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

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

 Separation and Dating
 By Frank Kermit
 
One of the most damaging actions an individual can take is to start dating someone new when going through a separation with their serious long-term partner (spouse, common-law partner or a defacto-union).

When I use the term separation here, it is not to be confused with a Legal Separation, which is a legal status, and an alternative to divorce for couples that have moral or religious objections to legal divorce.

I am specifically referring to when a couple goes through a separation where they are taking time apart from each other, living separately, in a period of limbo where there is an equal possibility of either a divorce or a reconciliation. This period can be especially difficult when there are children involved.
 
Some therapists recommend that individuals date other people. I completely disagree with this stance. Involving anyone new into a dynamic that is already in a vulnerable shape that turns it into an emotional triangle can wreak havoc on both partners, cause incredible distress on any children who rely on the partners who are separated, as well as cause confusion for the people you date.
 
The point of such a separation is not to experience it as a trial divorce, as many couples unfortunately assume it to be. In fact, the whole reason that separations occur is to work at every possible solution to give the relationship every chance it can have to survive. You do not need to separate first in order to file for divorce (except in the rarest of cases where you must be separated for a specific period of time for a court ordered divorce when one of the partners refuses to agree to it). If you want a divorce, get a divorce. Do not sugarcoat a divorce with a separation if you have no intention of working on your current relationship while separated.
 
What to do during a separation: Work on yourself and whatever issues you may have that contributed to the separation. Get tested for depression. Seek out therapy and coaching. Sober up and deal with your demons. Learn about how to address emotional needs and how to have your own emotional needs addressed.
 
Spend your time alone doing self-reflection and bettering your understanding of love and relationships. Ask yourself why you would have made the choices you made that got you into this situation to begin with. Ask yourself what you have to change to build a future life plan where you will not end up here again. If you invest in a couple of years of this kind of time into healing, then so be it. What is a couple of years compared to the lifetime you can have when reconciled with your partner, and other parent, of your children? It is worth it.
 
What not to do during a separation: It is not a time to form a close bond with new people that would threaten your relationship. Do not hang out with friends and family that have always encouraged you to break it off. It is not a time to be hanging out in bars playing the pickup game. It is not a time to be part of any unplanned pregnancy. It is not a time to be isolating your children from your partner as revenge on your partner. It is not a time to live out all those things you always wanted to do, but were prohibited by your relationship. It is not a time to make significant asset purchases like a new home. It is not a time to make any life altering plans given the lack of emotional stability in your life. It is not a time to uproot your kids from the remaining stability in their lives.
 
Separation does not automatically lead to divorce unless you let it. It is up to you and your partner to put in the work so that it does not happen. In the event you are the only one trying to work on yourself and your partner is not, the exercise is NOT in vain. Do it anyways. At worst, you may influence your partner into participating. At best, you will reach a level of emotional health and be able to teach your children from a broken home what it is to be able to manage an emotionally healthy relationship by serving as an example. If you do not make the efforts to heal, you will likely find yourself in a similar situation again in the future. If you do heal, but do not get the co-operation you need to save your relationship, you can take comfort in the fact you will be able to form better relationships for yourself in the future, which will benefit you, and any children who will be touched by your new relationships.
 
People are their repeating behavior patterns, and it is likely that whatever the issues that broke up your first serious relationship, are likely going to break up the second one as well, unless you work on yourself to correct those behavior patterns. Changing your partner will not solve the issues you carry inside. When the second serious relationship ends, is when most people realize they likely would have had an easier and possibly happier life (for their children as well) if they had just worked out the issues with their first serious relationship.
 
At the very least, be ethical if you are enacting a separation with your partner. You are dealing with another human being, and giving any false hope when you have already decided that this is the beginning of the end, is a horrible thing to do. It is not just your partner you need to consider here.
 
Even if you are too angry and resentful at your partner, and have reached a point where you just do not care, any children you have with your partner will surely be affected by the negative emotions. Your children are half you, and half your partner, and will internalize your negative feelings towards your partner, no matter how much you try to shield them from it.
 
