Learn about The Hierarchy of Dating and Relationships (and How Soon Is Too Soon For Sex) in the Coaching Workbooks: I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time Sexual Compatibility When Dating By Frank Kermit Sex. How scary the word can be when having to discuss your sexual boundaries with someone new that you are dating. A common question, I am asked by singles that are aiming to figure out the dating rules, is: How soon is too soon for adults to start having sex when dating someone new? Some schools of thought suggest waiting on having sex with someone new until you have gotten to know the person better. This method helps stave off getting too attached to someone too soon, as having sex can increase attachment for some people. It is believed that holding off also helps discourage people who pretend to seek something more meaningful but that just wanted sex, and will abandon partners right after sex. Other schools of thought suggest that having sex right away works best. This method gets the sex out of the way so that neither person is pre-occupied with sexual anticipation, and prevents either partner from building up what the sex could be like in their fantasies, which may come crashing down when the reality of sex happens. It is also believed that having sex right away helps discover if you have sexual chemistry, which for some people is very important to the long term success of the relationships they seek. In the end, it comes down to sexual values and finding someone that has similar values to you, in order to best make it work. There is nothing wrong with waiting for sex, or having sex right away, as long as, you are acting congruently within the boundaries of your sexual values. It is important that you seek a partner that has compatible sexual values as you do. The trouble exists where people have hypocrisies in their personal value structure. A person who wants sex right away, but condemns any partner that willingly has sex right away has a hypocrisy that needs to be resolved. A person that believes that sex is a special intimate act that should only take place after two people have gotten to know one another over a longer period of time, but then rationalizes that a one night stand with a stranger does not count also has a hypocrisy that needs to be resolved. These become very challenging if and when you have children with someone that you do not share similar sexual values, as conflicts will arise when it is time for the sex education of your children about sexual values. It is up to you to come to terms with your own sexual values and to eliminate any personal hypocrisy you may have about sex. Seeking someone with sexually compatible beliefs is much more important than trying to follow rules for yourself that may conflict with the way you really feel about sex. It is for no one to judge you for your desires, and the best way to protect your freedom to choose for yourself, is to set an example, and not judge others for choosing differently for themselves. Frank Kermit Learn about The Hierarchy of Dating and Relationships (and how to Transition as a Couple)
in the Coaching Workbooks: I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time
0 Comments
Creating More Luck For Love: Manifesting Destiny
By Frank Kermit Check out the Emotional Needs Analysis Mastery System When it comes to having luck in life, some people really are lucky in love. These individuals tend to be attracted to people who are also attracted to them. These individuals do not appear to have to "work" to find love; love finds them. These individuals just happen to be at the right place, right time, and meet the right people for things to, well, just happen. These individuals can afford to focus on other areas of their lives and when the time is right, love will seem to magically appear. However, what does a person do, when that person does not happen to be one of these individuals who are lucky in love? If you are someone that is simply not lucky in love, chances are you cannot leave your love life up to chance and must take matters into your own hands. When you are left wanting for love in your life, doing nothing tends to be the worst thing you can do. In any area of life that you are unsatisfied with, being proactive is often the better option, than waiting idly for things to change on its own. This may mean you will have to try new experiences that could push you out of your comfort zone, but that is a reasonable trade off given everything you have to gain (i.e. all the potential new love, affection, dates and relationships you desire but do not yet have in your life). One of the ways to increase your luck for love is solid life planning. This means thinking long and hard about what your long term and short term life goals are, figuring out where you meaningfully want to end up, and then working backwards on the timeline of your life right back to the present day. Once you know where you want to end up, and have more than just a passing idea of what lifestyle you want day-to-day, you will give yourself the road map necessary to follow through and build your ideal love life in a more realistic fashion. Start out by asking yourself where you see yourself in 10-15 years from now. If you already have kids, what are your plans for them? If you do not yet have kids, what are your intentions? Career wise; are you going for further training? Are you living in the big city, or small town? What physical condition are you in and what health challenges are you likely facing based on your family history and personal health practices? How this works is that with each goal you are setting, there is going to be a time or criteria requirement that you do not control. For example, if you want a certain career, you may have to embark on a specific number of years in education and work experience. If you want to have a certain number of children there are considerations about how many years apart your children are going to be. Then you must go back and factor in any conflicts in your timeline because you may not be able to complete that particular PhD at the same time as backpacking overseas, while raising your family, on the income you are set to make at that time. How does all this factor into your love life? When you know exactly what you want out of life, where