Day 15: Sophy Dale
When Kerstin first asked me to write a piece on Asking for Impossible Things, I knew straight away what I wanted to write about.
This story goes back more than a decade, to when I had recently turned thirty. A man I’d really fallen for had broken my heart and, when I looked around me, it felt as if all my good friends were coupled up, having children and doing all the things society tells us you’re ‘supposed’ to be doing when you hit your thirties.
So, I started online dating - and, you won’t be surprised to hear, it was pretty disastrous.
It turns out that dating when you’re feeling heartbroken isn’t a great move - and trying to swim with the ‘get married and have kids’ tide when you’re not sure about commitment is pointless. I went on a LOT of first dates, a few second dates, and had a couple of fairly brief relationships. One of these was with a guy whom I really thought OUGHT to be ‘the one’, if it just weren’t for the inconvenient fact that there was no real spark between us. Oh yes, and we didn’t seem to be able to talk about anything important. After about six months, he had the good sense to put both of us out of our misery by ending the relationship.
After that, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I’d had a first-hand taste of how lonely it feels to be in the wrong relationship, and I certainly didn’t want more of that. Also, when I looked at my coupled up friends, I realised that I envied their apparent feeling of certainty, but I didn’t actually want to be planning a move to suburbia or enduring sleepless nights with a newborn. So, what did I want?
That’s the first step I think, in asking for your impossible thing. You can’t ask for it if you don’t know what it is.
I stopped dating and spent some time revelling (as only an introvert can) in living by myself in my own little flat by the sea. I spent a lot of my time writing journal entries and went on meditation retreats and threw myself with renewed vigour into running my business. I spent more time with my friends, both the ones with small babies and the sizeable contingent who were single like me (but who had somehow not figured in my comparisonitis ‘everyone’s found their soulmate except me’ moment). And gradually, I worked out what I did want.
I didn’t want to be on the marriage-and-babies track. I wanted to see if I could find someone I felt completely comfortable to be fully myself with, someone who would challenge me and interest me and make me laugh and always have my back. And if I couldn’t find that person, then I was content to stay on my own.
Initially, I didn’t intend to go back to online dating. After all, I’d given it a pretty thorough go, and it really hadn’t worked for me. But then I got to thinking about why it hadn’t worked, and what had changed for me since then.
And also, I did what I always do when I’m stuck. I read.
I read exhaustively, not so much about ‘meeting your ideal partner’ since so much of that advice was such blatantly patriarchal bullshit, but more on the topic of how to ask for impossible things.
And the most useful book I read was one by a psychology professor called Richard Wiseman. His book was called The Luck Factor, and it was a research-based examination of how some people experience so much more luck in their lives than others. The people who are doing their dream job, or who have found their soulmate are perceived as being lucky - but maybe they just know how to increase their chances of getting what they wanted.
Wiseman came up with what he dubbed the Four Principles of luck:
Maximise chance opportunities
Listen to your lucky hunches
Expect good fortune
Turn bad luck into good
As I read the book, I could see that actually I was already living an incredibly lucky and privileged life, and also that I was already intuitive, optimistic and resilient, which meant I was doing quite well with principles two, three and four. However, as an introvert who avoids small talk at all costs, it was principle number one that eluded me. If I wasn’t going to be getting into many chance conversations in the checkout line at the supermarket, I was going to need to create my own ‘chance opportunities’.
One of the things I love about Kerstin’s project is it’s not about the Law of Attraction, ask the universe approach to asking for impossible things. It’s about taking concrete actions and asking something of real people.
And that’s when I decided to give online dating one last go. Which is how I came to agree to a date with a very persistent man who didn’t fit my predetermined checklist for the men I was dating (he wasn’t a writer/ artist/academic living in Edinburgh, he was an IT consultant who lived hundreds of miles away). And, one elopement later, that’s how I ended up married, with a baby after all.
Because when you ask for impossible things, you just might get more than you expected.
Sophy Dale is an editor-turned-copywriter, messaging strategist and business coach who works with coaches, designers, e-course creators and other freelancers and consultants. She lives in Edinburgh with her husband and daughter but works with clients all around the world, helping them find the right words to reach the right people.
Asking for Impossible Things
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