Romantic Relationships
It seems mostly people learn about relationships through trial and error, popular media and their peer group. This is pretty inadequate. We spend 13 years of schooling learning advanced Math but nearly zero on learning how to form a working relationship!
We all struggle to find love and then once we find it we try to learn how to share our life with our partner. Below are what I see as being the main issues we face when looking for “love”.
Lack of emotional maturity
Awareness of others, awareness of self, owning and using emotions.
“ I’m 25 got a great job and some great friends but I think I just lost the love of my life. I met her a couple of weeks ago at a party and we got on really well both intellectually and physically. After that we started dating and things recently became pretty serious.
Before we met she had a trip planned over seas with an old high school friend of hers, a guy. She assured me they were just friends but I was really jealous and worried.
After she left my jealousy and worry got worse I kept imagining all these things that she was doing with her friend or guys she was meeting over there and we had a horrible argument over email. I said some terrible things to her. I felt hurt and blamed her for how I was feeling. My life was miserable.
Now she has blocked me and isn’t talking to me. I think I just ruined something that was really amazing and it seems there is nothing I can do to fix it! ” - Bob
Someone with emotional maturity would be able to deal with their own jealousy by owning it. They would have not lost their new girl friend and perhaps the relationship would have been a wonderful one. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve hurt and pushed away over the years. I wish I had learned this lesson much much sooner than I did.
The three basic steps to emotional maturity are:
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Knowing your emotions
- Talk to people about how they feel in different situations and talk about how you feel
- Spend time just reflecting on your feelings in the present and in the past
- Learn to be aware of your feelings throughout a normal day and notice when they change / keep a daily journal of your feelings.
- On psychology of men - Emotions simplified
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Being aware of the feelings of others
- Traveling and experiencing different cultures
- Reading emotionally rich stories can help you imagine how the characters are feeling
- Listening to people and try to work out how they are feeling
- Startrek empathy - Leadership and empathy
- Scientific empathy - John Bessa Empathy
- Buddist empathy - Ethics lesson 6
- Sociologist video on empathy - radical experiment in empathy
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Owning and using your emotions
- Decide your emotions belong to you
- Stop blaming others for how you feel
- My blog on owning emotions - owning our emotions
- In depth guide to emotions - Emotions
Post advice, stories or comments! - the community
Social delusion
The romantic fairytale - boy meets girl, they fall in love and it is “true love” they are separated by something but they never stop loving each other more than anything else. Even if they marry someone else in the end they run away and end up together. Love always prevails?!
The reality - Boy meets girl, they fall in love then get separated. Boy is a hopeless romantic and follows girl around. He watches her go from one bad relationship to another and gets his heart broken over and over again. He gives her money and gives her a place to crash between her broken relationships but she always leaves him for someone new.
The reality - Boy meets girl, they fall in love. The girl believes it is true love and suffers worse and worse abuse. But she believes in Soulmates and believe he is “The One” so she stays with him hoping that one day she can change him. She has his kids. Then one day he leaves her pregnant and crying on the bed for a younger girl and never contacts her again.
These are real stories from real people. It is the opposite to our cultural beliefs. Many of us buy into these illusions and spend our lives chasing some perfect romance that will be our answer to unhappiness. In my opinion that is a pretty sad waste of a life. There are countless stories from people who both felt successful and that the world called the greatest minds / artists / saints of our time who never settled down with a partner.
There is no perfect partner - in most movies the characters have so many positive traits as to be unbelievable, in reality no one is this perfect and we will probably be lucky to find half of the traits in most people.
We don’t have one soul mate - this concept of cosmic love and only one person being able to fulfill you is pretty dumb if you think about it. At least open your mind to the possibility that there are a number of potential “soul mates” for each of us.
Many relationships fail simply because even though things are good, one partner doesn't meet this mystical soul mate romantic dream. We are not angels, if we find ourselves in a working relationship, one that improves the lives of both partners, then we are blessed! Our search is over!
- Exposing ourselves to the stories of others is a great way to begin to understand how relationships really work. Learn from real life not the fairy tales.
- Another way is to research other cultural practices for relationships and research the history or romance and relationships in society.
- Use negative and positive perception to see through false messages - Finding true freedom
- Romance is a hoax - Hoax of romance
- Understanding lust vs love - Lust and love
Post advice, stories or comments! - the community
Self delusion
Here is the story of Jane and her first date with Bob.
“ Within minutes of meeting him, he spoke of us being 'twin flame soul mates' and said that he had had an 'energetic conversation' with my daughters to make sure that they would be ok with his entrance into my life. And evidently, they had responded favourably. They didn't seem to be aware of said conversation, but I guess that was beside the point...
He also proceeded to tell me how I was feeling - 'right now you are thinking x' or 'now you are feeling x'. None of it was accurate.
At the end of the date, when we I was dropping him home he dove in for a kiss. I backed away very quickly, pretty much in horror, and he just smiled at me and then left.
He wrote me after asking why I hadn't kissed him? Like who asks that? Not to be rude, but isn't it obvious?
The guy still writes me periodically, and that was 4 years ago .” - Jane
It’s pretty clear Bob is deluded, Jane is not interested in the least and in fact she wants nothing to do with him but Bob has decided that she is in love with him and they are soul mates from one date. How much energy is he wasting chasing Jane for four years! After one date!
We lie to ourselves all the time and it is a huge waste of potential. The problem with self delusion is it can be pretty easy to see from the outside but when viewed from our deluded perspective it is almost invisible! Bob may well continue to chase Jane or other woman like Jane for the rest of his life and never realise how deluded he really is!
A similar delusion can be seen in woman who believe they can change the guys they are with and heal them of their problems. They might spend most of their life trying to make something work that is clearly broken. When seen from the outside it is usually blindingly obvious.
I only know of three ways to break through these kinds of delusions
- Question everything we believe, many of our deepest beliefs are things we picked up as children. They won't all be correct!
- Learn to understand the beliefs of others and where you have conflicts question your beliefs as well as theirs.
- Listen to your good friends as they may be honest enough to point out your delusions. You can even try asking them then go and have a good long think about what they say.
Post advice, stories or comments! - the community
Other resources
Relationship forum - forums.plentyoffish.com
Relationship site aimed at younger people - lovegoodbadugly.com
Start practicing!