When you’re in a new relationship, it canquickly become your entire world. You spend time at work anxiously awaiting atext from your special someone, and spend your off hours laying on your couch,ignoring the TV show you’ve got on, thinking about the next time you’ll get tosee them.
It’s a rush of adrenaline that few things in life come close tomatching, and it’s one of the most amazing sensations that a human being canexperience.
But it can also be a fuel that causes us tomove way too fast in our love life. Often, we can become fearful that we’remaking mistakes, not truly satisfying our partners, or that any sign ofhesitation will be perceived as weakness, and cause our partner to run for thehills.
As a result, many people lead themselves into a self-fulfillingprophecy, and move so quickly through the stages of their relationship thatthey scare the other person away.
To keep this from becoming your story, or to ensure that your partner isn’t pushing you into things you’re not ready for, consider the following tips.
Spend a Long Time as Friends Before You “Make it Official”
From the moment we start dating, it seems likemany people start developing a timeline to map out the proposal, the engagementperiod, the wedding, and having children.
It’s not that this is a bad thing -it’s just that these are serious steps, and you and your partner may not beanywhere near ready for that. Or worse, one of you is ready, but the otherisn’t so sure, and you start walking down a road that leads to resentment,rejection, and probably a broken heart.
To prevent this from happening, you need tospend a long time with your potential better half as friends before you ever commit to dating. Don’t get me wrong -I’m saying you can still go to movies together, meet each other for lunch, cookfor each other, and hang out at each other’s place, just like a committedcouple.
You can even share an apartment or home if you choose – just do it without the label of ‘in arelationship’ attached. That will take a lot of the pressure off, and give bothof you the room and time you need to explore what each other are like aspeople.
Date Someone with Similar Life Goals
Often times, relationships end because twopeople find they just can’t get along; that’s normal, and it’s far better thatrelationships end in this cases to save wasted time, and broken hearts.
Inother cases though, people may find that they truly do like and care about eachother, but life is just taking them in completely different directions. You maybe focused on advancing in your career more, while your partner may be ready tosettle down and tie the knot.
These are far more unfortunate, because neitherparty is wrong, and may be a wonderful couple otherwise, but they just can’tline up what they want in life.
Before you officially commit to a relationship, ensure that the person you want to date has similar life goals to yours. If you want to focus on getting a promotion before you get hitched, make sure they’re comfortable waiting. If they want to save up some money first before they move further, then you’ll have to be patient, even if you’ve got a healthy amount of savings put away.
Obviously, it will help immensely if you can find someone with the same industry and lifestyle as your own, because you can advance at about the same rate in your careers, achievements, and life in general.
Remain Open and Honest
You’ve heard this said a thousand times, and you’ll keep hearing it for a thousand more, because it is so fundamental to maintaining a healthy relationship – always share your thoughts with one another.
Now, I’ll admit it’s easier said than done.Sometimes, our partner is the one we’re the most hesitant to open up to,because they the one we’re the most afraid of hurting, or having resent us.
But here’s the thing – that fear is precisely what leads so many lines ofcommunication between couples to shut down, and relationships to end. Take thepain now to save the heartbreak later. If things are moving too fast for you,let your partner know, and make it clear to them that if things are moving toofast for them, then you want to be the second one to know.
