Being Right... And Getting Left

Most of us know the story behind our missing halves, as Plato tells it. Long ago, we were all complete, male and female united in one. We were happy, bouncy, round little beings, so the gods (as Greek gods were known to do) got jealous and split us apart. Belly buttons are the scar.

Ever since, we’ve wandered the Earth looking for our other half, the one person on Earth who fits with us, our perfect match. When we find them, we’ll be happy again.

Problem is, Plato made the whole thing up, at a meeting of literary types whose primary form of recreation was drinking heavily and trying to outdo each other with outrageous lies. The story was believable, though, and the modern-day version is the soul mate, the twin flame, and all the other models that fill meeting rooms at holistic expos when someone is trying to explain them.

Why is it so hard? We think we’ve finally found The One, our perfect fellow traveler on our journey across the planet, only to look out the window and notice smoke coming out of the engines – and then the yellow oxygen masks start to drop.

Part of the problem is lists. We’ve been led to believe that all we have to do is make a list of every single desirable quality in a mate, and wait for the Law of Attraction to deliver someone who immediately matches every single item. Ann Gadd has a lot to say about such expectations in What Went Wrong With Mr. Right? – and, to her credit, there are no exercises in it asking you to make such a list. (There is a list, but it’s not what you’d expect.)

Actually, there aren’t a whole lot of exercises at all – making her book equally accessible to the gender wondering what went wrong with Ms. Right, since, given the choice between doing relationship exercises and poking sharp sticks in his eyes, the average guy will ask. "How many sticks?" (It’s rumored that Ms. Plato made her husband take the relationship test in the ancient Greek edition of Cosmopolitan when he came home drunk.)

Ann is an artist and a Reiki Master, not a shrink or Cosmo editor, and she understands energy and how it moves. She’s also a big fan of archetypes. In relationships, archetypes (Perfectionist and Slob; Damsel in Distress and Knight in a Shining BMW) are dichotomies, the two sides of a coin, the two bowls on the scale that get filled and emptied a bit at a time until the thing balances – and balance is what you’re after.

· Take one of those old-fashioned scales, the kind that Blind Justice holds.

· Get two piles of similar but different substances – say, apple slices and orange slices.

· See if you can get just the right amount of apple on one side and orange on the other to balance the scales perfectly – the first time.

· If it doesn’t balance, throw everything out and ask yourself what you need to work on in yourself, since there must be something wrong with you.

· Make a list of all the perfect qualities in an apple or an orange, and see if you can find one that fits.

· Try again.

Sounds silly, but it’s about how we look for the perfect relationship. We find a house and paint the walls, we buy a car and keep it maintained – then we find a relationship and expect it to be perfect from day one. No wonder we crash and burn.

That soul mate you’re looking for is going to be a mirror, one that shows you from every side, perfect and not so perfect – so be ready. Even true soul mates adjust their way through different stages as they move towards harmony and balance.

If you expect otherwise – if you keep abandoning ship (as in, relationship) because your potentially significant other is only scoring, say, in the mid nineties – well, pick up this book, and maybe a stack of others. You’re going to have lots of time for reading.