If you do date someone while in the middle of a separation, the worst thing you can do is throw it in your partner's face for your own satisfaction, or as a means of getting a reaction out of your partner. In fact, this is creating a divide, not just with your partner (which you may be too drunk on negative emotions to care about); it has the incredible potential to also turn your own children against you, through no encouragement from your partner. This type of violation of security in your children is more difficult to heal than the problems you have with your adult partner.
 
If you want to end it and leave, then file for divorce and be done with it. Telling your partner that you are separating to think about things and that you intend to make the effort to work things out, when in actuality you are just making it easier to manage your secret affair that you plan to leave your partner for, is a mistake. The odds are high that you will surely end up alone, or in a worse situation than you are in now. Statistically, new relationships that start out as affairs rarely last any significant amount of time, but the damage done to the children who learn of the affair is longer lasting.
 
Separation is no time to start dating new people.
 
Frank Kermit 

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 

This is based on my coaching workbooks I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time.

The Meaning of your Relationships
Starts With The Meaning Of Your Life
 By Frank Kermit

Contemplate your death. No seriously. In order to make meanings of your relationships past, present and those you will have in the future, you must understand how to make meaning of your life. The way to start understanding the meaning of your life is to contemplate your death.

Until you come to grips with the cold fact that your time in this life is finite, and that at some point, you and everyone you know will be dead, the meaning of your life may forever elude you.

We cannot predict how and when we will die, but we do have a measure of control on how we choose to live day-to-day. It is not always easy to take action day-to-day making meaning of your life, especially if you have not decided on the end goal. The end goal of course is not to plan your death, nor is it to hope to live forever. The end goal is to have lived your life with the meanings you have assigned to it during the earlier stages of your life.

Envision the epitaph on your gravesite. What does it say? Great parent and spouse? Beloved Companion? A friend to everyone? Of the biggest heart? Forever remembered? In making the decision of your epitaph, you are in fact setting the goal for how you will live your life. It is the motivation source to make certain that many of your day-to-day actions reflect the way you want to be remembered.

Next step is to consider what you would want stated in your eulogy. Whatever it is that you want mentioned in your eulogy is synonymous with your life’s goals. The benefit of thinking about it today, is that you have the rest of your life to ensure that you live up to that eulogy.

One of the more fun exercises to find the meaning of your life is to contemplate the movie of your life. What would be the title of the movie? What part of your life would be presented in the film script? What songs and music will make up the sound track? What is your story arch, and how did you turn out at the end of your hero’s journey? What actor would play you? (Personally, I always thought that actor Jack Black would make a great Frank Kermit). The movie of your life is about the core of your life story. In imagining your movie, you find how you want your story to unfold.

Some people have a hard time trying to pinpoint these elements, as they have never thought about their impending deaths in the ways I describe. For those people, I also suggest other writing exercises. These include to make a list of the most influential books and songs in your life, a list of the people and characters you most admire and why, a list of your most important base life philosophies, and a list of ways you would like to see the world change.
 
These lists are designed to help to identify and acknowledge your core values and to help you decide what actions you can take day-to-day to follow through. Most people do already have an idea of what is really important to them, but as human beings are, a little reminder in the form of a writing exercise can be just what is required to act on those important values.

So, how can a person use any of this information to make meanings of relationships? Relationships can be our teachers. Relationships teach people about their core values, what they can and cannot handle, and also help people develop and grow as individuals.
 
With each relationship you experience, you learn more about yourself, how your life is, and you can pick out areas of your life that need more attention. If you want to be remembered as a good provider, do your current relationships reflect that? If you claim to be a person that values forgiveness, do your relationships behaviors reflect that? If you believe that protecting your children from potential harm is your highest calling, do you reflect that in the relationships you tolerate? If you claim to admire a character known for being a great lover, do your relationship skills reflect that?
 
If you answer “no” to any of those testing statements, you have found out where you need to start developing a meaning for the relationships you are involved in, so that all your relationships reflect your core being.
 