you want to be, and how you want to end up living, it will help you define where you can go to meet people that likely want the same things you want, who have compatible goals and values that you have. For example, if you know that you want to live an off-the-grid lifestyle, you can direct yourself to events, meet ups, educational symposiums and social gathers of like minded people and increase your chances of finding a love partner that wants to commit to a relationship with such a common principle-based foundation. We may not be able to predict the future, or control life circumstances, but we most certainly can influence our fortunes by knowing ourselves and planning ahead as much as possible, to get a little luckier. Frank Kermit Learn about The Hierarchy of Dating and Relationships (and how to Transition as a Couple) in the Coaching Workbooks: I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time Couples in Transition: Monogamy and Non-monogamy By Frank Kermit Couples who are experiencing a transition in the status of their relationship may sometimes look to explore new ways of redefining their sex lives by experimenting with the boundaries of sexual permissions. This includes couples who are monogamous that are interested in exploring the terrain of the swinger lifestyle, as well as, couples who were previously non-monogamous in some way, that now want to stop any extra-circular sexual activities with others and be monogamous. Transitioning from monogamy to non-monogamy or from non-monogamy to monogamy is not always simple process. It can be challenging, because the rules for each kind of relationship are different. The mindset for monogamists is different than the mindset of non-monogamists. Also, each relationship structure faces risk factors that are not always thought of ahead of time. The main 2 rules of monogamy are (1) you only have sex with one person and (2) you never do anything that could potentially threaten rule #1. Where this gets complicated is trying to identify what exactly is a threat to monogamy. Are using sex toys, watching pornography or contact with ex-lovers threats to being monogamous? You will learn to identify which are threats to your monogamy by communicating with your partner, and finding out where your partner is comfortable. Each individual has particular boundaries, and the goal is to find a common ground about what each partner feels comfortable with while at the same time not enforcing rules that might be too constrictive which could lead to any resentment. In non-monogamous relationships the main 2 rules are (1) you can structure any kind of sexual permissions you and your partner both agree on and (2) you have to make sure that you find likeminded new partners that are capable of respecting your rules. Where this gets complicated is for the two partners to figure out what sexual permissions to agree too. It does not matter where you and your partner draw your lines in regards to sexual permissions to engage in activities with others. As long as you and your partner agree to the stipulations, it is no one else’s business. One couple may believe kissing and heavy petting with others is fine, but not intercourse. Another couple may only engage in sex with a single woman, but not engage with sex with another man or another couple. Another couple may only allow for group sex activates, but not allow for either individual of the couple to have sex with others if both partners cannot be present. Some couples may also take a lax attitude towards using condoms and encourage bareback penetration. It is no one’s business as long as you and your partner agree, and that you deal with other adults who consent to those rules. In either case, whether monogamy or non-monogamy, it is important to keep in mind that what seems like a good idea in discussion, may in fact not be a good idea in practice. For monogamy; In theory, never spending any time away from your partner which includes turning down invitations to take part in a boys’ night out, or for your cousin’s bachelorette party may seem like the right thing to do as a means to help preserve and protect the monogamy of your relationship. After all, if you eliminate any potential threats to your monogamy, you are better able to keep your monogamy intact. However, such restrictive rules may be too confining for some people, and could also be interpreted as emotionally abusive by people outside of the couple, which may result in more social hardships for the couple when having to explain why various invitations get turned down. In addition to this, there is the consideration that one or both members of the couple may even start to feel suffocated and held back in the relationship which also leads to social hardships between the couple. For non-monogamy; In theory, who your partner may decide to get sexual with outside of your primary bond should be of little concern for you, because the sex is strictly recreational and is not a threat to your relationship. However, if your partner is uncomfortable with the way you enjoy yourself with your new lover, especially if your new lover is capable of enduring certain sexual experiences that your partner does not have the stamina for, it can cause great levels of jealousy to muster. Another side effect that many people who experiment with non-monogamy tend not to be aware of: when a problem exists between how your partner relates to their new lover turns sour and they start fighting, it will actually have an effect on your own primary relationship. Few people going into it realize that when your partner breaks up with one of their lovers, it can feel like you and your partner may be experiencing the effects of a divorce as well…and you may not have even been involved in the relationship that ended! But neither relationship structure is better than the other. It is up to the couple to find the relationship structure that best works to meet their particular emotional needs and that also helps them keep what is important to them in the relationship. Simply put, you and your partner must look at what you both VALUE about the relationship structure that you are currently in, and to find ways to maintain what you VALUE about it, while at the same time find a balance with being able to explore. Both lifestyles, monogamous and