Love Doesn’t Happen When You Least Expect It

If you were on your deathbed, would you whisper to your closest friend, "Now that I look back on my life, I wish I worked more 12-hour-days."

If so, keep doing what you're doing.

If not, it's time to get a career that doesn't require such slavish devotion.

You may have a job, you may have money, but you don't have a LIFE.

You’re a single Mom of two teens.

You’re a workaholic small-business owner.

You’re holding down two jobs and training for a marathon.

Make no mistake about it: being busy is the greatest and most believable excuse for being single that you can find. Which is why you're not going to hear me suggest you ditch your job, ditch your daughter and spend 24 hours a day finding love.

What I will suggest, however, is a re-evaluation of three things in your life.
• 1) your time
• 2) your priorities
• 3) your methods

Time is a precious commodity. Our lives are finite. Days end after 24 hours. And, as an adult, you have responsibilities that don't simply abate because you wish them away. You still have to work to pay the bills. You still have to make sure your children get fed each night. That's life, and it's way more difficult to create opportunities in love when you're pulled in so many directions.

But that doesn't mean it's impossible.

Consider these questions:

How many hours do you work each week? If you're like most people, you're home by 7pm. That means you potentially have 4 hours every night to devote to the pursuit of a relationship.

How late do your kids stay up every night? Granted, you have to feed them, play with them, read to them, and put them to bed. But once they’re asleep, you should be left with a few hours to yourself.

Is it possible to create a more even custody arrangement? Hire a baby sitter? Ask your parents or your ex’s parents for a little relief?

Despite my probing questions, I want to acknowledge that if you have sole custody during the week and your ex works on the weekends, you have virtually NO breathing room. And instead of trying to create something out of nothing, you need to get your life into better balance before you worry about dating.

Which is why I suggest a shuffling of your priorities. This is not to say that you should be any less devoted a mother or father. But you owe it to yourself, your kids, and your sanity to lead a life that does not eat up all of your free time.

I see this frequently with my hardworking clients, who put in a full day at the office, maybe fit in a workout and a meal, and start all over again the next day. Who could blame them for not having a love life? Yet it's virtually impossible to break the cycle. Despite the fact that love is more important than anything, we maintain the mindset that work comes first.

One smart, successful client of mine always stressed about how busy she was and how this made her search for love particularly taxing. She had little free time and certainly didn't want to spend it going out with strangers she'd probably never see again. She just wanted to cut to the chase and find a guy. One day, she informed me that she met an impressive man online, who claimed to be too busy to make a date with her. This pissed her off to no end. Yet she was unable to see that in 99% of the circumstances, SHE was the one who was too busy for the men who were courting her.