If you want a successful, long-term relationship, Daniel Dowling says you need a plan.
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I have a glaring issue with relationships that I just can’t get past: Nobody plans for them! We plan meticulously for our careers, hobbies, playtime, baby showers, manicures for our dogs, and anything else that we want to succeed in. But, strangely we forget to do the same for relationships; the gateways to new life.
We’ve been conditioned to hope and pray for the right one to come along, but that hasn’t worked out. Follow me for an article and I’ll help you plan for the relationships you desire and deserve.
Sex is one small but important chunk of the love pie. Everyone is interested in it, of course, because the survival of our species depends on it. In case you didn’t know … Sex is a good thing!! But, like all other good things, the goodness depends on your plan for using it. If you are itching to get sexy before you really know of a person’s commitment, character and quality, chances are there are many more creative ways for you to get to know a person and for them to get to know and love you unconditionally. You get to know more about yourself, and more about the partner that you could potentially spend a lifetime with. Win win.
As a wise man once said, “If sex led to fulfilled marriages, everybody would still be married!”
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From my experience, sex before marriage is harmful because it distracts couples from the qualities that lead to lifelong commitment, like trust, respect, morals, beliefs, mutual goals and needs. As a wise man once said, “If sex led to fulfilled marriages, everybody would still be married!”
So, I say yes to friendship, yes to respect, yes to marriage, yes to setting appropriate boundaries, and yes to human connection. Mostly I say yes to a plan for your successful relationships. When respect is part of your plan, you can feel good about saying no to everything else and sleep like a baby; no insecurity or jealousy required.
Friendship is respectful always, and the highest evolution of friendship between a man and woman is marriage. Respect is maintained throughout, but the context changes as your appreciation, admiration, devotion and commitment to each other increases. What would be respectful for a couple after two years of committing to each other will not be respectful for a couple of two months.
As far as I’ve learned, you must have a boatload of personal knowledge and commitment in a relationship before you can get physical… if you want to love unconditionally. If you couldn’t love someone for a lifetime based on the friendship you’ve built, something logical and terrible happens. You become chemically bonded with someone who may not turn out to be the diamond in the rough you thought he or she was. And when you find out objectionable traits after you’ve give yourself away physically, your love becomes conditional; you want them to change to suit your needs. That is is the biggest relationship killer known to mankind, and I call it PPE (premature physical engagement–yeah, I spent a year in the army so I get to use cheesy acronyms.).
PPE leads to distraction from the spiritual, mental and emotional connection that is the foundation for lasting love. It effectively blinds you from the qualities of a person that you really need to become familiar with if you expect to last a lifetime together. If you don’t care about those qualities, please stop reading: you’ll be wasting your time.
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Education: The Antidote
I had an inchoate sense that what we call normal wasn’t the best I could achieve. I had seen and experienced too much misery and heartache that came through blindly accepting what we’ve been taught, so I committed to a different way.
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Through all of my education, I never learned a speck about real relationships. So, I had to educate myself deliberately and intensively. I refused to take part in the paradigm that offered brokenness and temporary pleasure as the best it gets, because I had observed others do better. I had an inchoate sense that what we call normal wasn’t the best I could achieve. I had seen and experienced too much misery and heartache that came through blindly accepting what we’ve been taught, so I committed to a different way.
My relationship education is focused on intelligently and constructively channeling sexual desire.
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Until we have revealed the depth of our character, commitment and creativity, sexual desire is more appropriately funneled into less extraordinary pursuits than sex. Whether that be a writing a song, crafting a painting, plumbing toilets, or whatever it is you are passionate about. There is no limit for what we can do with our sexual energy. But, it is entirely up to us to harness that energy in ways that build up our relationships.
If we choose not to educate ourselves and plan for a better application of desire, we have nobody but ourselves to blame for the train wrecks and disasters that we are so accustomed to. Not biology, not society, not “human nature”, not our genetics, and not anything but ourselves.
Until you’ve discovered the depths of a partner’s commitment, character and creativity, I believe you cannot trust that they will be able to lovingly raise the children that come through physical love.
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Until you’ve discovered the depths of a partner’s commitment, character and creativity, I believe you cannot trust that they will be able to lovingly raise the children that come through physical love. If you are prematurely physical and new life comes, you won’t be prepared. When you aren’t prepared, new life does not get what it needs and what should be a miracle and a blessing is perceived as an inconvenience. Pretty messed up.
Imagine being a newborn and knowing that your parents neither wanted you nor had the capability of caring properly for you. Newborn babies can’t say, “WTF Mom and Dad?! You should have prepared for me!! I don’t deserve this shit!” But I can. WTF?