There is no room for personal hypocrisies in finding ultimate peace and happiness. Sometimes the only meaning you may find in a past or present relationship is to teach you what a mistake you are capable of making and you making meaning by learning the lesson you need to learn in order not to make that same (relationship) error again.

Sometimes we choose the meanings of our lives, and sometimes those meanings choose us. Some of us have a calling in life, such that regardless of what we pursue, life has other plans for us. There is meaning in that too. Even when life has other plans in store for you, you still have a choice. You can fight it, or you can embrace it.

To check out more on my coaching workbooks, visit  I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time.

Relationship Goal Setting
By Frank Kermit
 
This is based on my coaching workbooks I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time.

Setting goals in most areas of your life can be challenging. When it comes to relationships, there are even more challenges. Whereas in other areas of your life such as education, employment, and even some areas of betterment of health, there are a number of areas that are fully within your control, and a huge range of support systems in place.
 

For example, if you want to get a certain degree, those educational institutions that offer such a degree will forward you information about what is necessary to get into the program, and there are some loan and bursaries programs designed to help manage the costs of tuition. You control which schools you apply to, how quickly you adhere to the application process, and making arrangements so that you will have the time and the finances to support yourself while studying.
 
Those are some of the things you are in control of. But like any goal setting process, there are elements that you do not control. Using the same example, you can do everything exceptionally well, but you still might not get in to your program of choice at the schools of your choosing. You control everything within your power of influence to make something happen, except mainly for the final outcome. That is one area that you cannot control what happens. All you can do is manage how you can best react to what happens.
 
When setting goals as they relate to your relationships, it can be even trickier than in other areas of your life, because whereas in other areas of your life, a desired goal is something a little more quantifiable (maybe a LOT more quantifiable) using a pre-determined set of circumstances, in your relationships you are dealing with a real human being.
 
Using the previous example, there are very specific things that are measurable for someone to accomplish in order to get accepted into an education program, and if the applicant is open to applying to various schools, and continues to do so year after year, learning how to improve their candidacy based on previous rejections (if any), then it is likely that some program, at some point will accept the applicant. For some, it is an easier process, but for others it can take a few attempts to get in.
 
But what makes this process easier than goal setting for relationships is that the requirements are limited (a handful of documents and letters), specific (previous education considerations), and measurable (work or volunteering experience). It is not so with relationships.
 
As I teach it, even at your best, you are still only 50% of a relationship and the other 50% is YOUR ability to choose the right partner. It is not enough to be a great partner; you also have to align yourself with another great partner to make a relationship work. If you are looking to set some relationship goals, here are some tips:
 
1-Goals need a deadline: A deadline helps a person focus in on a goal. For example, setting a wedding date, or an age that you would like to already be married and having started a family by may help a person focus on growing up and choosing more suitable long term partners to date.
 
2-Goals need to be realistic: Realistically you cannot expect to be a lawyer in 6 months when you only have a high school diploma. Most professional orders and licensing boards have requirements such as a minimum of a three-year university bachelor degree. Your wishing to bypass it is not realistic. The same holds true on your relationship goals. If part of your goals is to learn to be more social, savvy and emotionally healthy, it will likely take more than a few minutes of your time once in a while, to make that kind of deep change a permanent repeating behavior pattern. If your standards are much higher than your ability to attract such a higher-standards partner, you are not being realistic for what is within your scope.
 
3-Goals need to be related to your absolutes: Your preferences come and go, but your absolutes reflect your boundaries and values, and your goals must be in line with those. If you do not know the difference between your preference and your absolutes, then one of your first goals is to get that figured out.
 
4-Goals and Hope: There is no guarantee that you will achieve your goal. There may be factors beyond your control that you may not be aware of.
 
For example, you could attempt to engage someone into a romantic relationship and not be aware that the person you are targeting simply has no capacity to be involved with anyone for reasons that would be too personal to share. That person might have an STI, or an abusive background related to intimacy, or on a path of personal healing that would negate that person from being open to any kind of romantic connections at this time. It is important though that you never give up hope that you WILL meet someone and find love. Even if you learn every relationship management skill in the book (This is based on my coaching workbooks I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time.), it is all for not, if you do not at least carry the HOPE, that a loving relationship is within your grasp.
 