non-monogamous, have their positive points and their negative attributes. Monogamy has fewer rules to understand, paternity of children is predictable, there are less people to take into consideration and there is little risk of sexual transmitted infections. However it is easier to take your partner for granted as you are not reminded of how much others may desire your partner, the restrictive rules may lead to resentment if either person starts to feel too constricted and monogamy requires work to keep building the relationship to continually be able to address each other’s emotional and sexual needs, as neither of you has the opportunity to have those needs addressed elsewhere. Non-monogamy lets the couple negotiate ways to keep sexual variety a priority in the relationship, gives the couple a chance to explore fantasies and experiences that being with just one partner could not fulfill, and can be a means to quash any incentive for infidelity or abandonment. Having a non-monogamous relationship can alleviate one partner from being asked to please the second partner in ways that that the second partner simply has no interest in. The first partner can have those experiences fulfilled by someone else, and help the second partner not feel guilty for not being interested in participating with the first partner. However whenever you involve new people into your existing love life, you also invite their personal issues. The people you may choose to associate with may not care as much about your primary relationship as you do. Sexual accidents like a condom breaking can force a couple to be very mindful of the dangers that safe sex is supposed to protect from, and you may also have to contend with your lover’s other lovers in ways you did not fully appreciate until it is too late. Commitment to your commitment is the key element in ANY transition a couple is going through. The decision to do whatever it takes to work it out and stay together It may take a long time to figure out how strict a monogamy you need to feel secure, or how freely open a non-monogamous relationship you can handle. In that time of experimenting, you must both prepare yourselves to forgive each other for the hurt you will each feel from the mistakes you both may make, and the unexpected consequences your new relationship rules may bring about. You may likely miss out on some major events that you later regret not taking part in because you were trying to establish a means of respect for your monogamy. You may end up going too far in your experimentation with non-monogamy and crossing a line that your partner and you were not clear on. Remember that this is just as much a learning journey as any, and your commitment to commitment may be the only thing that reminds you of why you entered the transition to begin with…to find a new way of staying together. Frank Kermit Learn about The Hierarchy of Dating and Relationships (and how to Transition as a Couple)
in the Coaching Workbooks: I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time Learn about The Hierarchy of Dating and Relationships in the Coaching Workbooks: I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time Couples in Transition By Frank Kermit When a couple is going through a change in the status of their relationship they are a couple in transition. This includes couples that are transitioning from monogamy to non-monogamy, from non-monogamy to monogamy, and also covers life stages from new parenthood to entering the empty nest syndrome, as well as caring for an elderly parent or becoming a primary caregiver to your life partner. With each transition is a change in your individual identity and how you both may define yourself as a couple. What is important is that you and your partner manage realistic expectations of what will be affected by the transition and let go of any harboring resentment that partners may unknowingly start to feel against one another. No relationship structure is perfect. No relationship structure is better than the other. They all have their positives and negatives. The key is finding what relationship structure works best for your needs, managing the reality of that relationship structure, and use the transition to help make your relationship stronger. The primary reason that -Happily Ever After- does not exist in real life is because in real life change is constant (unlike a fairy tale fantasies where things can stay the same for a long time). From one year to the next, life has a way of putting you through traumatic events, bringing about tremendous loss as well as great fortune, and ironically presenting us with new opportunities that can be veiled as bad luck. Holidays, birthdays and anniversaries can be serene moments of reflection to take in what has and has not changed for a person, couple and family in the course of a year. There are times when we choose our transitions (like the active decision to invite a new child into the family). There are times when we do not choose our transition (such as an unforeseeable accident that leaves you or a loved one incapacitated and in the care of others). There are also transitions that we know are coming, but do not know when though have already agreed to accept for reasons such as feeling obligated, love or to keep a promise (just like when a widowed parent becomes unable to live alone and must move in with adult children and grandchildren). The fact is transitional stages in life are a given. How and when those transitions occur is less in our control. However, what is within our control is how we choose to manage our transition. One of the more dangerous elements of a transition is the RESENTMENT that can build up between couples. There is a difference between our intellectual understanding of a situation, and our emotional reactions to a situation. It is this RESENTMENT and how we manage it that will direct the future of our relationships. A person suddenly caught off guard and thrust into the emotional hardships of a transition, could easily direct lots of resentment against their own partner. For example, many new parents find themselves unready for the lack of sleep they experience caring for an infant. Intellectually they knew what to expect. However, the lack of sleep robs them of energy they normally use to manage their emotional