Also, when you haven’t built faith in your partner’s commitment, you open yourself up to separation and divorce (contrary to popular belief, it is a choice). Divorce isn’t luck of the draw. It comes when couples don’t know enough about each other to successfully commit for a lifetime. When divorce happens, children lose their faith in love and rebel against it. In that case, a physical display of affection would not have been making love, but making war.
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The antidote to all of this is relationship education. Relationship education is the systematic approach for determining what actions and beliefs a person needs to adopt to successfully relate with another person. Generally, this is about what you do, not what you don’t do. Do make meaningful connections with another person that reveals your character and content. Do concern yourself with your partner’s morals, character, habits, beliefs, and goals. Do create connection through acts of kindness and selflessness. Do plan for habits that build character and intimacy in relationships.
But, the don’ts are extremely important too. Do not allow any interaction that would degrade your human connection. For women, this is important stuff, because men who engage in pornographic viewing will weaken human connection. This is because they have trained themselves to make transient connections with pixels on a screen, which are distinct from real women. Real women have real needs and complex emotions that pixels don’t.
So, as a man: How are you going to prepare for a real woman? And as a woman: How do you want a man to prepare for the real you?
Questions for your potential mates
After having been pornographically trained, men become unable to attend to the depth and emotional nuances of a real woman. Their commitments are not to the relationship and meaningful connection with her, but to the pleasure that they have learned to associate with her form. The difference is internal vs. external.
For this reason, the first question you should ask any potential dating candidate is: Do you watch porn?
If he or she answers yes, then tell them exactly why you cannot relate with him. Educate them, and let them know about the real connection that all humans need, and how to practice that. If you suspect that they are lying, run quickly. *I realize that mostly men watch porn, but 1/3 of porn consumers are women. That is a substantial number.
A second question should be: Do you believe in lifelong and committed love?
A man who is high on your love drug might fool himself into believing that he wants lifelong commitment with you, when he really only cares for the pleasure.
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This is an important one to ask long before physical affection, because a man who is high on your love drug might fool himself into believing that he wants lifelong commitment with you, when he really only cares for the pleasure. That would be a man who threatens your ability to meaningfully connect, which is a disaster in the making- run quickly from those types. If your lover doesn’t believe in lifelong and committed love, then your capability of growing in love and intimacy is automatically restricted. If your partner doesn’t believe in it, then he or she also doesn’t believe that children have fundamental rights to secure and loving parents.
Another question could be: “Why, precisely, do you want to relate with me as a woman (or man)?” Or, less robotically, “What do you want with me? Where do I fit in your plans?”
This will be disarming to a man, because he will have never heard it before. Many people do not have plans for relationships other than to satisfy a temporary desire to feel good. It’s an honest question though—“What do you want from me? What do you hope to achieve through relating with me?”
Tell him you’ll see him again if he can come up with a decent answer. Let your potential partners fully understand your plan for relationships so that they might come up with their own. Don’t have one? Make one. What are you waiting for?
In this human experience, our success is contingent upon planning. Need an example? We have turned our world into a giant dumpster that seeps toxic sludge out of every orifice. Mass wildlife die offs. Oil spills. Floating islands of garbage the size of Texas … Do you think we planned this? Heck no, we just got greedy and refused to plan better. Because we didn’t plan more holistically, and because of a focus on instant gratification, our success is gravely threatened.
This same myopia has infiltrated our relationships. Need an example? High divorce rate. Oodles of unwanted children. We’ve adopted the insane idea that harmful behaviors in relationships are “normal”, and so we are thrusting headlong off a cliff! (End rant).
You can’t plan everything because life is uncertain, but you can plan and practice your response to the unknown.
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The only thing that can reverse this pattern of short-term gratification and long term devastation is: A plan. It’s like my wise older brother told a struggling sister—“You don’t need a man, you need a plan.” The more specific your statement of purpose is, the greater your chances of success in achieving it. The more detailed your steps and resources are for attaining the goals in your purpose, the more desirable your outcome will be. You can’t plan everything because life is uncertain, but you can plan and practice your response to the unknown.
Get a Plan
If you don’t have a plan yet, this one is fail proof:
Love unconditionally
If you find yourself attracted to a relationship for anything other than what you have to offer and grow through, then rework your inner world to see what you have to give instead. That way, no one can take love away from you. That way, everything you receive will be a gift.