It can also sometimes be very difficult to stay motivated to keep going after your relationship goals; especially if a person has a lot of bad relationship experience.
 
One of the ways to help you stay motivated is to make a list of all the potential pain you will have if you do NOT achieve your relationship goals, and all of the potential pleasures you will have if you DO achieve your relationship goals.
 
For some people, having a list like that (a constant reminder) of what they stand to gain or lose, can be enough to stay dedicated through the rough roads as they are in the middle of crossing that emotional trench called the canyon of pain.
 
What's your motivation?
  
This is based on my coaching workbooks I'm A Man, That's My Job and I'm A Woman, It's My Time.

Frank Kermit 

Let the Holiday Headaches Begin!
By Frank Kermit

You have been dating your new partner for a few weeks now, and your timeline has stumbled upon the holiday season. The holiday season means parties. Family parties, company parties, client-related parties, friends-traveling into town for dinner parties…should you bring your new relationship partner with you? Or should you go solo and wait until next year?

The answer is: It Depends.

The criteria you need to consider before you bring your new partner to meet your friends, co-workers and especially your family at a function is if you are ready to go public with the nature of your relationship. That’s it. If you are not prepared to introduce your partner as “your partner”, you do not bring your partner along. And before the label-haters (those people that can not stand putting a label on their romantic exchanges) start gunning down my throat, consider this: It will be easier on you, your partner, and everyone that your partner will be introduced too.

If you are not going to introduce your partner as your actual partner, then do not bring him or her. The worst thing you can do is to bring your partner to a function and introduce your partner to everyone there as your “friend”.


First of all, introducing your partner as “your friend” makes it awkward for everyone. You are not fooling anyone. People will make three assumptions:
 
(1) you are dating but do not want to admit it because there is something wrong with your relationship,
 
(2) one of you wants to date the other but the other is not interested enough, or
 
(3) you are both just pathetic because you would rather hang out with a platonic friend instead of making the effort to actually find your own legitimate partner.
 
Which would you prefer? Personally, I have been in all three situations, and I can tell you from experience that none of them make you feel good at the end of the night.
 
One of the stories I often hear during my coaching is about the person who brings a “friend” they are interested in to a function, like a work party, and end up having to bite their tongues when co-workers start to flirt, hit on and aggressively try to attract “the friend”.
 
After all, if you aren’t willing to admit that you are more than “just friends” (or that you would want to be), then your “friend” is fair game. Do not put the focus of your affection into a potentially compromising social position.


If you are still at the point of having to introduce your partner as “your friend” at any functions, then do everyone a favor: Wait until next year, and bring your partner along to the future holiday functions if you are still together, and publicly open as a couple.


Frank Kermit 

Getting into brand new relationships is tricky enough, but when new relationships start around the holidays, it can be even trickier. In fact, there are even people who boycott dating just before or during the holiday season because they do not want to deal with extra challenges.
 

One of the challenges that new relationships face during the holiday season is trying to figure out how appropriate it is to attend a holiday gathering, be it an office work party, or a holiday family dinner. It is not always easy to navigate whether or not you need to invite your new relationship partner.
 

Bringing a new partner to a holiday gathering of any kind is an outward sign to everyone around you that your relationship (no matter just how new it is) is getting more serious. That will be the automatic assumption for most people.
 

Where this may get unpleasant is when one partner in the new relationship is looking forward to sharing the holiday gatherings together, and the other partner feels that it may be too soon to attend such events as a couple.
 

Although it is good to know exactly where each of you stands, especially if you both have different views of your status, it can also be disappointing to find out that you and your partner do not seem to agree on the level of commitment that exists.
 

As a coach, I have been asked if it is wise to bring a new partner to a holiday gathering and to introduce your new partner as -just a friend-. I always advise against this. If you are going to introduce your new partner as just a friend, one of two things is likely to happen.
 

