Everybody has heard the terrifying tales of all the disastrous dates. Most likely, we’ve personally heard some of those terrifying tales.
For instance, having friends introduce you to someone they simply “know” is the appropriate fit. or conversing little while sitting across the table and simply staring at one another. Or your date “has” to leave and apologize after receiving a call “out of the blue.”
Where can we find relationships-building dating advice? Our companions? our relatives? Our own encounters? It’s fantastic if you consider yourself to be a “conscious” person who is always discovering more about who you are and making the required adjustments along the way.
Most people find that dating is a process filled with a lot of unpleasant encounters. Have you ever wondered when someone changed for the worst when you woke up one day? How could I have missed the warning signs?
I’ve found four strategies to lessen the likelihood of these terrible incidents. We frequently have to, at best, painfully acquire these ideas on the fly because they are rarely taught in schools. With the correct information, marriage can succeed.
We don’t know how to choose “the right one,” and when we do, we don’t know how to maintain healthy relationships, which is why the divorce rate is so high. As if this weren’t awful enough, the majority of people who divorce go on to replicate the same unhealthy habits in their second marriage or relationship.
Our tendency to not have a healthy, true sense of self-worth is another factor in failing relationships. This is not advantageous. We tend to draw people who have roughly the same level of self-worth as ourselves. Consequently, you should examine your own self-perception if you find that you are drawn to sick individuals.
Here are 4 sentences every successful couple has memorized:
1. Don’t get into a relationship with an agenda
People often stay in a relationship because of an agenda. An agenda is a belief that something needs to be a certain way for us to be “okay” For example: “I must be married by 30 years of age.”
When we have an agenda, it will often get in the way of the more beneficial decisions we would normally make.
2. Open your eyes and be willing to see red flags
I cannot tell you the number of people who have told me that they never saw the unhealthy qualities in marriage or relationships until way down the line. We are talking sometimes years. They often report that the behavior “just showed up one day, out of the blue.”
The truth is that the behavior was there all the time but was ignored. “Love is blind” is not a helpful mantra when it conceals warning signs.
3. Read up on things you can expect in relationships
Learn the concepts and skills that will help you navigate through a relationship — and life in general. For example: How do you have difficult conversations in a relationship? How do you determine healthy and unhealthy behaviors?
Without knowledge of these skills and concepts, it can feel like navigating in the dark, not knowing what you are bumping into.
4. Give your partner time to show their true qualities
Watch out for consistent behaviors for at least 6 months. It is very difficult to hide your true qualities for more than 6 months without being a sociopath — and for sure, no longer than one year. And you would have to be a skilled sociopath on top of that for those unhealthy qualities to remain “hidden.”
Watch for consistent behavior in the relationship. This holds for negative as well as positive behaviors. There may be an underlying reason for a person to temporarily exhibit negative qualities.
We all make mistakes but there is a difference between occasional “mistakes” and an overall theme of repeated negative behavior. Conversely, occasional “good” behaviour does not negate an overall theme of unhealthy behavior.
