The Call for Love

Love relationships are like belts.

Love relationships are like belts. They should be accessories, not necessities. My 27-year-old daughter and I reminisced on this vital lesson I preached to her growing up. She remains single, independent, and happy today. Thankfully, family lessons override society’s notions.

Society continues to pass down messages that being in a committed love relationship is vital to adulthood. Consequently, people make unhealthy sacrifices to find and maintain partners.

Lasting Love

Relationships have four critical stages, and each stage has signs that suggest the couple should not move to the next stage. However, each stage makes separating more difficult and increases the likelihood of carrying out dysfunctional patterns.

Stage-one: Meeting

Many couples meet in vulnerable places, like self-help groups, bars, and dating sites that emphasize physical relationships without commitment. Vulnerable environments obscure the authentic nature of people.

Relationships are driven by the environment because people cling to their common interests. If the meeting environment is not a significant healthy part of your life, expecting to build a healthy relationship with someone from that environment is unrealistic.

If you meet a person of interest in an environment that is not part of your intended healthy lifestyle, double-down on caution. Do not allow yourself to be swept off your feet.

Unsurprisingly, religious organizations are identified as a positive contribution to spousal selection and marriage satisfaction. When couples prioritize their religious preferences in dating, they have more satisfying relationships.

Religious priority isn’t the only match made in heaven. Couples who share a workplace are also likely to advance to marriage. Previous research advised against work romances. However, recent research suggests otherwise. “There is a growing literature that indicates the potential importance of schools and workplaces as local marriage markets” (Mansour & McKinnish).

You don’t have to claim possession to a person or become a possession to a person to be valued.

The trend in advancing relationships and dating satisfaction seems related to the commonality of healthy patterns. How to raise children, expectations of coupling, financial compatibility, and values are often dictated by organizations. So, individuals within organizations often have similar lifestyles.

If you meet a person of interest in an environment that is not part of your intended healthy lifestyle, double-down on caution. Do not allow yourself to be swept off your feet.

Make sure you get to know a person as a friend before you consider yourself in a dating relationship. You don’t have to claim possession to a person or become a possession to a person to be valued.

Stage-two: Dating

Assuming you had good reason to advance a friendship to dating, you should continue to be vigilant about looking for deal-breakers. Space out the time you spend together and spend time in groups.

Any relationship that’s worth advancing long-term is worth starting out slow. Rushing into a relationship is a setup for future conflict. Find out more about a person’s lifestyle and life before give the person access to your life. Birth family, companionship, parenting, and career histories should be explored early in the dating process.

Second time around

A tell-tell sign of relationship immaturity is if the person is divorced and blames the breakup 100% on the ex. Do not believe that your love interest is the victim of a bad relationship. If that is the case, they have to at least take responsibility for choosing their partner.

Ideally, if the person has ties to another person that will infringe on your relationship, make sure the situation is fully under control. Don’t fall for someone that you have to constantly fight for. An unsettled relationship can cause great dysfunction, especially if you see your interested person as a victim.

Choose your relationships; don’t let relationships choose you. A belt one size too small or one size too big is an unfit accessory, and never a necessity.

Choose your relationships; don’t let relationships choose you. A belt one size too small or one size too big is an unfit accessory, and never a necessity. As flattering as the attention can be, keep your mind engaged, not just your body parts or ego.

Exit at the first sign of dysfunction, such as jealousy that is possessive or persistence that resembles stalking. Healthy, long-lasting, relationships start out slow. Someone who wants to integrate lives within weeks is not likely to be a healthy partner.

Stage-three: Commitment

Consistency and reliability in relationships are staples for longevity. However, consistent and reliable patterns of dysfunction should not be tolerated. Familiarity is not a reason to enter into a commitment with someone.

Dating compatibility should be near perfect. The person should put you on a pedestal while maintaining personal boundaries. People are at their best when dating. If you accept mediocre fulfillment in the dating process, the long-term commitment will likely be dysfunctional.