state, and causes them to have a lot less patience with their partner's idiosyncrasies (including those particular partner quirks that they have originally find endearing or attractive). Many people are incredibly surprised to learn that they had emotional expectations that were different from their intellectual understandings. A person can intellectually understand that when they get married he or she is signing up for better or for worse, but when the -worse- part happens, and they can intellectually stay committed, that does not mean he or she is fully on board emotionally. In fact, it is likely that there could be some emotional resentment building that will surface as a fight, or a lack of interest, with the relationship partner. So if you find yourself feeling resentful of your partner for something related to a transition going on in your relationship or in life, you may want to consider examining exactly what your expectations were on an emotional level when you went into that relationship. If you were emotionally banking on a happily ever after, even if you intellectually knew better, the issue might be a simple lack of maturity that comes with the understanding about the reality of life and relationships. As I teach it, it takes more than love to make a long-term relationship work. It takes a commitment to commitment. Being committed to a person is fickle, as how you feel about the person could directly impact how you feel about keeping your commitment. However, if you practice being committed to your commitment, you may stand a higher chance of sticking it out and making the effort to manage your resentment when your emotional expectations are crash against the wall of disappointment. To all couples in transition, I urge you to hang in there. There is a future if you are willing to work through it. Frank Kermit Learn about The Hierarchy of Dating and Relationships in the Coaching Workbooks:
I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time Relationship Redemption:
Finding Closure and Self-Forgiveness By Frank Kermit We all make mistakes in life. If you have ever tried to get into a relationship, are in a relationship, or are recovering from a relationship, chances are about 100% you screwed up somewhere on something. If you are lucky, you have a partner (or ex-partner) that either has a lousy memory, or a partner that chooses not to remind you too often of the times you goofed. However, with all that said some mistakes are bigger than others. Insignificant mistakes can be corrected easily. But those mistakes that can detour the journey of your entire relationship, maybe even costing you the relationship itself, are a little harder to process. Even when your ex partner either forgives you, or just does not care anymore about your error that forced about the parting of your ways, people still need to do something to achieve a sense of peace with their pasts. People need to forgive themselves. And for some people, self-forgiveness is mission impossible. In fact, those people who more easily forgive others may struggle indefinitely to forgive themselves for a number of their relationships gaffs, both great and small. There is a real danger that this particular population may very well get into the bad habit of punishing themselves with self-sabotaging behaviors, which makes their circumstances even worse, causing even more acts of unforgiveable bad judgment, and the cycle continues until a person can be overrun with a horrible shame-and-guilt complex that forbids them from the capacity to function in an emotionally healthy relationship. For people who find exceptional struggle with forgiving-thy-self I have often found that the key to the ability to forgive yourself for the relationship faux-pas of your past is reaching a point when you can trust yourself, not to commit the same mistake again. Once you prove to yourself that you have new behavior patterns that would prevent you from ever making the same mistake again, some people find a divine compassion for themselves that they previously could not tap into. People, who repeat the same negative behavior patterns in relationships, will inevitably continue to do so, until they take an active role in learning new behavior patterns, and repeating those new behavior patterns, until those behavior patterns become unconscious habits. When it comes to unconscious habits in relationships, those new habits will foster into an intuition that will give the relationship seekers a sixth sense that will keep them away from bad relationship partners, and point them within the perimeters of potential premiere partners. Sometimes mistakes can include things like infidelity, wrong priorities, superimposing unrealistic expectations, committing too soon, losing their sense of self in a relationship, becoming too needy or dependant on their partner, acting out personal issues from childhood that have nothing to do with their current partner, or simply choosing the wrong people to date. All of these errors can be understandable in their unique contexts, but they can all destroy the best relationships that come into your life. When seeking help in relationships, a person tends to want to seek out ways to fix what they keep doing wrong that lands them to lose their relationship opportunities. Even when they learn what exactly they did wrong, and intellectually know what they need to do next, it is not until they go through a real life experience to process that new knowledge into action, that a person can start to feel confident that they will stop making those same mistakes again. Until that challenge is met, the certainty of their change-work is in question. However, once a person commits to a new behavior pattern such that, they have now reach a point where he or she can trust in themselves, to never make those same mistakes again; THAT is when a person can get to the point of self-forgiveness. In that moment of a newfound respect for self, is the RELATIONSHIP REDEMPTION that allows for even the most hurtful past of any relationship wound to find ultimate closure. In closure on our pasts, through the self-forgiveness of our own personal relationship redemption, we will find the beginning of our new chapter in the book of our life. Frank Kermit How Much Should You Care About What Other People Think?
