Tag Archives: dating

Make the Most of Valentine’s Day

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Certainly one of the more controversial holidays/observances, Valentine’s Day for some is an awesome day, as it’s one when love and romance are more in the public conscience than they are on most days, and there’s undoubtedly something cool about celebrating your own personal romantic glee on a day when so many others are doing the same.

It’s probably fair to say that those in a great relationship probably look forward to V Day more than do those in a relationship they wouldn’t characterize as “great,” and, almost surely, especially more than those who aren’t in a relationship at all. Although a certain contingent of those in great–or even Everything— relationships may take a dim view of Valentine’s Day, some lamenting it’s a fabrication of the jewelry industry, the chocolatier mafia, or the greeting card cartel. Or feeling it’s disingenuous to make special one day a year when expressing one’s love, desire, or both for another is encouraged, because that’s something that should be done all the time, effusively and extensively.

You won’t catch me arguing about that. One absolutely, positively should constantly be expressing one’s love for one’s partner, open heartedly, expansively, authentically, and eloquently. With no expectation of reciprocation. Because the act itself is the reward. You’re lucky enough to feel all these amazing things and it’d be a disservice to your partner and the relationship itself if you chose to keep those feelings to yourself. And constantly means daily, bub–even multiple times a day. In person, via text/IM, on the phone, via love notes tucked into lunches, taped onto coffee mugs, by your actions, your energy, etc., etc. The possibilities are endless.

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Undoubtedly some guys reading this post raised their eyebrows during the preceding paragraph. Here’s the deal: expressing your feelings, your heart, your love in genuine, full, fearless, fun ways, frequently, is not inherently in conflict with manliness, with masculinity. Expressing fear-based insecurities like need, jealously, clinginess, possessiveness–decidedly unmanly.

Even though I revel in the constant expression of my feelings of love, I definitely don’t look askance at Valentine’s Day. Not at all. As someone lucky enough to be in an Everything relationship the last 2+ years, tomorrow will be my third Valentine’s Day with the love of my life, Lien. Nothing overly extravagant about our plans: dinner at a nice restaurant, a box of her favorite pastries, some flowers. To us Valentine’s Day ain’t about the “things,” it’s about celebrating and honoring how absolutely lucky and happy we are, feelings that continue to grow in strength each and every day, and that we celebrate and honor every day.

There’s not a romantic relationship out there that won’t benefit from the partners being open-heartedly expressive with one another. If you’re already there, congrats! If you’re not but you’d like to be with your current partner, then let go of fear and speak from your heart.

If you’re in a relationship you’d like to exit because you’re sure there’s a better romantic reality out there for both of you, maybe it’s best not to open-heartedly express those feelings on Valentine’s Day. (harsh, a bit…) But seize the opportunity to clarify your feelings and thoughts and start taking definitive steps toward that new reality.

What if you’re not in a relationship at all? No reason to feel “left out.” Get over yourself and let that person you’ve had a secret crush on know how you feel. Or take time on Valentine’s Day to work on your definition of your ideal partner as the first step toward manifesting that reality for yourself. And as part of that envision how the two of you will be celebrating future Valentine’s Days together.

Everything begets everything

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The “Love is…” single-pane, syndicated cartoon that’s been in major newspapers for decades is sometimes schmaltzy, sometimes not terribly on target, but occasionally gets it right in a way that resonates.

Here’s one from Saturday’s LA Times that hit the mark for me:

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The empowering, heartlifting, ongoing individual boost one experiences as a result of an Everything relationship does indeed make everything–and anything–seem possible, achievable.

So Everything as we define it here, with a capital E, most certainly begets everything.

Does Nicholas Sparks’ Divorce Say Anything About True Love?

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Online news media and social media were abuzz earlier this month when news broke of the end of mega-successful romance author Nicholas Sparks’ 25-year marriage.

An article on The Huffington Post culled tweets expressive of the sentiment that if Nicholas Sparks, the mind behind culturally impactful books (and movies) like The Notebook, Safe Haven, Nights in Rodanthe, The Lucky One, and so on and so forth–who had previously cited his relationship with wife Cathy as inspiration for his work–the-notebook-2004-copywas giving up on a relationship, then True Love must be dead and buried.

Frankly I’m amazed that so many expressed the sentiment of feeling cheated somehow because Sparks’ literary output had had a positive impact on them, perhaps giving them hope that a relationship like those depicted in his books and films was out there somewhere for them, but now, since his own marriage proved not to be an Everything relationship, that somehow undercut the hopeful and optimistic message underlying his overall body of work.

Responding, then, to the question posed in the title of this post, does Nicholas Sparks’ divorce say anything about True Love? In a nutshell, hells yes it does! It says that True Love is alive and well, thank you very much. After 25 years and probably a ton of practical reasons to remain together: kids, finances, and, in this particular case, public perception, Nicholas and Cathy Sparks recognized that their relationship had run its course. It was not a True Love relationship. Not an Everything relationship.