In the early stages of a healthy relationship, the following patterns are typically evident:

• Offerings: People tend to show their appreciation for your time with gestures or offerings. Opening doors, paying for the date, bringing flowers, or small gifts are evidence of kindness. The absence of such gestures suggests the person is self-absorbed. By the way, compliments on appearance are not offerings. They are only observations.
• Openness: People give you reasonable access to them. If you can only call them within a two-hour window, or contact them only by email, be aware that they may be hiding an aspect of their life. Before you commit to someone, you should know for certain where they work and live.
• Freedom: The expression of freedom is critical in a relationship. Make sure your love interest can take no for an answer. They only way to know that is to refuse them. Don’t agree to every date, respond immediately to every text, or break prior commitments to accommodate the date.

As time goes on

People become more comfortable as they get to know you. If you find yourself trying to make a dating relationship work , marriage will be vulnerable to high-conflict. You must be willing to look ten years down the road having to accommodate a partner’s weakness.

While dating, maintain boundaries. Do not start expecting a future with a person just because you’ve dated for six months. Love is a physiological response of the brain that is similar to being on cocaine. It is produced by familiarity, physical intimacy, and emotional vulnerability. Love contributes little to long-term satisfaction.

Love is a physiological response of the brain that is similar to being on cocaine. It is produced by familiarity, physical intimacy, and emotional vulnerability.

Before you establish a partnering commitment, make sure you are compatible for the long haul. Consider the outside influences on your relationships, including family, political, religious, and cultural influences. Consider the compatibility of your moral compasses.

Conflict can become a building block in relationships when people have lived with conflict all of their lives. People tend to normalize conflict instead of leaving relationships. You must remember that loving someone does not make you compatible.

Partnering

A committed relationship is an opportunity to grow and build a life with someone. The key is to build together, not to control the other person. Do not try to make two people into one. The one life you build together must accommodate two people’s interests and ideas, as well as independence.

Expectations

Research consistently shows that lower expectations in marriage yield higher satisfaction. Low expectations are not the same as low standards. Standards are held high in the selection process. Once you have chosen the appropriate person to build a life with, the standards should have been met.

Low expectations are about the demands placed upon a partner. High flexibility and fewer gender roles are makers of high satisfaction marriages. Both partners tend to have hobbies and interests outside of the marriage, as well as routines that include one another.

Long-term commitments aren’t necessarily life commitments. Some relationships fall apart even decades into marriage. Severing a relationship is more complex as years go by and lives become increasingly intertwined. That doesn’t mean that dysfunctional partnering should be chosen over difficult freedom.

Tightening Your Belt

At no point in life should a relationship take priority over your physical or emotional well-being. Leaving is always an option when relationships remain an accessory.

At certain stages in a relationship, exiting may require significant planning and support. The emotional separation may be easier than physical separation. But, exiting is still an option.

Some relationships can and should be salvaged when partners are steeped in dysfunctional patterns and high conflict. For example, some partners are so financially dependent that they have to make the relationship work to avoid subjecting the children to a life of poverty.

But, salvaging a relationship is not the same as restoring it. Relationships have a better chance of being restored if the right choices were made in the dating process. For example, when the cohesiveness of a relationship has been interrupted by unexpected life challenges, restoring harmony is more optimistic.

Relationships are complex, and so are human needs. While human needs are met by relationships, no specific relationship is a human need.

References

Bakari, R. (2020). Second marriages and the hope they hold. Illumination on Medium. https://readmedium.com/second-marriages-and-the-hope-they-hold-4220661875b5

Bakari, R. (2020). How to avoid trauma bounding relationships. Illumination on Medium. https://readmedium.com/how-to-avoid-trauma-bonding-relationships-5c37cc80e87e

Bakari, R. (2019). If you love someone, let them go. Illumination on Medium. https://readmedium.com/if-you-love-someone-let-them-go-e34772fb3cbd

D’Angelo, J. D. (2017). Virtual choice architecture and online dating: The effects of choice overload, reversibility, and impermanence on online daters’ satisfaction and communication with selected partners

Mansour, H., McKinnish, T. Same-occupation spouses: preferences or search costs? J Popul Econ 31, 1005–1033 (2018). https://doi-org.libproxy.uccs.edu/10.1007/s00148-017-0670-z

McNulty, J. K. (2016). Should spouses be demanding less From Marriage? A contextual perspective on the implications of interpersonal standards. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(4), 444–457. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216634050

Perry, S. (2015). A Match Made in Heaven? Religion-Based Marriage Decisions, Marital Quality, and the Moderating Effects of Spouse’s Religious Commitment. Social Indicators Research,123(1), 203–225. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/24721598