10, using the hashtag #SexyBeardExperiment. Happy growing!

Don't fall in love

Do you want a piece of advice? Do not fall in love. You see, loving is a gigantic task you may not want to get involved in. Need any reasons? I'll give you a few for you to consider.

Loving is caring. It means taking care of somebody else than yourself, committing to look up for their welfare and your own at the same time. Exhausting!

Loving is dangerous. It awakes your worst nightmares and demons. Jealousy, pride, prejudice, insecurity; you name it. It requires you to be strong enough to fight them, smart enough to ignore them and firm enough to choose love over them all.

Loving is weakness. Makes you vulnerable because it forces you to open up completely to the other person. It's brutal honesty, humbleness, physical and emotional nudity. You must be who you are, your true self, no masks nor faking. It's leaving your comfort zone and exposing all your wounds and flaws.

Loving is losing. You give up part of your freedom and independence, adjusting your life and space to be with the object of your affection. You forget about all “the fishes in the sea”, because you are already taken, off the market. Your roofless individuality now ends where the other's starts. Kiss goodbye your selfishness, there's no room for it anymore.

Loving is growing. It requires you to improve yourself to the fullest, because to deliver the best of you in the relationship means also that you must be the best version of yourself you can be. Doesn't mean you have to be perfect, because imperfection is part of the package. You must embrace your imperfection, using it in your favor. Because imperfection is what makes us human, and a human who, despite its own flaws, reaches a higher level of personal growth, defines perfection itself.

Loving is investing. Your time, energy, tears, sweat... sometimes even money! Though as an investment it's the worst you can make. You can't expect anything in return; is giving selflessly, limitless and in good faith.

Loving is adventure. When you jump into it, you start a quest. Every day is a challenge, an exploration in the unknown. It's discovering the other and yourself, constantly wondering in the deepest boundaries of the soul and the worldly whatnot of life in common. This search, this journey, is not to take the relationship for granted, to make it stronger over time.

And, over all, loving is sharing. It's to deliver the most of you. Your happiness, your dreams, your sense of humor, your weird kinks. It's to be there for the other because you want to, not for obligation, not for need. Searching for balance all the time, avoiding the game of “master/slave.” Bear a part in the life of your significant other as well as them are part of yours. It's quiting for once and for all flying solo and hold hands to start walking towards a present and a future as Us or We, instead of Just Me.

So, after reading all this, do you still think you wanna fall in love? Because, as Roman Krznaric says in his article, love is a word nowadays is used lightly. The increasing rate of divorces around the world, the ever growing cases of violence among couples of all ages, the inhumanization of society due to the importance they now give to individualism. All the above are factors to take in consideration when we talk about love. Is it what it used to be? Do you think you can give yourself to it for real and not in the shallow way most people do these days? If not, and I say this for your own good, just don't fall in love.

I don't need you

I've had a terrible love life. Mistake after mistake, disappointment and abandonment, pity and guilt. Been there, done that, and it was shit. So I constantly asked myself what I was doing wrong, or why girls couldn't appreciate me. I mean, c'mon, I was cool! Or was I?

Nevertheless, as usual, my questions never got answered by the girls that dumped me, rejected me or treated me like dog shit on the sole of their shoes. Frustrated as I was, I started blaming all on them. It was easy, and it came easier when I turned up the volume of my music player and sang along one of the most misogynist songs I've heard: I don't need you, by Die Antwoord.



Practically vomiting this abominable lyrics, I released my grim thoughts and my hate towards those hurtful ladies. Over and over again, I unleashed the darkest part of myself to the beat of that song, until one day I got it. It wasn't them who I was shouting to. It was myself.

I was a mess. Didn't know what I wanted for my life, didn't like my work and I was basically living just to keep breathing, with no purpose whatsoever. How under this conditions could I love or be loved? I only could aspire to have mediocre relationships or meaningless affairs, all of which ended badly because I was needy and looking to find completion to my own self with my partner.

