If you want to see your reflection and confront the reality of who you are and what you want, sign up for online dating.

It’s an eye-opening experience, that in a month’s time has elevated my understanding of who I am, as well as toughened my skin of forthrightness — allowing me the ability to be boldly honest with the men I date.

It’s stimulated many questions, and reaffirmed the theories I’ve had about relationships.

Fear wears many outfits, and one of those outfits is avoidance/resistance.

Knowing that life is short, why, oh why do we spend it doing what we don’t want to do, or being with someone we don’t want to be with?

The answer is fear — fear of hurting someone else and casting ourselves into the pond of the unknown.

It’s not easy finding connection, connection which dives deeper than the superficial (similar lifestyle, upbringing and attraction to each other’s external appearances). Most of us hover in this place, connected at a surface level because the alternative is terrifying — being alone.

Perpetuating an unviable relationship is safer, even if it’s miserable. How do I know? I’ve been there, done that, too many times.

I’m the girl who would go out with almost any guy who had an interest in me. I could squint and find something magnificent in him, then will myself to be attracted to him. Sometimes these connections were purely physical, and sometimes they turned into relationships. This was my modus operandi when I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted from a relationship, or in life. I was still squinting internally — my insides, my desires, my thoughts were hazy and indiscernible. I’d avoid reality and find some way to love, and make it work, regardless of that voice inside that kept screaming, “No! No! No!”

Humans are born with an optimistic outlook, which allows us to believe in love and try to connect over and over again, despite relationship failures.

We want love, and we want love to work out, but it’s not that easy. A love connection is like trying to conceive a baby. There must be a confluence of factors that meet at the perfect time, in the perfect place for a child to be conceived. It’s the same for a relationship — a love match is a miracle G-d makes, on his own time.

It was a blessed and cursed day when I realized that I have no control over the meeting of my heart and another’s; all I have control over is harnessing who I am and what I want. Now, I am incapable of settling, of spending another second with someone who doesn’t get me, or whom I am unable to appreciate fully.

We all know what it’s like to sit across from someone, trying to listen intently to what they are saying, while fighting the distraction of waving red flags that pop up out of the gopher holes of a deeper knowing that it’s just not right.

So, I made a deal with myself that I’d stick to my gut, and not be afraid to be honest with the men I’m dating.

“We are just not a good match.” It’s simple, it’s to the point, and most of all, it’s the truth.

I didn’t know how it would been received, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Most men have accepted it with a warm understanding and an appreciation for my outright, no bullsh*t way. There’s a freedom in that, on both sides, because if one of us is feeling it’s not right, it’s only a matter of time before the other concurs.

Is it scary? Absolutely. No one wants to be the rejector or the heart breaker, but that’s not what I’m doing, or what you’re doing when you end something or say what you need to say. We are acting out of love. Truth is love. Love is truth.

The most loving thing we can do for others is to let them go, so they can discover the love they deserve, reciprocal love, the miracle we are all hoping to know.

Follow the author of this article, Rebecca Lammersen, on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rlammersen

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