The first is that people may assume that you are actually involved and wonder what must be wrong with the two of you for not admitting it (perhaps assuming that your partner is already married and cheating?).
 

The second is that those people who actually believe the two of you are -just friends- may unknowingly make a pass at your partner, in your presence, because they assume that as -just friends-, your companion must be single.
 

After all, if your companion weren’t single, that person would be out with a significant other, and not hanging with another friend at a holiday gathering.
 

When trying to resolve this dating dilemma, the issue is not actually how long you have been dating, but rather the level of commitment of your relationship. It does not matter if you only started dating two weeks prior to the holidays, two months prior to the holidays or have had been seeing each other for two years prior to this holiday season.
 

How long you have been involved is not a deciding factor when choosing to bring your partner to a holiday gathering. It has everything to do with how serious your commitment is to one another and if you are intending to build a future together.
 

A couple that has only been dating for two weeks but is already secure in the idea of getting married and growing old together should attend holiday functions as a couple. A couple that has been seeing each other dating casually for over a year with zero intention of making any sort of long term commitment should not involve one another into holiday gathers.
 

If either of the partners in this new relationship is not fully prepared to accept how attending holiday functions together will be interpreted by family, co-workers and friends as a sign of a more serious commitment, then the ethical choice is not to attend them together, until such a time as you get more serious.
 
Frank Kermit

 Holidays and Inter-Faith Families
By Frank Kermit
 
The number of interfaith families is growing. It is likely that you or someone you know has been involved at some point in an inter-faith relationship. Love may be blind, but the challenges some couples face in inter-faith marriages can be very real.
 
According to Dr Sheila Gordon, president of Interfaith Community, religions aren’t really set up to accommodate people creating households where there are two different faiths. She suggests that parents should discuss with each other, their goals of the religion as it regards their children and what aspects of the religion they want to practice, and what they want to get out of practicing their faiths before bringing their children into it.
 
Some couples face what has been called the December Dilemma, where multiple faiths have days of celebration around the same time. 
 
Some families try to celebrate each holiday separately on their respective days, but allow for decorations of both holidays to be present the entire holiday season (this avoids the December Dilemma of deciding, for example, if they should put up a Christmas tree or a Menorah). 
 
One inter-faith couple told me that they celebrate both sets of holidays and will let their children decide what faith to follow in the future.
Some families just celebrate all the holidays at once in their own interpretation of mixing traditions together.
 
Finally, other families make a firm decision that the children will be brought up with one faith and one set of traditions, and the parent from the other faith either gives up a faith, or celebrates the holidays more privately, or with less emphasis even if the children are involved.
 
Basically, it is important for the couple to decide ahead of time, as much as they can, what they believe would be best, not only for them, but for their kids as well. It is important to keep in mind that managing different holiday celebrations and how to incorporate them into your family’s life is a yearlong process.
 
One thing that many inter-faith relationships face is a lack of acceptance from family and friends.
 
An old colleague of mine used to be very out spoken about his stance against inter-faith marriage to the point where he would refuse to attend the weddings of his friends and families if they married outside his religion. This eventually led to a lot of abandonment. 
 
Everyone has an opinion about inter-faith relations, and it may not always be in favor of the loving couple.
 
If you are entering into an inter-faith relationship, and believe it is heading in the direction of an inter-faith family, be sure you are ready to face opposition that you may not have known you had.
 
Personally, I find it sad when family and friends are accepting of inter-faith friendships, but not accepting of inter-faith romances. 
 
In fact, in my own practice, the biggest challenge to inter-faith couples is not the couple’s inability to work out the role of religion in their lives and the lives of their children; their biggest challenge is getting close family members on board to support them as they would any same faith relationships.
 
If there could be just one message I could relate to those parents and other family who abandon a loving inter-faith couple it is this:
 
The taint of your abandonment will never be removed even if you reconcile later.
 
More often than not, abandoning family re-enter that couple’s life again in the future, and it usually is because you want to see the children of the new inter-faith family. 
 
Think long and hard before you do something that will never be forgotten. I have yet to meet any abandoner that later claimed it was the right thing to do.
 
