1 2 3 4 5 Decide what you want from a loving relationship. What do you want out of a relationship, romantic or otherwise? What do you look for in a person that you love? What do you love in a person? While you dont want to narrow your focus too much, a properly-aligned list of priorities is helpful in knowing what to look for and how to find it. If it works for you, rather than making up a list of wants, make up a list of deal-breakers. If you absolutely cant abide a drinker, a hyper-religious person, or a daredevil, put it on your deal breaker list and avoid getting tangled in their complicated web. Be judicious. If you’re putting a nice butt before a stable personality, you’re going to have a really tough time in relationships. Same goes for things like valuing friends who get you into the best clubs over friends who’ll hold your hair back while you puke. Put substance above superficials, every time. Real people don’t fit in boxes. Keep in mind qualities that you want a prospective lover to have, but don’t require someone to meet all of them and make sure you’ve got your priorities in order. [1] Have something to offer others. When you go to start a relationship, be it romantic or platonic, you’ll want to be sure that you bring something to that relationship. Having nothing to offer will give you and probably the other person the sense that you are a leech. Work on giving as much as you take, in all your relationships, and you’ll be set for success. A life partner or a lover can help you cope with the problems in your life and will work with you to solve them, but no one is going to make those problems just go away but you. You have to rescue yourself. Be your own knight-in-shining-armor. Expecting someone else to do that for you will only result in putting way too much pressure on them and disappointing yourself in the long run.[2] If youre experimenting with online dating, or other digital forms of communication, youve got to put some work into it. Messaging a hottie with Hey isnt bringing anything to the table. Ask questions, put your dazzling sense of humor on display, be naturally curious. Be yourself. Meet lots of people. Unlike in the serendipitous plots of most romantic comedies, we usually dont run into long- term lovers and friends by accident. With the noise and bustle of 21st century life, meeting people takes work. Treat every night out, or every new class, or every new encounter as a possibility and bring your A-game. Be friendly when you meet people, and try to see the best in them. Even if youre at a party youd rather not be at, make a little goal that youll make one new friend by the end of the night. Turn your dull party into a fresh opportunity. Make plans with people youre interested in. Rather than exchanging numbers and putting someone in your phone as Red Shirt Blonde, try to make specific plans before the end of the night. Find common ground with someone and decide that youll meet up for coffee, or an event sometime later in the week. Make it concrete, rather than vague. Let yourself be vulnerable with others. Unfortunately, loving someone means that they can hurt you. This is normal and okay (and almost inevitable). But if you want to have real love, you need to allow yourself to open with that person. Don’t keep secrets from them, don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t, but instead give them the opportunity to know the real you. Dont put on an act with people youre interested in, or with friends that youre building a relationship with. If youre pretending to be one way, its not fair to the person who meets you halfway. Be yourself all the time, and youll be confident that the people you meet are worthy of loving you, because itll be the real you. Give it time. Don’t force love and don’t try to speed it up. This will only create false feelings which drain you emotionally and leave you feeling empty and unsatisfied. You can’t rush love. But believe that it will come because it most certainly will. You just have to find the right person. Part One of Five: Finding Romantic Love 1 2 3 4 5 6 Commit. If youre in love, prove it by putting effort into the relationship and working hard to make it work. Communicate openly with your partner about your goals for the relationship and where you see it going. If youre only interested in a short-term fling, be honest. If youve got an eye toward serious long-term love, be honest. Theres nothing wrong with either kind of love, but you need to make sure that your partner is equally committed to the same version of love that you are. Commit to the person and to the relationship. It’s easy when two people have been together for awhile and you’ve become very trusting to just get very comfortable with each other. Maybe you don’t go out on dates anymore or maybe you don’t dress up nice for each other sometimes. But you should at least do these things occasionally, or eventually someone will feel like they’re no longer worth the effort. Learn lessons and apply them to your relationships. Yes, bad things will happen in your relationships. You’ll say the wrong thing, or they’ll hurt your feelings. It happens. The important part, when anything goes wrong (even if it’s just problems in your life), is to learn your lessons and just keep moving forward. Try to make the most of any negative situation, turning it into something positive by gaining and growing from the experience. [3] If youre in the wrong, apologize and own up to your mistake. Good relationships air out the grievances and clear the air. Bad relationships hide the negativity and let it fester into serious problems. If youre in love, talk about your problems. Work constantly to make yourself and those you love better. A good, loving relationship is one where you constantly challenge each other to be better people. Help the other person to achieve their dreams and goals because you believe they deserve it. Improve yourself and work for your dreams so that you can be the person you feel they deserve. We should be better people because of the relationships that we have, and this is the way to do it. Eliminate jealousy. This is one of the unhealthiest things to have in a relationship, as it can break down trust and respect, and create barriers. For some people, this can be the most challenging part of relationships. Jealousy is a tough thing to break, but you can do it. The most important thing to understand is that jealousy issues almost always come from within, from the jealous person’s own issues, so those need to be worked through first. This is a place where those communication skills come in handy. This is, of course, assuming one person in the relationship is running around blatantly cheating on the other. In which case, they don’t really love the person they’re hurting, now do they? Try to see issues from all sides. We hate to be wrong. Everyone does. But the thing about everyone thinking they’re right is that someone HAS to be wrong. If we disagree on an issue, we’re bound to be wrong on at least part of the issue. You’ll have much stronger relationships if you learn to talk things out with the other person, see their point of view, and find somewhere in the middle where you can meet and agree. Be partners in life. The whole point of going through life with people you love is so that you can tackle life’s challenges together. Work together to find solutions, solve problems, and comfort each other when times get tough. We can’t solve everything on our own, we can’t know everything there is to know...but a whole bunch of people getting together out of love can solve just about any problem. Part Two of Five: Making Relationships Last 1 2 3 4 5 6 Never, ever manipulate someone. Popular culture often tells us, subtly, that we should manipulate our significant other. You’ll find magazine upon magazine about how to get your girlfriend to do this or how to make your husband more that. But the thing is that expecting someone to change, and emotionally or mentally manipulating them into doing it, is one of the worst things you can do for your relationship. By manipulating them, you are creating distrust and resentment, a terrible thing to do to someone you love. Don’t expect perfection. Don’t expect perfection in the person you love or in yourself. This sets incredibly unrealistic expectations. Neither of you will be able to live up to these standards and you both will end up hurt and disappointed. Even if you feel that you only expect perfection for yourself, this will give you the mindset that people can be perfect and you will subconsciously expect the same from the person you’re with. Don’t bring outside problems into your relationships. Life gets stressful sometimes. We have problems and they make us upset, hurt, or angry. There are many, many people who take out these negative emotions on the people they love, often because they feel like they have no other outlet. But you should never do
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 15:21:17 +0000
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