Why? Because one simply cannot have had a True Love relationship. If it voluntarily ends, regardless of the specifics, it fell short of True Love. By acknowledging this, by accepting that a better reality might well be out there for both of them, romantically speaking, Nicholas and Cathy Sparks are totally and unequivocally validating the lure and desire for the most vaunted relational state possible for us as human beings–you got it: True Love.

True Love knows no age. It becomes possible when the circumstances of one’s life–one’s understanding of one’s self, one’s contentedness with the individual completeness of one’s life, and one’s precise definition of who and what one wants in their ideal romantic partner and relationship–set the stage for it.

In Nicholas Sparks’ case, his relationship with and marriage to Cathy was good enough to inspire him to hypothesize great, True Love romance and express it in ways that spoke to millions and millions. Ultimately, it perhaps even spoke to him and Cathy, helping them realize that “good enough” is a far cry from True Love, from Everything. And now they’re both free to pursue that for themselves. With all that they experienced and learned from each other, about what they want and don’t want in their respective Everything relationships, helping refine their visions of their ideal relationships.

From where I stand people shouldn’t take the Sparks divorce as the death knell of True Love. Quite the opposite:  they should take it as convincing validation that True Love is alive and well, thank you very much.

Hopelessly in Love? Huh?

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It’s possible that, on occasion, I can get overly semantical about figures of speech, phraseology, etc., but I’ve had something on my mind since falling head over heels into my  relationship Everything: why in the hell did the expression “hopelessly in love” become a fixture in the vernacular of romance?

Well, we’d certainly have to assign some responsibility to rock band Journey, whose song “The Party’s Over (Hopelessly in Love)” hit #2 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart in 1981 and sort of blasted the concept far and wide.

So what’s my beef with the expression? Well, because it’s such a complete negative (is there really any way to construe positivity out of the word “hopeless” ?), quite simply I think it doesn’t apply whatsoever to an Everything relationship–a powerful, heartlifting reality that speaks of unbounded positivity and hope, not hopelessness.

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When you’re experiencing your Everything, one thing you’ll notice is that expectation regarding your partner and relationship is replaced by hope (a topic for another post). And that the purity and open-heartedness of hoping is a consistently amazing, energizing, enlivening feeling. How? Well, because you inhabit a blissful state of ongoing hopefulness that your continued offering of your unique gifts perpetuates your and your partner’s Everything. Again–in a way that’s entirely free not only of expectation, but of need.

And the best way to continue enjoying your Everything is to give fully of yourself and your unique gifts, hoping that they’ll be received and cherished by your soulmate.

So the purest, truest relationship you can aspire to is literally plastered with hopefulness. Constantly. And hopefulness is, of course, the antithesis of hopelessness.

Hopefully someone’ll drop a song called “Hopefully in Love!” that describes an existing, thriving relationship.

Everything Awaits

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Everything, the sum total of your specific, no-compromise desires in a romantic partner and relationship, is not simply going to land in your lap because you made the effort to define and visualize it.

It’s virtually certain that to experience Everything you will have to live up to your utmost best, pushing through to the edge of your authentic expression of yourself, fully present, free, and fearless. Hoping but never expecting. After all, it’s Everything or Nothing, right? Not Everything for Nothing.

In fact, it’s only when you’re fully willing and able to give everything that you’re ready for your Everything.

What Everything Looks Like*

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Up till the time my soulmate, Lien, and I started living together, in addition to our constant daily interactions, every week I emailed her a proposed schedule for our time together for the upcoming week, covering the broad strokes and leaving plenty of room for spontaneity. A fixed component of this email involved a continuously expanding description of our Love.

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I realized that my weekly addition of a new descriptive for the nature of our Love resulted in a pretty awesome, extensive characterization of the type of Love that’s representative of Everything:

Undying, ever-expanding, deepening, soul-stirring, all-encompassing, once-in-a-million-lifetimes, written-in-the-stars, head-over-heels, heartlifting, permasmile-inducing, sparkle-in-the-eyes, tingly-all-over, awe-inspiring, perpetually electrifying, knows-no-limits, mind-blowing, off-the-charts, beyond-belief, perfection-surpassing, elevating and energizing, mutually mesmerizing, constantly steamilicious, spellbinding, laws-of-physics-defying, limitations-of-language-proving, absolutely positively Ahhhhmazing❤️, Schmoopilicious, shout-it-from-the-rooftops, ever-rejuvenating, way-better-than-Nicholas Sparks-novels, ever-yummilicious, Everything/Forever, if-we-could-bottle-it-we’d-be-trillionaires, über-profound, astoundingly magical, pulse-quickening, must-have-more, utterly breathtaking, beyond-all-measure, ever-blissful True Love!

“Seinfeld” fans may have taken notice of “Schmoopilicious” above. It’s my conjoining of the term “Schmoopie” from the absolutely hysterical “Soup Nazi” episode of that phenomenal series with “delicious.”

This is an example of what’s possible when it comes to imagining the Love of your wildest dreams. My experience of Everything, to which the asterisk in the post’s title refers, exceeds my wildest dreams by leaps and bounds. Individual results are likely to vary, but be equally astounding.