Happy Holidays whatever you celebrate!

When Love Ends At The Best of Times
Heartbreak for the Holidays
By Frank Kermit


As the holiday season approaches there are a number of things most people can count on. Time off, shopping, spending time with family and friends (including the ones you may not be particularly fond of), bad weather, exams if you are a student, end of the year projects at work that need to get done, the pressures of holiday get-togethers, worse weather, bad drivers, holiday parties, trips to the clinic, feeling overwhelmed, traveling, even worse weather, travel delays, resolutions, less day light, longer commutes…did I mention the weather? But if you are lucky enough, you might just have that kind of holiday season where you get a glimpse, a tiny reminder of what makes it all worth it. The holiday season brings about a sense of reflection for many people. It is a time, when we look back on all the things we have done or accomplished in the past year (or didn’t). And that is why holidays bring about the end of many relationships.

The holiday times can be super challenging if you have a lot going on. It is easy to feel pressure and exhaustion, as if you are being pulled in too many different directions. When this pressure hits, and you start questioning if the relationship you are in is worth it…that means only one thing: you-are-normal.
 
Holidays have a reputation of bringing out the best in humanity…it can also bring out the worst too. Not everyone can handle the holiday times, and if you are having any issues with the person you are dating, the holidays are ripe to exploit even your most minuscule doubts and have them cause cracks in the foundation of your relationship future.

It may not be until the holiday’s approach that some people take the time to ask if this is the relationship they really want to be in. It may not be until the holiday’s approach that some people must now decide if they are going to introduce the new partner to their family. Holidays can force issues like commitment-talk, future-talk, family-planning-talk, and even the dreaded, so-what-are-we-exactly-and-where-is-this-going-?-talk. (Yeesh! And you thought that people just drank too much over the holidays to make merry…)

And those are only the challenges if you are monogamous. When dating multiple people during the holidays, it can be a bit tricky because there are only a couple of nights that you have to spend with your someone special that have important meanings to it, and if you have more than one someone special in your life, choosing only one person to spend that special night with, usually means that the others will dump you. If you can’t bring all of your partners together to celebrate with you (and hey, that could happen), you might not get to spend it with anyone.
 
The reverse can happen as well if your preferred partner is seeing more than one person, and happens to choose someone else to share that midnight New Years kiss with, instead of choosing you. It can be easier than you think to end up alone on a major holiday. Being polyamorous doesn’t protect you from the same risks as being monogamous.
 
Think of the holiday season as a test. Can your relationship survive the holiday hazards? Is the person you are dating understanding about the time you need to prepare for your exams (exams that can change the course of your life)? Is the person you are with just adding to your holiday aches? Are you the one that is making things worse for your partner because the holidays are fueling the fires of your own unresolved issues? It is a pretty safe bet that if your love life cannot withstand the handful of weeks leading up to, and including the holidays, it is likely that the person you were dating would not have been a reliable life partner for you anyways. So the good news about a holiday break up is that you found out before you got more committed or attached.

That still does not change the fact that the end of a relationship heading into, or during the holidays, just royally sucks. It is going to hurt. There is never a “good time” for a relationship to break up. There will always be reasons to stay, even when the most important reason (the fact that you do not want to be in a relationship with that person) says that you need to go. Holidays notwithstanding, if the relationship ended, you are still going to have to deal with the heartache.

If you do end up in heartbreak for the holidays, take every opportunity to make merry and spread cheer with the people you care about (except the one that dumped you), and enjoy the company of people that care about you. Take the time you need to mourn the end of your relationship, but not at the expense of the focus you need for those things (like study time to pass your exams) that WILL stay with you for the rest of your life. The pain is temporary.
 
There will be plenty of time to focus on the things you want, after you focus on the things you need to do first. And when you do mourn, remember what you LEARNED from your last relationship. If you can find the correct lesson to learn, so that you do not end up in exactly the same situation again, that is the path of finding your relationship redemption.
 
That is the way to forgiving the most important person you need to forgive in a break up…yourself. Have a safe holiday season everyone.

Frank Kermit