Relationship and Dating Advice For Men and Women.

The Dating Scene - Signs of a Promising Relationship

Celine was just starting to date again after a difficult breakup. She was feeling anxious because she didn’t want to go through another unhappy relationship, but she didn’t trust herself to make good choices. She sought my help in learning how to discern a promising relationship from one that is bound to fail.

In Celine’s last relationship, she had been pulled in by Gary’s ardent pursuit of her. She had wanted to go slower but didn’t listen to herself. Instead, she gave herself up to Gary’s attention and compliments.

“Celine, my experience with men who come on strong right away is that they are often controlling and needy. Is that what happened with Gary?”

“Yes. He seemed so loving and open at the beginning, but once we were in a committed relationship, he started to pull on me for time and attention. He became critical and angry and petulant when I didn’t give him what he wanted. How could I have known all this at the beginning? What should I look for now that I’m dating again?”

Celine had gone on one date with a man named Mark. After this first date, Mark emailed her, saying that he wanted to spend a lot of time with her and go on a trip with her.

“Shades of Gary,” she said. “This is a red flag, right?”

Celine and I explored some of the red flags as well as some of the signs of a promising relationship.

SOME RED FLAGS

• Comes on strong at the beginning of the relationship.
• Becomes angry, critical or withdrawn if you say no.
• Becomes logical and tries to talk you out of your feelings or your experience. Tries to

Should I Give Up Me To Not Lose You?

How far can you afford to bend your values to preserve your relationship? How far can you go in giving yourself up to avoid losing your partner? How much of yourself can you afford to sacrifice to not lose someone you love? How do we find the balance between maintaining our integrity and bending our values?

Most relationships require us to bend to a certain extent, but how much can we bend without a sense of loss of self?

There is an inherent paradox in these questions: A truly loving relationship is a relationship where each person accepts and even values the differences between them. If you have to excessively bend your values to preserve the relationship, what are you preserving? You are not preserving a loving relationship since love does not demand that you excessively bend your values.

Rather than look at relationship in terms of bending values to accommodate another person, let’s look at it in terms of each person learning and growing as a result of their differences in values.

For example, Patricia is a highly responsible person with a strong work ethic, while Sam tends to let things go a lot, which results in an imbalance regarding financial responsibility in the relationship. Patricia is not happy about this. Does she just accept these differences to preserve the relationship? No! That is not what a good relationship is really about. Since a good relationship is about each person learning and growing

How To Put An End To Loneliness

Loneliness and separation are the real illness of our times. While we urgently need true communication, instead we often find withdrawal, games and lies. This is so widespread it is taken as the norm. So often we come away from one another filled with misunderstanding, wondering what really went on. Although we may not realize it, this confusion arises because we do not know who we really are or who the person we are with is either.

We get us many chances to set this right. Our entire life consists of building bridges. Each person we meet is another bridge, another link, a new way to deepen the love and understanding we can become capable of. Yet, so few of us know how to build this link - so few allow it. Or, if we do, it is only for a few precious moments only, and then we run away and hide.

The crucial bridge is the one, which allows another person into our world. But there are many obstacles in crossing this bridge. Usually our first response to another person is to judge, reject, or make some kind of criticism.

We meet someone and immediately label them. Instead of being a person, they become an object to us, a stranger, or opponent. In this way we separate ourselves from them. Then, we wonder why we feel so alone.

Games We Play