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Marry Your Best Friend
Marry Your Best Friend
By Frank Kermit
One of the questions I ask couples in my pre marriage course is for each of them to name their best friend, and what makes that person a best friend. I want to know what it is that they value in that other person that merits the title of "best friend". Is it the fact that you can tell a best friend the entire truth and not fear abandonment?
Is it because you feel completely accepted by your best friend? Is it because you and your best friend shared certain experiences together that created a bond? Is it merely that your best friend, is simply the one that you have known the longest and is the only one left that you still regularly socializes with you.
It is a trick question.
First I want to see if the couple would consider each other the best friend of the other. Sometimes, one does, and one does not. In those cases, we have identified a place in their relationship that may need some added attention going forward.
Second, I want to see what a person's best friend offers that that person's partner does not. This is where I am looking for red flags (predictors of future problems in the marriage that we could neutralize right now before it ever becomes a serious matter).
For example, if someone feels they can tell a best friend anything, but does not feel that way with the person they are engaged too, that is a problem. What is going to happen when some kind of real crisis occurs? Are you going to call your best friend first in a time of stress instead of your spouse?
What if the stress has to do with a crisis within the boundaries of your family (such as a child is waiting for a diagnosis, a massive debt was incurred, or intimacy blocks have settled in that your partner feels shame about)?
Will you go straight to your partner like you would your best friend? If not, you both may need to re-consider the communication priorities of your relationship.
Marriage can be challenging. Depending on the studies you research, the rate of divorce can be as high as 40-50% for some demographics.
After the honeymoon phase is over, and the two of you get down to building up a future and face the grind of real life, a solid friendship as a foundation for your marriage, may be exactly what is necessary to carry you both through a life time commitment.
Even the best of marriage can face the divorce question at one point or another.
On that note, if you are currently best friends with someone, and that person is a little attracted to you, and even asked you out, then do both of you a favor.
Say yes, and give it a chance. Yes, it may be a little awkward at first, but most first romantic interactions can be so, with a new partner.
However, allowing a deep friendship to deepen even more into a loving marriage allows for the foundation of your marriage to also have the benefit of long nourished roots.
Frank Kermit
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10 Signs of Avoiding Commitment
Ten Signs Of Avoiding Commitment
By Frank Kermit
There are signs that the person you are dating has no real intention of ever committing to you, even if you are being led on with the person saying that one day in the future they will commit. In many of those cases, your partner is sticking around for reasons that have nothing to do with a desire to be with you for good.
Those reasons tend to be all about sticking around because you are good-for-now. Sometimes a partner stays with you until someone they like more comes along. Sometimes, your partner is not in a financial situation that allows him or her to leave comfortably, so your partner continues to be with you, for now.
Sometimes the reason a person stays is as simple as you continue to have sex, and it is easier to get sex from you, than it is to seek out a new sexual partner. Whatever the reason, you are being mislead to think there is a possible future together, when in fact, your partner already knows, that what you have together is a time-limited affair.
Here are some signs that your partner has no intention of ever committing.
1-Refusing to set any dates or deadlines (for a wedding, birth of a planned child, engagement date). Any lacks of deadlines are signs of lack of seriousness
2-Displays a fear of being alone, or mentions never being able to find a better partner. Low self-esteem can keep a person from leaving temporarily, BUT that same LSE also stops them from moving to the next level.
3-Massive fear of divorce. If this conversation comes up all too often, your partner is trying to tell you, without directly telling you, that the idea of serious commitment is not an option.
4-When every discussion about getting serious turns into having sex. This is a distraction ploy where sex is used to reassure a person that he or she is wanted, and helps avoid any talk in the moment about future commitment.
5-Wanting to wait to save up a certain financial amount to be spent on the wedding. The key here is that the person is not actively saving said amount. If they are not saving for the wedding, they are not planning to have one.
6-When your partner constantly tries to push your boundaries on things that you are not interested in doing. A partner that cannot accept you as-is, is a partner that is not planning a future with you.
7-Your partner puts family, friends and hobbies, ahead of very meaningful moments in your life. If your partner would rather hang out with friends instead of celebrating an important moment in your life, that is a major red flag.
8-Your partner limits your contact with their family, and extended family. This one is tricky, because some manipulators do involve their short-term romances with their families, so be alert to the other signs as well.
9-Your partner shows no interest in getting a life plan in order, which shows no motivation or urgency to plan a future with you. People without a life plan, are less likely to be able to stick to any commitment they make, so it is easier just not to make any commitment to keep options open.
10-Your partner insists on multiple versions of birth control to make sure that nothing -bad- happens up to and including not having sex anymore. Yes, a person will stop having sex with you, but still claim to want to be in a relationship with you. Normally, it usually turns out the other person has already starting to see someone new, and is hoping that you will be the mean one and break up with them, to allow them to play the victim publicly.
