Relationships:
Self growth & Self-improvement
How do people enter into a relationship in the
first place?
And what I mean by that, exactly? Well, to start with, I think it's fair to say
that a lot of people lack basic information about the things that would serve
them well when they were attempting to enter into a romantic relationship.
For example, how many of us know whether or not our partner has the same
understanding of what love is as we do?
The Nature of Love
There are different aspects to love, and there are
different ways of demonstrating it: one woman might want her man to perform acts
of loving kindness or acts of service towards her, while another woman might
want to be reassured verbally that he loves her.
By contrast, a man
may want his woman to offer sex regularly, or he might want her to reassure and
support him emotionally. I'm sure you can
see how,
if men and women have different ways of loving each
other, confusion can all too easily arise, and a couple could easily come to the
conclusion that in fact they don't love each other when all that is happening is
that the means of expression of love are different.
So taking that as a very simple example of how romantic relationships can become
convoluted and crossed, it follows that the more information either partner
has before, during and perhaps even after a relationship, the more likely it (or
the next one) is
to be successful. I say after a relationship because I always like to keep open
the possibility of
relationship repair after a break up. People can always learn from their
past mistakes! And that information is all about what women like
and want in a man, or what men like and want in a woman, and what processes,
behaviors, attitudes, thoughts and feelings, are the ones most likely to result
in a couple spending time together and enjoying a fulfilling relationship.
The more you think about this, the more complicated it
becomes. There are many levels of interaction: the emotional, the
non-verbal, the verbal, the factual, the physical, and the spiritual.
Even preferences for a particular form of each of these
methods of communication can be different between members of a couple.
It's a truism, of course, that people find others on the basis of their physical
appearance - after all, this is generally the most common way that people are
attracted to each other.
Having said that, you have to take account of
the fact that these days many people meet via the Internet, and we don't always
portray ourselves accurately on Internet dating sites!
On these sites,
it turns out
that people are more likely to form a relationship if they have spent a lot of
time talking to each other, have an effective communication style, and have
gradually come to know each other over time.
Of course some of those criteria for a relationship
are equally true for those
who meet in a more conventional way. But the truth is that meeting face-to-face is the way most people still meet,
and appearance is a large part of attractiveness.
Furthermore, particularly where men are speaking to women, the man's confidence,
masculinity, and gender confidence (by which I mean his sexual self-confidence, his rootedness in his masculinity, and so on) are critical factors in determining
whether or not a woman will find him attractive.
Conversely, women tend to apply certain "tests" to a man to check out
his
characteristics -- specifically, to check out
his masculinity,
his power, and his
sexual attractiveness. Now, while psychologists might say that things like good communication skills and
emotional intelligence are the basis of a successful relationship, the truth of
the matter may be simpler: revealing an open heart and showing your
vulnerability to your partner might be the critical factors which reveal
qualities such as trust, reliability, emotional maturity and so on.
Another aspect of relationship that is commonly overlooked is the question of
human needs.
Many people forget that we all have needs, and that our needs are not
necessarily going to be met by our partner; it's certainly true that a lot of
people enter into relationship with the expectation their needs will be fulfilled by
their partners. However, if one partner is unaware of
the other partner's needs, or if their primary needs take different forms, then
neither partner may end up satisfied and fulfilled, and the relationship may
split up because they regard each other as uncaring.
The point I'm getting at is that if you want to
maximize your chance of getting
into a relationship you have to be a little bit proactive. You can't rely on
chance, and you can't rely on your past experience to guarantee a successful relationship.
That's where the Internet has been incredibly helpful in helping many people
overcome their lack of knowledge, confidence, and even basic understanding of
relationships. Some of the programs with information about
getting into a successful relationship are extremely useful and very
helpful to men and women alike.
I suppose it's possible to see this as slightly manipulative, but I prefer to
regard it as actually a natural expression of the way humans have met partners
for
generations.
There may be something we have forgotten about human
nature: the fact that we have been
genetically programmed over millennia of evolution
to
behave in certain ways, and that when we do behave in those ways we are often
most fulfilled and most truly human.
The problem is that modern society tends to imbue
us with a number of belief systems about how we should behave, or what's
appropriate in our relationships with the opposite sex.
I question this. I wonder if women are actually most fulfilled, as a general
rule, when men are more or less dominant and women more or less submissive; when men
take responsibility in certain areas and women and women take responsibility in
other areas.
Be that as it may, research has certainly demonstrated that
Capture
His Heart is one of the more successful programs on the Internet and whether you
regard it as simply a list of dating tips for women, or something more
significant, the reality is that if you want a date, a relationship,
or a lifelong partner, or indeed if you want to get married, this might be
something that holds a lot of valuable information for you.
Equally there is
a program for men wanting a
relationship called the Tao of Badass (written by by Joshua Pellicer), which is all about helping men find their truly masculine selves,
and ensuring they know how to behave towards women from their greatest masculine
power and integrity. To buy into this, of course, you have to assume that women want a Badass!
And of course that that raises the question of what exactly
a "Badass" might be.... The answer seems to
that it is a man who knows exactly how to behave towards women in a
way which makes them regard him with admiration, respect and perhaps even sexual
attraction. Again, manipulative? Possibly, but open your mind
to the possibility that this isn't manipulative, but natural. The truth is,
having tried it, I can tell you it works -- and it seems to be great fun for
both the man and the woman concerned! And finally what about physical attractiveness?
I've already touched on the issue of physical attractiveness as far as the Internet
dating scene is concerned. Once again, it
seems most
people will rate themselves at a certain level of attractiveness, and will
then look for partner of similar attractiveness.
It follows, therefore, that if you as a
man want to find yourself in relationship with the most attractive women, you
should do everything you can
to improve your appearance and desirability from a physical point of view.
This is going
to increase the likelihood of you getting into a good relationship with an
attractive woman. Since male confidence depends to a large extent on having a sexually attractive
body, I suggest that if you're serious about dating, serious about your
own health, and serious about sitting squarely in your masculinity, then the
building a better body is more or less a necessity for you as a man.
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