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Dating Deadlines
Dating Deadlines
By Frank Kermit
Sometimes, the only way to move forward in a relationship is to set a deadline.
Setting a deadline when you are dating someone is a way to find out exact how serious someone is about continuing to be with you, and how ready someone is to move your relationship to the next level.
If you have a life plan and feel that you are running out of time because your partner seems like he or she is dragging their heels, asking them for a deadline for when they will make a move may be a good idea.
Dating deadlines are usually related to a couple setting a specific date to move into the next level of commitment in the hierarchy of relationships.
It can mean going from causal dating to a more serious relationship, living separately to living together, going from dating to an engagement, and a deadline to go from engagement to marriage, and to trying to get pregnant.
A deadline can also be about non-relational situations such as buying or selling an asset, and even deciding when to move to another area or city.
In some of the more complex situations I have seen in my practice, it may even involve asking a partner to give up seeing someone else in order to fully focus and commit to the relationship.
If you are thinking about setting a dating deadline, because you suspect your partner is consciously or unconsciously dragging heels about a certain move forward within the relationship, be sure to involve that person in naming the deadline date.
It is always best to let the person who is holding back, to set the date of the deadline.
The key is to let that person pick a deadline he or she feels comfortable with meeting. Then give that person the space he or she needs to meet that deadline.
This will accomplish exactly what you need:
An environment of support and trust that gives your partner everything necessary to meet the deadline without added pressure.
If your partner meets the deadline, you will have moved forward in the relationship together.
If your partner has not met the deadline, and there were no other mitigating circumstances to blame, your partner has no excuse for not meeting the deadline.
Your partner not meeting the deadline is the outward sign you may need to end the relationship.
There was one couple I distinctly remember from my practice that had set a dating deadline that by a certain date, there were to be married.
On what would have been their wedding day, there were still not married (not even close to the planning stages of a wedding), and they decided to come in for a coaching session together to figure out why it had not happened.
A deadline not met should often be seen as a red flag.
However, it does not need to automatically declare the end of a relationship.
In some cases, an unmet deadline can also be the push necessary to start a path of personal growth and healing, to get your relationship where you want it to be.
Frank Kermit
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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
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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