By Frank Kermit There will be times when we want to do something in our lives that is meaningful to us. It could be a decision related to abandoning education, what career path to choose, what kind of person to date, changing something major in how we live, or even a new life experience to experiment with to see if it is for you. Each option that you consider can unto itself be overwhelming. However, if it is something that may have the consequence that others may not like you for doing it, it can make an overwhelming option a near impossible decision. With each new choice we make, there will be benefits and consequences. The benefits are usually easier to identify than the consequences. The one alarming factor in your internal debate is the fact that you do not actually control the consequences of your actions. However, when we believe that one of the consequences of our actions may be lack of approval from people, it can make going for what you want a harder decision. If what other people think of you is very important to you, it is likely going to be a huge factor in your decision making process. Sometimes, that can be a good thing, but it is not always as important as people think. Over the course of your life, it is YOU, and not anyone else that will bare the major burden of any decision you make. If you are going to take into account the opinions of others, it is important to keep in mind exactly how effective those "others" are in the ongoing process of your life. There are times when caring about what others think has incredibly good side effects. A teenager, who chooses not to experiment with drugs and avoids the whole drug culture because she worries about how her parents may disapprove, helps keep her safe. That is a good side effect. Caring about what your boss thinks about your conduct both in and out of the office is often necessary as it can have an impact on your ability to be promoted, and increase your earning potential. Not all approval seeking behaviors and decision-making is bad. When the negatives in your life outweigh the positives because you are caring about what others think, and put their approval ahead of your own happiness, that is when you are caring way too much. One of the lessons I teach people who are struggling with pursuing relationship goals is how to balance when to worry about what other people think, and when to just follow through on your interests. People tend to have more regrets about the things they did not do, or at least try, than to regret the things they did do and try, even if they failed at it. When you are trying to judge if you should care about what someone thinks; when you are trying to decide if you should go for it or not, you must ascertain whether or not their opinion actually has any legitimate and actually harmful consequences for you. Does the person in question have the power to ruin the quality of your life in a significant way? If the answer is no, then really, who cares what they think? If the answer is yes, then you have a choice to make to judge if the consequences would outweigh the benefits. For example: you want to drop out of college and start your own business. You have talked about this plan and a number of people think you are crazy, while others support the decision even if they do not agree, and still a few love the idea. All of this is in fact meaningless. The focus has to be on what are the consequences of this decision. If your parents are paying for your education and have told you that if you drop out they will no longer support you and that you would be financially on your own and have to move out of their basement, THAT is one of the consequences that needs to factor into your decision more than others. Are you ready to completely live on your own and support yourself while you pursue this new path? Not sure? In this case caring about what "they" think is important. Also note that if the handful of people who thought it was a great idea for you to pursue, but aren't actually going to help you, or support you in pursuing that dream, then their opinion is worthless. It does not matter if they think it is a good idea. As they are not offering any support for your cause either way, what they think is not something you ever need to care about. That is a key understanding many people miss out on. The idea that liking your idea without actually taking action to support you is as useless to care about as someone hating your idea but not doing anything to stop you from trying it. What about dating and relationships? What about sex? If you want to date someone that some of your friends and family thinks is a bad idea, what should you do? If you want to have sex in a way that you would be stigmatized for, what do you do? You balance the benefits and consequences, including how you will be able to live with yourself long term if you do not even try. It is this one element that can be the most devastating. In the short term it is easy to give up some pleasure in your life in order to keep the peace with the people you care about. However, in the long term, living for others and being self-sacrificing does not necessarily grant peace nor happiness. It is more likely to lead to a life of unfulfilled dreams and an abundance of resentment. There will be a consequence no matter what you do. There is ALWAYS a trade off. That is the way of life. There is no one direction that does not have some kind of bad string attached. It is about choosing the paths that have the bad strings you are able to live with. If you have sex when you want to, with who you want to, you will experience one of the great pleasures life has to offer, but you may also acquire the scorn of people who disapprove calling her a slut or him a sleaze. If you choose not to have sex to please those people, you are limiting some of the life experience and life lessons that comes from experience, which may be something you regret not doing down the road. Will it be comforting for you that you cared what others thought when you hit your mid-life crisis regretting all the things you missed out on? Only you can answer that truthfully. If you choose to go after your dreams there will be people who will HATE you for doing it if you succeed, and will HATE you if you fail; and there will always be consequences to just having dreams no matter what they are. Should you still have and go after your dreams? If you have relationships with individuals that some of your family and friends can not stand, you will have to deal with possibly being cut off from them and others you love that may be caught in the middle (like a younger relative that must obey their parents that no longer approve of you). However, you may very well have the main relationship partner of your life that addresses your most important emotional needs better than your friends and family ever could. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that truthfully. Then again, you could forget that potential partner and only date someone your friends and family do approve of that may or may not completely fulfill you. If you do, and given you keep your friends and family connections intact, it could seem like an acceptable trade off. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that truthfully. Or since you can't be with whom you really want, and you don't want to be with anyone else, you could just end up alone for the rest of your life. That way no one is happy, but no one is hurting...except for you. By putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own, you ARE hurting. It is just that it is not always easy to detect when you are being hurt since you are not in the habit of looking after your own needs. (Ouch, those a-ha moments sting don't they?) Whether "they" are strangers on the Internet who have nothing better to do than to troll your efforts and post negative comments, or if "they" are people that actually have the power to affect your ability to provide for yourself, the process is the same. Judge if the consequences are actually worth what you are getting for it. Over the course of time, your consequences change for certain decisions you make for yourself. The consequences of being an uneducated 19 year old, in a closed social circle, who is dependent on parents to survive is very different from the consequences you would have to deal with as an independent 35 year old adult, who owns a business, and does not care about breaking ties with close friends and family. So do keep in mind that how much you have to care about what others think will change over your lifespan, as your dependency on others change. One thing is for sure though. No matter what decision you take, YOU are still the one person that has to live with the full consequences of every decision you do make, and that you don't make, regardless if you cared about what other people think or not. Frank Kermit Figuring Out What You Want
In Dating By Frank Kermit In my work with singles that are struggling to find a serious long-term relationship, one of the challenges is to get the single person to define exactly what it is he or she wants. Many people think they know what they are looking for, or believe that when the right person comes along, they simply will feel it. Based on my experience and my practice, I have to tell you that such beliefs tend to lead people to dating the wrong partners or ending up very alone as they get older. Trying to define exactly what you want in a life partner, as well as, the kind of relationship structure that meets your needs is not as easy as some may assume. First you must balance what you think you want, and what you personally can and cannot handle. You may think you would be happy with a very socially active dating partner; however, it is only after you actually date someone who is very socially active that you come to realize that your own introverted nature and home body lifestyle, simply cannot support dating a socially active partner who is out and about most times and enjoying extrovert behaviors. Second, there is the issue of not having enough experience with dating in general. How do you know if casually dating a number of people, instead of trying for a monogamous relationship right away would make you happier? The answer is, you likely do not know, until you try and let experience teach you. When I meet with clients who struggle like this, I usually suggest that sometimes it can be easier to define what it is you do NOT want. You may not be sure if you want a monogamous relationship right away, or to casually date several people at once, or to have a primary partner with some kind of more open relationship because you simply do not have enough experience to know yourself. In fact, dating could turn out to be just a big experimental tryout until you figure it out by getting burned a few times. However, if you can list what you are sure you do not want, it can help you narrow down your choices to figure out your next immediate decisions. For example, if something you know for sure that you do not want in your future is a divorce from the other parent of your own children, then use that as a guiding principle to help you choose what you believe is the best potential learning opportunities going forward. No one-relationship lifestyle is better than another. Each one has pros and cons and can be better suited for different phases of a person's lifespan. It is about starting with your end goals, identifying what you know you do not want, and working back from that future point. This will help you decide who you should attempt to date today, and in what kind of relationship structure you should date that person. Dating can get complicated if you let it, but it does not have to be that way if you know what your end goals are, and use that knowledge to factor into the choices you make today. Frank Kermit Ally vs. Enemy:
Understanding The Emotional Needs of Men By Frank Kermit The best way I know how to teach people about the emotional needs of men is to break it down to absolute fundamentals. If people can understand those, then people can understand the emotional motivations behind the choices men make in who men choose to have sex with, date and make long term commitments too. A woman can only play one of two roles in a man's life. She is either his ally or she is his enemy. She cannot be both. In every action a woman takes, and in everything a woman says, a man will judge her on an emotional level that he may not necessarily be conscious of in deciding if he should have her in his life, have sex with her and/or make a commitment to her. If a woman addresses a man's emotional needs he will feel that she is his ally, and potentially feel enough of a bonding trust to commit to her. When a woman violates the emotional needs of a man, he feels he might have her as an enemy in his life, but he may still continue to have sex with her pending how bad a violation of his other emotional needs, though he has already emotionally decided he will never commit to her. One of the ways that the emotional needs of men and women differ is in the way men and women categorize each other. Women can only feel that she can play one of two roles in a man's life. She is either his mother or his lover. A conflict occurs when a woman feels like a man's mother (at which point she loses any sense of being attracted to him), and the man feels she is his ally because she acts like his mother (which does not negate his sexual desires and in fact, he may interpret her mothering him as a sign of her being romantically interested in him). The more I learn to understand couples and relationships, the more I really do experience moments when I am in awe that anyone ever gets together anymore when there are absolutely no outside factors involved like family pressure, cultural expectations or just needy desperation. Sigh. One of the main differences between men and women is how their emotional needs relate to sex. For women, the act of sex can be an efficient means of addressing her particular and individual emotional needs profile. For men, sex IS an emotional need. Sex will not address a variety of a man's emotional needs; sex only address the one need: his emotional need for sex. This is a key reason why when men and women attempt to enter into "friends-with-benefits" types of relationships, it is usually the woman who will start to develop more feelings of attachment than men. During continual sexual activity, women are having multiple emotional needs met during their sexual session, and that triggers feelings of deeper attraction and loving attachment. Men get the sex, and the emotional balance that men experience from sexual intercourse, but do not necessarily get any of their other emotional needs met during sex, depending on the context of their sexual activity. Most men will have certain emotional needs in common such as his need to have his reputation protected, his need for recharge time, his need for femininity, his masculine-identity, and finding a woman he can trust as his secret keeper who will put their relationship ahead of all other people. However each man has an individual emotional needs profile that defines which emotional needs are more important and less important to him. The key to gain his commitment will be found in assessing his emotional needs, and being able to address his most important ones to the degree he emotionally responds too. Frank Kermit What Love Masks By Frank Kermit A mentor of mine taught me that love is not blind; it is just that categories are rigid. When you meet someone, you put that person in a category (lover, friend, temptation, fling, does-not-count, creepy, unattainable, out-of-my-league, good-enough-for-now, spouse, soul-mate) because of how that person addresses (or violates) your emotional needs based on your first impressions; and if it turns out that the person actually belongs in a different category, it is more challenging to drop that first impression category. For example, you meet someone, then get wrapped up in the honeymoon phase of the dating experience, you may categorizes that person as the perfect soul-mate, only to find out the harsh reality three months later that the person and you simply have incompatible core values. You and that person should never had more than just an intense private fling. But, -love is blind- so it is likely very challenging to give up on that person who is actually best left as at temporary adventure (fling), despite intellectually knowing better, because of the category they have already been put in (soul-mate). When on a first date with someone, it is generally expected that we are going to be our best self, and not just be yourself. Your best self is a Mask. You are not going to act like your every day self. First dates are a time to put out your best character traits forward. As deceitful as it sounds, it is actually very ethical. You go on that initial outing together to get a feel of what kind of person you are meeting, and for that person to get a feel for you. If you do not put your best self forward on a first date, you are likely killing your chances of getting the beginnings of your relationship off the ground to reach the second date. Using the Mask of your Best Self is no more deceitful than being at your best when going to a job interview. Wearing a Mask in relationships is only unethical, when you LIE to the other person and attempt to pass a false representation of yourself in order to get sex, a relationship, or basically just to get someone to even like you as a friend. Situation comedy productions (TV, movies, and theatre) love to play out this plotline of someone trying to use a Mask of deceit in order to get someone to date them, and usually all have an ending where the truth is learned and the Masked-User is punished, left abandoned and with nothing. The same principle applies when meeting someone new in real life. If you used a lie to get with a person, and assuming the interaction goes on beyond the point of a traveling one night stand, that same lie has the power to tear down everything you have since built up with your partner. We all wear masks. It is not a question of should we, or should we not, wear a Mask when dating. The issue is always the context. How we act at a funeral, is very different from the way we act at a wedding. Each face we exhibit is a Mask. That is not being lying or deceitful...it is about CALIBRATION to the circumstances and environment around you. Whenever you lie, you are hiding behind a Mask, and likely that same Mask will be your undoing. The best way to use your Mask is for the Mask to be a reflection of those parts of your personality that you want to display. On a lighter note, I fondly remember a scene from a Peanut Cartoon entitled, "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". A number of the characters were together getting dressed to go out trick-or-treating for Halloween. The aggressive character Lucy Van Pelt known as the mean, crabby old sister exclaimed, "A person should always choose a costume which is in direct contrast to her own personality" just as she