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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
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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
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Primary Partners in Open Relationships
Primary Partners in Open Relationships
By Frank Kermit
In the hierarchy of relationships and dating, the position of Primary Partner on the Non-Monogamous Branch of the hierarchy, which is the level equal to Exclusive Partner on the Monogamous branch, often raises a number of eyebrows. After all, it seems almost a contradiction in terms to say that someone is primary to you, if you are still dating other people. Yet, that is exactly what it means. When you are in some kind of open-relationship structure where you and your partner come to terms with having certain permissions for one, or both of you, to date other people then the issue becomes how to define what separates and makes your Primary Partner a distinct priority, over your other non-exclusive partners.
For some people, this can be an easily made distinction. The Primary Partner is deemed to be the only partner that is being considered as a future fiancé, spouse, and life partner. (This may even include the idea of becoming parents with the Primary Partner).
For others, this can be a very confusing set of parameters that can be ever changing with a Primary Partner being demoted to Secondary Partner, and a Secondary Partner being promoted to Primary depending on circumstances which may be beyond the control of the people involved. For example, if two people consider each other a Primary Partner in an open relationship, but one of them is called away on a work assignment or for school, to travel away from home for an extended period of time (could be months, even years), then the Primary Partner position may rarely be stable.
A Primary Partner enjoys certain rights and privileges that other non-exclusive partners do not share in. These may include rules such as, only Primary Partners may engage in unprotected sex, the Primary Partner is the only one to meet members of the significant others family and friends, and the Primary Partner gets a say (maybe even a Veto) on who else can become a non-exclusive partner of the significant other.
It is up to the individuals in the relationships to decide what rules they will follow, based on what they believe they can and cannot handle. However, there are some basic general rules to help newcomers to non-monogamy navigate a multi-partner lifestyle.
Never define a partner as being a Primary Partner just because you end up happening to spend lots of time with that partner. The amount of time you spend with someone can be an indicator of the level of commitment you share, but it is not, nor should it be, the sole telling criteria.
It is highly suggested that you do not make someone your Primary Partner who does not consider you a Primary as well. Making someone your Primary when you are that person’s Secondary (or lower down the hierarchy) means that your needs and concerns come after your Primary Partners other partner(s) who are more a Primary priority than you. However, this does not apply for individuals who enjoy a lifestyle of not being, nor having, a Primary. Some individuals thrive on their freedom, and likely do not even consider the partner they connect with most, a primary. In fact, it is very possible to be involved with multiple people, without ever having a true Primary Partner because of the extra responsibility that it would entail.
Is it ever possible to have two Primary Partners? For example, do those individuals that actually want to seek out two husbands, or two wives, aim to have two Primary Partners? I will leave that discussion for a possible future article.
Frank Kermit