Truth is I, and actually nobody, can be completed nor fulfilled by someone else. Love is not a magical thing that will immediately fix all your flaws and transform you into a perfect person, making your problems disappear at the same time. You are responsible for this, not love, not your partner. Once you realize that and start improving yourself just because it's yourself you'll be helping, you will be able to find true love. Because love is a decision, not a necessity. I am happy with myself and I choose to share this happiness with somebody else, someone I can tell “I don't need you” and mean it. Because I'll be with her not because I need her, but because I want to.

“I don't need you, I want you.”

Can you say that to the one you love? If you do, your are in the clear. If not... well, check yourself. Nobody likes needy.

Moving on, easier said than done

It hurts. Breaking up is never easy, but when you are the one who's left behind, it hurts even more. You cry, you do stupid things and lose every trace of dignity and self-respect. All you think about is coming back to that person, because you feel you can't live your life without them and the only thought of continuing to exist alone makes you miserable. Basically, you are pretty much fucked.

Your friends tell you that time heals all wounds, but yours seem too deep. More than wounds, it's like some of your limbs have been amputated, and there's no healing for that -unless you are a lizard, which is not the case. Then, when your face is still having a moisturizing treatment with your own tears, the magic words come to play: moving on. And they say it to you all the bloody time, like if repetition would ease the process. But it's not easy, not at all.

Moving on after somebody broke your heart is a very difficult task. You love them for the wonderful past you shared together, but you hate them for how grim your life has become after they dumped you. They can be your perfect partner to live happily ever after, and at the same time you forsake them for how awful they've been to you during and after your relationship. This way, you keep them in your head all the time, jumping from one extreme to the other, love to hate, mixing your emotions like if your heart were on a blender.

I've been ditched myself, and I can speak from my own experience: moving on is really fucking hard. I cried my heart out, until I was out of tears. I partied, I drunk, I danced and I fucked around to exhaustion. No matter what I did, I couldn't get her out of my head for long. She always came back to my mind and I felt helpless. Didn't have control over this constant thoughts, those flashbacks and this belief I lost my soul mate, the love of my life, my lass.

How did I move on? I wouldn't say I'm totally out of the woods, since some ashes of that fire I once had in my heart still feel hot. Anyhow, life now looks promising as I can see and sense the warm light at the end of this long tunnel. I managed to get to this point thanks to time, that surprisingly did heal my wounds. My friends and family did a great job too, as well as never ceasing my social life nor the activities I enjoyed. But, most of all, analyzing from a distance my so called “perfect partner” and the whole relationship gave me an approach I didn't have before. I was idealizing this girl and what we had together, but ignoring all those details that were far from perfect.

Everyone have their own process and timing, but time, in the end, is the key ingredient to move on. So hang in there, my friend. Better days are coming. Nobody said it was easy, but they did forget to mention how hard moving on was. Though, if you can do it, next time it won't be that hard. Actually, there shouldn't be a next time. That's the whole point of this: learning a lesson to never repeat the same mistake again. Or, at least, get to be the one who breaks up instead.

Selfie-esteem

Having a nasty accident really fucked me over. Besides the financial and physical impact, my whole lifestyle took a turn I wasn't expecting. All of the sudden, my active day to day was no more. I exchanged running for lying in bed, cycling for sitting on my ass the whole day, dancing for a wheelchair. No more walking for me. From one minute to the other I stopped being a totally independent young man and became a burden to my family and friends.

My self-confidence was crushed, my ego was just a good memory. Latin lover days were over I assumed, and ghosts from the past started haunting me. The bullying at school, my bad luck with girls up until I ended up trapped in a relationship for years, just to be dumped by the girl I fell I love after breaking up with my ex. Add crippled on top of all of that. Brilliant.