put on a witches costume. The joke of course is that she did not see herself as a witch, when in all other respects; she was depicted as a mean witch in the show. However funny or inappropriate the joke may be in today's climate, it does shed light on the idea that most peoples first assumptions with Masks, is that Masks are trying to hide a persons true intentions and that the Mask being presented is not an indication of the person behind it. The further irony of the above example is that in the majority of cases, real witches (not the kind that appear in popular media, but the kind of women and men who take part in a variety of healing arts and religious practices) happen to actually be some of the most pleasant people sometimes. Even mean Lucy reveals at the end of the show, how much she actually does care for her younger brother who defied her the entire episode. She wakes up at 4 a.m., concerned that he is not in his bedroom, and fetches him from the cold pumpkin patch where he is shivering and half asleep. She does not scold him. She just brings him home and tucks him into a warm bed. Sometimes, we wear Masks, not to deceive people, but to feel safe and protected, to hide away our insecurities, our fears, and to prevent us from feeling too vulnerable. It is OK to want to feel safe. It is normal and human of us. For the purposes of finding love and connecting with others, the key is not about doing away with Masks. The key is about being just guarded enough that we protect ourselves, while at the same time test the people around us, so that we can share ourselves slowly as the other people earn enough of our trust for us to feel safe in being with them Mask free. I wish you all bountiful loot bags, and may you never have to say that all you got was a rock. Happy Halloween! Frank Kermit History of The Emotional Needs of Men Program Ally vs. Enemy: Mastering the Emotional Needs of Men by Frank Kermit In September 2006 I lived out of my life long dreams. I moved from Montreal to the city of Toronto. I arrived Sept 9th. I rented a room in a house and was on a very tight budget. Going out about town was simply not a possibility. Most meals consisted of whatever I brought with me (lots of ramen noodles and jell-o) On September 10th, 2006, I started to delve through my journals for various insights and experienced I have logged from 1998 to 2006 (over 1000 pages of journals). It took me 40 days (from Sept 10th to October 20) to write my book Everything Out of Her Mouth is a Test. It was 12-14 hour days with few breaks. The week of October 20th, 2006 I self published it immediately. My book on understanding the emotional needs of women was complete. But there was one question that kept coming up from the people who read my works and those I coached. What about the emotional needs of men? I had mentioned in Everything out of her mouth is a Test, that I would one day produce a book on that topic sometime in the future. So I started to put together some of my ideas on the emotional needs of men, using the emotional needs of women as an example base, as well as various insights I had logged in my pages and pages of journals and I let the ideas stew in my mind, while furthering more personal research including discussing it with people I trusted. In 2008 I did my biggest live seminar in Toronto on the topic of Frank Inner Game based on the book, I'm a Man, That's My Job. It was in I'm a Man book that I first published my initial thoughts on the emotional needs of men. There, at my seminar, I devoted an entire hour on the topic of the Emotional Needs of Men, and released it as an introductory audio program The Emotional Needs of Men 101: An Introduction (a program for men). Demand for more information on the emotional needs of men continued to grow, and to respond to the demand, in 2008 I self published an Emotional Needs Analysis workbook on the emotional needs of men. Normally I would have published the theory book first, and then the workbook, but the demand was getting stronger, and with the other challenges I was facing at the time in my personal life, the workbook was all I had time for. In late 2009, I found myself in a quandary. I had achieved some personal goals such as getting married and becoming a father, which was good. But I also had made some bad business decisions along with battling health challenges that I ended up doing something I never thought I would do…I moved my new family back to Montreal with me for an opportunity to get my life more stable again. In January 2010, just before I left Toronto, I sent my wife and son ahead of me to Montreal, and in our tiny empty apartment, I recorded 11 seminars with live audiences over 21 days (some seminars were at little as 6 hours, while others lasted 2 full days). One of those lectures was a 2 full day seminar on the emotional needs of men. In February 2010, I arrived in Montreal and began to edit and release whatever programs I could, but due to making my family and our collective well being a priority, the men’s emotional needs seminar recordings were left untouched until years later. In the Summer 2014, Master Class on The Emotional Needs of Men, to an audience that was mostly women who wanted to better understand how to attract a man's commitment. This was released as The Emotional Needs of Men - An Analysis for Women audio download. In 2016, after recovering from various challenges and refocusing on releasing the remaining seminar programs that had been sitting on my computer for years, I finally released (after quite a bit of editing) Ally vs. Enemy: Mastering The Emotional Needs of Men audio program of 7 hour long mp3s. Later in 2016, I was approached by a fan of my work, who wanted to invest the money necessary to transcribe the edited 7 hour audio lecture, so that I could self publish and release the Ally vs Enemy: Mastering The Emotional Needs of Men ebook and paperback. THANK YOU DUDE! The week of October 10th 2016, exactly 10 years to the month of releasing my first book on the emotional needs of women, I had the pleasure and pride of releasing Ally vs Enemy program I hope you enjoy your journey of learning about the Frank Kermit Emotional Needs Analysis Theories, as much as I enjoyed creating them. -Frank |
Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
NDG Encore Singing Chorus **** Every Friday Night Dr. Laurie Betito Quotes
|