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All About Moving Your Relationship To The Next Level
The Hierarchy of Sex, Dating and Relationships
By Frank Kermit
One of the biggest mistakes people make in relationships is to promote someone up the hierarchy of commitment that has not really earned it.
The Ten Levels of Commitment In the hierarchy of relationships (specifically romantic relationships), the categories are:
- Legal Spouse (can be substituted with Life Partner, or Co-Parent)
- Engaged Fiancé (can be substituted with Live-in Partner)
- Monogamous Exclusive Partner OR Non-Monogamous Primary Partner (Same Level)
- Casual Dating (Public) Partner
- Friends-With-Benefits (Private) Partner
- One-Night-Stand
- Non-Romantic Friend
- Off-Limits-For-Now
- Off-Limits-For-Ever
- Toxic
From least committal (Toxic) to most committal (Legal Spouse).
Below is a Chart from the chapter The Hierarchy of Dating and Relationships from my coaching workbooks. One of the principles I teach in my coaching workbooks for men and women, "I'm A Man, That's My Job" and "I'm a Woman, It's My Time" respectively is that to make any relationship work is that COMMITMENT MUST BE EARNED.
The Chart Of The Hierarchy of Sex, Dating and Relationships by FrankTalks.com
One of the keys to successful relationship management is not to commitment your time, energy and attention to a person just because you feel something for that person.
You must also take into consideration if that person has earned your commitment in the manner with which they satisfy your criteria for each level of the relationship hierarchy.
successful relationships quotes
For example, let's say the person you are casually dating (non-exclusive partner) is someone that drinks alcohol regularly, but your personal criteria for a spouse is someone that rarely drinks at all.
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Given that your criteria clearly indicates that you have no long term future with that person, under the rules of the hierarchy,
you must never promote that person to an exclusive partner.
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The reason being that there is no point in getting exclusive with someone if there is no long term possibility with that person. Even if you are madly in love with that person, you still must resist the temptation to seek a stronger commitment with that person.
In time, it will become more evident if you continue to commit to the wrong person, that love alone is not enough to make long term relationships work because those criteria you have set, will have been based on your personal values.
If your chosen partner violates your values over the course of your relationship, then it is just a matter of time before your own resentment towards your partner overtakes any notions of your original romantic love that motivated you to choose to seek a commitment from someone that did not reflect your values.
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At each level of the hierarchy are distinct criteria. Each criteria level will include criteria from the lower levels, and are missing criteria from the levels above.
This means that the criteria for one-night-stand partners must be the category with the least criteria, and as you move up the hierarchy, the criteria for friends-with-benefits will include the same criteria as one-night-stand partners as well as a few more, but not as many as the criteria for non-exclusive partner.
The spouse criteria should be your most abundant list of requirements, because that is the highest level that a partner can hope to earn in your life.
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When you take your relationship to the next level (promote your partner up the hierarchy) it has to be based on how your partner continues to prove he or she satisfies your personal criteria.
And when you demote a partner down the hierarchy (from exclusive partner to friends-with-benefits) it cannot be because you "just are not feeling it right now".
It has to be because they have stop satisfying your criteria.
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During the course of any relationship, there will be times you will not be "feeling it right now", and there is no way of being sure that the lack of emotion does not stem from your own issues (for example, weather-related mood swings) rather than a partner failing to meet your emotional needs.
How you feel about a person plays less of a role in emotionally healthy relationships that most people think.
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