Call me shallow, superficial or whatever the heck you want, but discovering Instagram was a nice treat for my self-esteem. Of course there were other factors that helped me get it up again, like starting to walk, having a good lover by my side and the support of all my loved ones. Still, publishing selfies as an homage to myself (and my beard) every now and then has been refreshing. I may continue to have a limp with a therapy in the works to get myself able to do most of the things I was used too. Plus, my left leg is, literally, half as thick as the right one, which is not very appealing. But, nevertheless, getting a like always makes me smile. How bad a duckface really is then?

Wanna take a peek at my selfies? Head over to Instagram @edoherto

Weird dating advice that actually works

I'm no dating expert, but I can't complain. Even in my worst moment, lying in bed with a broken foot, I managed to have a good caring lover by my side. This is no coincidence, it's a consequence. A consequence of over a year of practice, a trial and error process which included a lot of fucking up and around, getting my heart broken by a girl who travels and building myself from scratch after that. This list includes most of the things I learned during this period and it's aimed to help you as it helped me.

Confidence: this is the Golden Rule; you have to trust yourself. If your self-esteem is low, nothing will come through. There's no deal breaker like insecurity, so shake it off your head. If you don't know how, there's nothing to worry about. The list is just starting.

Make the best of yourself: I won't tell you to “become the best version of yourself”, because unless this is a true change, it'll be fake and people will notice. You have to do with what you have, and from that point taking advantage of being yourself. Whether you are short, tall, skinny, fat, nerdy or plain boring, there has to be something in you that somebody will like. You gotta find what it is, improve it and find a niche where to exploit it. Believe me, kiddo, you have it in you.

Get your latin lover on: there's nothing better to improve your confidence than feeling secure about your skills bed-wise. But adopting the pose of this mythical Latino sex creature requires more than just being decent for the good ol' intercourse. A latin lover makes his lady feel like a woman. He pleases her in every way possible, not only between the sheets. He caresses her with his hands, acts and words. He doesn't shag her, he makes love to her, because that's all he knows. He's caring, chivalrous and kind to her. And he dances. Oh Lord, he dances! Because he's passionated and not afraid to show it. So learn good manners to treat a lady properly, rehearse a few good taste compliments and, for Christ sakes, start moving those hips to the beat of the music!

Work out: I couldn't tell if being muscular is a guarantee of success in the dating arena. Personally I think not. I am very slim and I do pretty well, and I have a friend who is ripped and haven't got laid in over a year. So I'm not saying that your should lock yourself in the gym and not coming out until you look like the Hulk. But if you wanna become a proper lover you gotta have a good endurance and, let's cut the crap: why would you wanna rock at dating if you won't live past next year to enjoy it?

Embrace your imperfection: nobody is perfect, so don't feel the pressure to be it. Imperfection is what makes us human, and once you recognize your own humanity you'll be able to see that in the rest of the people. You like a girl too much and think she's impossible to get with? Imagine her taking a shit. Yes, she shits and is imperfect too. Not looking so impossible now, is she?

Be cocky, not a cock: it is true that a high self-esteem is really important to attract the opposite sex, but better not taking it to the extreme. Showing off here and there is no big deal, if you have something to brag about. Feeding you ego is always a good thing, but don't become like those who are so full of themselves that don't have room for anyone else in their lives. You are looking to get laid or a significant relationship, not winning some stupid contest.

Grow a fucking pair!: have you ever gone out clubbing or to a bar and haven't been able or didn't wanted to drink? If not, give it a try. When you do, you'll see a lot of very drunk guys hitting on gals, making a total fool of themselves. Yeah, that's what you look like while you are at it in a regular night out. Do yourself a favor and don't be that lame dude again. Man up and go out there sober, or not more than tipsy. Girls will appreciate it and you will too. Next time you are more likely to wake up next to a woman than with yet another hangover.

Wait no more, my friend. Following this advice we'll surely grant you a very good time and, who knows, you may end up dating the woman of your life... or of that night, depending on what you want.