Navigating the “Whole Package” While Dating

In June of 2020, I needed a reprieve from online dating. I decided to try something new and reached out to an experienced matchmaker in Baltimore. They had me create a profile and proceeded to define my ideal partner. 

About eight months after creating the profile, the first potential match entered my inbox. I was dumbfounded by the message: 

“Dear Katie,

I have a fabulous new client.  He is the whole package; good looking, successful, athletic, worldly (lived in Prague) and is fortunate to have a wonderful family.  Now he is ready to meet the right woman and start the next chapter of his life. His interests included Netflix shows and going out to nice dinners and golf.”**

This is it? This is the “whole” package I’ve been waiting for  the last 37 years? 

Has the ideal male and their interests not evolved in the last 100 years besides digital streaming? And what about me? Am I even required to have a pulse or would a blow-up doll with great listening skills suffice?

When are we going to evolve as a species to include, “emotionally available and curious” as foundational descriptors to the “whole package” for both sexes?

Society taught me early that my role as a female required that I be a support system for a male partner and my own needs were to come second if I’m lucky, but most likely third. I was told to look a certain way, present a certain way, and if I did, all my needs, which were to be few, would be met. 

This was very confusing for a girl who was wild, rambunctious, and hated rules. Like water trickling over a river rock for years on end, the messaging eventually dulled my edges when it came to dating.  

In my teens, I dated the “whole package” and fell in love with the fact that this boy was infatuated with me and swooned over by other girls. Again, hoping this person’s obsessive love would fill the vacancy in my soul. I was beautiful, smart, and funny, yet I had dismal self-esteem. I often looked to my partners and how they were received by others to create my own image of myself.

I was easily influenced when it came to male attention and lost my virginity to my boyfriend at age 15. It took place on a lawn chair in a wealthy neighborhood after homecoming. Welcome to adolescence in Florida! While I consciously made the decision to lose my virginity at that moment, alcohol was involved, and I had no understanding of my sacred offering.  There was no ceremony, no romance, just a tipsy drunken sexual hunger that needed to be fed. That is all I needed to spread myself wide open and give someone else my innocence.

Ironically, I switched roles and became the controller in my next relationship, taking my boyfriend’s virginity just two years later. I believe I pressured him due to my awakened sexual drive.  

A few years later, at the age of 19, I walked into my dad’s corporate office building in downtown Boston to have lunch together. I wore an off the shoulder black knit top and a cut off jean skirt. I felt confident and cute as I approached his corner office. When I entered, I sensed disappointment.  I did not follow the rules that I was supposed to look more polished as the boss’s daughter. I had a specific role to play. I was informed that I was not going to be introduced to the new Ivy League lacrosse player who was interning for the summer as I was not dressed appropriately. We went to lunch at a grab and go restaurant as opposed to somewhere upscale, and I headed back home. In my head, I was struggling to feel good about myself and yet there were underpinnings of shame that began to cultivate and take residence in my subconscious.   

At the age of 37, I look back at all the “whole packages” I have dated that did not meet my needs, and I sure as hell did not meet theirs either. I was addicted to attractive alcoholics active in their disease in my 20’s and compulsively driven to clean up their messes––wholeheartedly using it as a decoy to avoid my own messiness. A few years ago, I began to take an honest inventory of all my past romantic relationships and take accountability for my own codependent behaviors. I couldn’t blame or project any longer. It was ready to create my own definition of the “whole package” and power wash all the bull shit standards society taught me that no longer serve the wild feminine lioness I am becoming.

I needed to be more than just someone else’s romantic interest. I needed to be more than just pretty. I needed to be more than just agreeable. I refused to let go of my raw humanness and messy emotional self that can easily be hidden behind some mascara and studded Valentino pumps. You wanted the whole package. Now, you are getting the whole damn package.

I created my first ever dating plan in January of 2021. Personally, I think a dating plan should be a mandatory requirement for all women starting at age 15 and let it evolve just like we do.  While intimidating at first, I felt empowered once the first draft was completed. I had never really taken the time to be honest with myself and build an incredible partner from scratch. It felt gluttonous and fantastical. 

Over the next few weeks, I created a clear list describing all the attributes that excite my insides (in a healthy way) and bring a new awareness of my high standards. The top four attributes on the “whole package” list being: 1. emotionally available 2. curious and 3. asks great questions 4. I am romantically attracted to them. I shocked myself with the awareness of how many times I tried to convince myself that I was attracted to someone solely based on their romantic interest in me.  My dating plan also entails my non-negotiables (Yes, people. We deserve those as well.) and my own red flag behaviors that are indicators of co-dependent patterning and abandonment of self. One of those behaviors is filling the void with a curious question if the other person is not talkative or engaging me. I need to let that silence be awkward and wait to attract someone who takes care of those needs.

Through the matchmaker, I did not end up getting set up with the potential suitor, and it’s likely due to  the energy I am putting out there in disdain. While I have not attracted the exterior relationship of my dreams, I can’t help but drip with love and admiration for the relationship I have continued to build with myself. I have entered far down into the basement of my inner emotions and continue to locate crevasses that are yearning to be healed and nurtured. I hope that we enter into this new era birthing a new foundational understanding of what the whole package is when attracting a partner and it begins with a reflection of the wholeness and sacred love within ourselves.

Edited by Patrick Shannon

**The last sentence referencing suitors interests was pulled from his profile. Not initial email.