Unconditional love is the only way to love someone for who they are, not for what they give you. So if what you do in relationships is conditional, stop doing it. If you have an opportunity to give freely without expectation, do that instead, then look for more opportunities. Best place to accomplish that is a friendship. And when you’ve been best friends with someone for so long, one day you’ll realize that you couldn’t imagine spending the rest of your life with anybody else; you’ll want to give all of yourself to them. Then you can get married, and have all the wild and crazy sex you want. It will only get better as you give more of yourself to each other.
Originally published on DowlingWriter.com.
Photo—Michael Coghlan/Flickr
I read the article with an open mind. And personally I will not date someone who is closed to ghe idea of porn. It usually indicates a closed mindedness that leads to boredom in th e bedroom no matter how strong the feelings of love might be. Surviving divorce has been the best thing that happened to me. I am happily single and dating bit extremely choosy. No closed minded dates for me ever again. Thank you.
Perhaps being closed to bad ideas is the greatest sign of a discerning mind and open heart. Objectification and lust never have been or will be good ideas. My grandfather had a great quote: “Don’t be so open that your brains fall out.”
Thanks for sailing with me Cap’n!
I agree with all of this except the porn. I (very occasionally) watch and enjoy porn (I’m a woman) and have had good fun with partners enjoying porn together. I don’t think sexual images are inherently negative. A person who is not interested in going deeply into relationship will not be interested whether or not he/she watches porn. But i do agree that finding out early on about a potential partner’s wishes and desires (in relationship and out of it) can help us hone in to people who match what we want. I’ve not been very good about that in… Read more »
I’m sorry to hear that you consent to your own objectification, Ms. Adventure, and that you would reject someone who makes sacrifices to know and love you completely. The greatest adventure that any man and woman could go on is in each other’s hearts and souls. The only way to access that infinite mystery is to pay attention to the internal, and to support it with your behaviors and thoughts. Porn…it’s the best way to MISS the greatest adventure of a lifetime, not to mention the security and intimacy that comes from a pure love in marriage. Your sex life… Read more »
I’ve been with my husband for 10 years and found out a few days ago that he’s been watching porn. Apparently it’s been going on our whole relationship even though he knew I considered it cheating. The whole time he would tell me he doesn’t understand why men watch porn and that he’s never liked it. I had no reason to think he was lying or not trust him. Finally he made a mistake and forgot to delete the browsing history and I found out. I’m 29 and attractive enough. He’s always told me how beautiful I am, and now… Read more »
Dee, I have a thorough response written out for you, but I thought you’d appreciate a private response. My email is [email protected] , and you can also connect with me through Facebook. I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you, and your response. But one thing is important to know now: You are beautiful and worthy beyond comprehension. Don’t ever let anyone’s actions dictate how you feel about yourself– You are of the utmost value and no one’s actions or perception can change that, not even yours. Though, life will be better when you look into the mirror and… Read more »
**ATTENTION ALL WOMEN** Are you tired of dealing with men who engage in pornography? Are you tired of feeling hopeless for a more suitable mate? Your feelings are important, as is your voice. You can use your voice as a vote for a better dating scene. Send me all of your frustrations. Send me all of your complaints. Send me all of your personal experiences that detail how pornography has harmed your relationships and caused you pain. Has it caused your family life to suffer? Send me every bit you have and I will make sure your voice is heard.… Read more »
I would LOVE for said dating site to exist! More than anything I want a man who doesn’t watch porn, but they don’t exist anymore, do they? They’ll all lie about it, but that isn’t exactly the same thing, is it. Basically as it’s a dealbreaker for me, I’ve made peace with remaining single. So much less depressing.
Thanks for your comment, Lucky! Funny that you express desire for such a site, because I am actually already in the planning stages with another (female) relationship coach. I feel you. There are so many men who exemplify this harmful behavior, so it can seem impossible to find a more suitable mate. That said, they DO exist. They travel a harder road through a narrower gate, but they can be found. If you want to see more of them, I suggest that you get vocal about your demands. Get crazy, crazy loud about this. Go out and see men, but… Read more »
@ Good Luck
I am here to tell you we do exist! Real men who do not watch porn or go to strip clubs etc…..
I feel like you about remaining single……But, deep down I have not given up on finding a lovely woman to share my life…
Good Luck to you. Cheers!!!
@ Jules– thanks for giving our ladies some hope! You’re a good man. I’d appreciate your input for the dating site I’m working on, if you can find the time.
Daniel
Maybe you should start an online dating website for us that do not watch porn ,and look for partners that also live with porn.
The chance for a woman to meet on of the few men in real life is like looking for a needle in a haystack .
Silke,
There are more than you think. It just happens that those men aren’t the ones on dating sites because most of those sites are trash.
I appreciate your comment and am heavily considering. Keep in contact with me via [email protected] and let me know specific features that you would like to see.