One of the worst things that can happen when you are seeking a serious commitment is to have your precious time wasted. The easiest way to avoid these situations, is to have your boundaries and rules in place, and when you see that your partner is not living up to the boundaries you set, then please do assume the role of the -mean one- and end it, and put your time towards someone that does want to commit to you.
Frank Kermit
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Waiting For Your Partner To Change
Waiting For Your Partner To Change
By Frank Kermit
Can people change? Yes, people can change.
If you are in a relationship with someone, and wondering if the person you are with can change, the answer is yes, most anyone can change, if the person can make the commitment to change, the capacity to see it through, and the relative motivation to stick to it through the change process (which can be very challenging at times).
The question is not if the person you are with (or interested in being with) can change. The question you need to be asking is whether or not you wait for that person to change.
The focus is always best directed on the things you can control such as your decision to stay or go, and not on the things you cannot control such as whether or not your partner actually makes a change.
In my practice, I often find myself helping individuals shift their focus from trying to get a partner to change, to focusing instead on why the individual would seek out a partner that needs to perform some kind of change in order to make the relationship work.
It can be an eye opening experience, and a hard shot to the ego, for individuals to realize they may be self sabotaging their chances at being in an emotionally healthy happily satisfying relationship with someone new, by always choosing to date people that must change in order for any relationship to function.
When seeking a long-term partner, a key ingredient to relationship success is to find someone that you can take as is. If the person you are attracted too must change something in order to continue to be in a long-term relationship with you, it is best not to attempt to get serious with that person to begin with.
You do not get serious with someone because of who that person may become in a few years time. You get serious with someone because of who he or she is RIGHT NOW. And if the person he or she is RIGHT NOW is not good enough for you, do not commit.
Time is a resource that is irreplaceable and unreplenishable. When you hang around someone that is not ready or willing to change in order for your relationship to get serious or move to the next level, you are wasting your time.
The time you lose lingering is time you will never get back. More importantly, it is time that you could have used to find someone that is ALREADY the person that you can have a serious relationship with RIGHT NOW.
If you are dating someone that needs to change in order for the two of you to be more serious together, and your partner is dragging his or her heels about it, do not put your life on hold waiting for your partner to change.
It is OK to have hope that your partner will change, but do not cut yourself off from meeting and dating new people, while you hope that the person you currently favor will change to meet your needs. Use the time your partner needs to change to explore all of your other relationship options.
There are certain situations where waiting for a certain change in your partner to take your relationship to the next level makes sense. For example, waiting for both you and your partner to finish an education and get a career started before starting a family, is the kind of waiting for a partner to change that makes some sense, because there is already a willingness and existing commitment in place.
However, there are certain decisions are too important to wait on such as moving in together, getting engaged, getting married, having children, and other values individuals may consider very important such as moving to a new city, changing religion, getting sober, or legally ending a pervious relationship status.
When everything else has been discussed, and you have acted reasonable with realistic expectations, and it is just a matter of taking that next step, and your partner is either not able, nor willing, then you may need to take some time for yourself to evaluate if your partner is worth the wait.
Frank Kermit
- Published on
When your partner does not want to get serious
To Commit or Not to Commit
Do Not Be With Someone
That Does Not Want To Be With You
By Frank Kermit
There are times when individuals stay with partners who do not want to get more serious. This situation happens when one person, for whatever reason, feels that it is better to stay with someone they have to convince to change their minds, than it would be to break up and start over by finding someone new to be with.
Sometimes, the person stays because of a deep held belief he or she is with the right person and is willing to wait it out. Other times, a person stays in this situation due to a deep fear of being alone and not finding anyone else or anyone better. Then there are those situations where the circumstances have to do with the pressure of a biological clock that is so close to no longer ticking that it feels riskier to break up and look for someone else to commit to in such a short time frame, than it is to stick it out, hoping to pressure a partner into agreeing to make something more happen.
Regardless of the reasons, the general rule is that if the person that you are interested in having something more serious with (moving to the next level in the stages of the relationship hierarchy) is not interested, nor even open to talking about what would have to happen for your relationship to move forward, the best course of action is to walk away and find someone else.
The emotional damage done when a person stays with a partner that does not want to get serious is the most significant reason for leaving. Constantly being pushed away and rejected, can lead to a repeating behavior pattern of responding to that kind of lack of affection. In other words, the longer you stay with someone that rejects your advances, the more you get used to being rejected when expressing intimate interests, and it can lead to the point in the future, where you learned to only feel romantically interested in people if they push you away and get turned off by the people who accept your emotional advances. We become engaged with the challenge and the pursuit of love, but bored of actually having love. It is not about what we intellectually know is better for us. It is about how we respond emotionally to those behaviors by our attachment history.
You may intellectually know that the person who is available to you and accepting of your affection is the better partner for you long term, but you will not be able to feel attraction for such people if you have programmed yourself to only emotionally respond to people that continually reject you.
Simply put, do not value someone that is unable to value you back. It is time to find someone else.
Frank Kermit
