Episode 71. People Love Our Rough Edges

What in life deserves our time and attention and what things don't. I hope that as we consider that question along with other topics on this show, that we can all learn to live our lives just a little more intentionally. This is Seth Roberts. Thanks for joining me on Skipping Stones - “People Love Our Rough Edges.”

Once upon a time, I used to think that there was a way to make everyone like me, but that's not possible. I don't think even Mother Teresa was universally loved. No one is universally loved. Some people are able to manage being liked by a lot of people, but those people are also very frequently uninteresting.

Trying to look perfect makes us boring. So many of us think that we have to put out a public image that's something close to perfection. But ironically, in  my own life, I've found that the harder I've tried to show people a perfect version of me, the more boring I became to them. No one can relate to a perfect person.

Perfect people are robots, not people. Most of the humans on this good earth. Are kind of confusing and maybe a little dumb sometimes. We seem to think we don't like when people are that way, but we clearly do because the vast majority of us refuse to draw close to anyone that we think is perfect. So since I got divorced, I've had the privilege to learn about the world of midlife dating.

And every few months or so I'll cycle onto a dating app. I've never had what I would call great success, but I figured it was because I'm older now and I'm sure having kids doesn't make me look any more attractive either. Recently though, I tried something a little different. I advertised just a few negative  things about myself and would you believe it?

I actually got more traction doing that than the picture perfect version of me that I tried to show before. By no means am I killing it on the apps, but it was shocking to me that I did better the time that I showed some rough edges than I did when I tried to portray perfection. So either these ladies are crazy.

Or maybe they get something positive from choosing to connect with less than perfect people. When I stop to think about it, I myself don't wanna spend my life with a perfect person. I was talking to a woman recently who was telling me all about how she didn't need a man in her life because she had found a way to be content and happy.

She said she'd like a man in her life, but that she had so much more to offer than they could ever offer her. And as appealing as it may sound to always be on the receiving end of a woman that can offer so much, I found myself  totally turned off. I thought to myself. Why would I ever wanna be with someone that I had nothing to offer to?

And we all wanna feel like we bring something to the table. Most people are not hoping to go into a relationship purely to receive, but to give. I don't think anyone gets excited to be in a relationship where they're always the needy one. To be needed from time to time is gratifying. Don't we all like to be the hero?

Sometimes? I think one of the primary drivers that gets us into relationships in the first place is often our desire to be needed. So I think I ended up on the other side of this equation at one point. I remember going on a date with this girl that I was totally enamored with. She was super cute and funny, uh, but she wasn't without her issues.

And I remember that I actually liked her particular issues because I felt like there were issues that I could help her with. It was an awesome date. We had a great time and she even suggested that we go out again, and so we planned something. But when I reached out a few days before the date to confirm plans, she never responded.

I reached out a few more times and she never got back to me. Now, who really knows what I would've gotten myself into, had it continued. I might have dodged a bullet, but it's hard to tell what's going through a person's mind. There are so many reasons she might not have reached out again, but my working theory is that she felt like she had nothing to really offer me, and nobody really wants to be a charity case.

We all wanna feel like we bring value to a relationship. People draw closer to others when they confide their problems to them. And on the other side, they push people away when they brag about their lack of problems. A person with absolutely no problems  might be the most boring person on earth who could relate to someone like that.

Every person is a story in motion, and every good story begins with a problem. If nothing goes wrong in your story and you are never challenged, you become less a story and more like an instruction manual. It can be hard to let our rough edges be seen sometimes because the nature of a rough edge is that it is in fact a negative and inherently undesirable. 

As such, it will be off-putting to some people, if not most of them, but at least if they're visible for people to see, then the people that can relate with them will finally be able to find you, and when they do, they'll be relieved to find someone that can likewise understand them. When you've lived a little while, you come to realize that there is no perfect person.

So it's actually refreshing to come across someone that isn't trying to pretend like they are. 'cause it feels real, ironically, in my life, many of my closest friends are people I don't think I ever would've drawn close to had it not been for shared struggle, if I had kept everything hidden from those same people.

They probably would've thought I was boring or worse, yet maybe they would've resented me for having such a perfect life. So I don't recommend you walk out in public and hang out all of your dirty laundry, but when you're getting to know a person.  You need to show them a little bit of who you are, even if other people can't relate with you whatsoever.

They all relate with struggle and a person willing to show others what they really are and what they fear and what they struggle with is someone that feels real. A person with no rough edges would never make for a good character in a story, and neither would they make for an interesting person in real life.

The human mind likes problems. I don't know anyone that  wants to be overwhelmed, but we don't wanna be bored either. I think being human could be described as perpetually looking for another problem to work on. Nobody makes it through life without getting beat up and at least a little bit broken.

But to be otherwise would not be human and humans. Want to spend their time around other humans. This is skipping Stones - “People Love Our Rough Edges.” You can find this podcast anywhere you choose to listen to podcasts. For more information about me, feel free to visit www.skippingstonessr.com. And if you enjoyed the show, please like or subscribe.

If there is a topic you would like me to speak on, please feel free to email me. At info@skippingstonessr.com, new episodes will be released weekly every Monday.