I’m constantly humbled and profoundly grateful to be enjoying Everything. And I wholeheartedly encourage you to do the same. Is it really as easy as dreaming it and visualizing it, and being unwilling to settle for anything less? All I can say is that it since it worked for me there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever it shouldn’t work for you.

Know who you are and where you’re going in life (both of these are essential, since the more precisely they’re defined, the better you embody someone else’s Everything), then define your relationship Everything and unfailingly manifest it. That’s the only way to make it happen.

 

 

The Two Basic Reasons Relationships Don’t Result in Everything

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So you’ve met a phenomenal person you’re quite romantically excited about and vice-versa, and things are off to a strong start. While there are infinite possible ways to meet and begin a relationship, once underway there are only two possible eventual outcomes: you either end up together forever, enjoying Everything, or you don’t.

While there can be myriad variations of and details associated with “you don’t”–all those whys and why nots–there really are only two underlying scenarios that can lead to that outcome. From the guy’s perspective, they are:

Wrong girl, Right time

Wrong girl, Wrong time

Completing the spectrum of scenarios that either lead to Everything or don’t, from the standpoint of a guy seeking his Everything, the desired outcome is obviously:

Right girl, Right time

Anyone who thinks in a symmetrical/completist manner may wonder if a possible variation is missing on the non-Everything side, namely Right Girl, Wrong Time–the culturally ingrained “the one who got away.”

There isn’t. Quite simply, if you don’t wind up together in a lifelong relationship characterized by True Love, she was not the Right Girl for you, period. No matter that you were together for a few years, were married, have children together, etc. She is not the one who got away. The Right Girl does not “get away.” In other words, having your Right Girl is fully synonymous with having your relationship Everything. Except in the case of an untimely passing, one cannot have had Everything.

Each of the two non-RR scenarios has variations:

  • In WR, you could realize she’s not your Everything, or she could realize you’re not her Everything. Or both of those things could happen. This could occur soon after the start of a new relationship, or after a lot of water’s gone under the bridge. In either case, you are ready for your Everything—she’s just not it.
  • In WW there are a few permutations, from her being the wrong girl at the wrong time from your perspective to the opposite, to a mix of those.

RR is quite straightforward. It is, simply, Everything in both directions, i.e. True Love. Crack out the Cristal and toast to your mutual good fortune!

Zooming in a bit on the concept of Wrong time, there can obviously be a range of considerations that make the timing component unfavorable. You or she could be dealing with a health issue, an emotionally all-consuming family situation, a period of intense financial difficulty (this characterized my situation for several years, during which, in addition to having scant resources for dating, I also questioned the likelihood of an RR situation arising for me). It also sometimes happens that you meet a potential soulmate while either you or she isn’t entirely unattached, relationship wise.

For guys, it should be fairly evident that the most difficult scenario is the version of Wrong Girl, Right Time where the sense that she’s not the right girl comes from her, not from you. Regardless of the specifics of a given WR situation, though, the result can be a dynamic where you, she, or both of you are biding time, i.e. hanging onto what you can of the relationship while you, she, or both of you keep an eye out for what’s next. We’ll cover the perils of biding time in a future post.

While the WR and WW scenarios are sometimes easily identifiable, or manifest quickly, it can also take time for what you thought/hoped was a RR relationship to resolve into either WR or WW. This can take mere weeks…or decades. Basically, those of us looking for Everything may view new relationships through RR-colored lenses–we so very much want to find our Everything!–especially in cases where we haven’t precisely defined the nature of the Everything we seek.

Similarly, RR can also take time to congeal. In cases where RR becomes the outcome, sometimes you may know it in your heart of hearts from early on but that awareness is not as quick in coming for her, vice-versa, or you both arrive at that conclusion, and not always simultaneously, after being together for a while. There’s no preferred path to RR. Here, as in most things, results trump process.

While the “True Love at first sight” version of RR is clearly the most unabashedly romantic and whimsical, RRs arising from that rather rare circumstance are functionally no different than RRs that take a bit more time to manifest.

Since Everything can’t be forced, it’s best not to over-analyze your relationship to the point where you suck all enjoyment out of the present moment, and/or apply undue pressure on your potential soulmate, yourself, and the situation in general. Because by doing so you run the risk of turning a potential RR into a WR. Instead, be true to yourself and follow your heart. If she’s your Everything, and vice-versa, this approach will yield positive results.

image credit: http://www.sharonebardavid.com

Love in the Time of Smartphones

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Doesn’t take a genius to to realize that the smartphone and related mobile devices (iPads and such) have facilitated countess aspects of existence, in the process becoming indispensably useful for a whole lotta people. Comparisons to sliced bread may be warranted. In terms of things amorous, from looking for a mate to keeping in touch with the love of your life when you’re apart, smartphones and their extensive ecosystem of apps have had a tremendous and, in my opinion, enormously positive impact.

Dating-related apps, from mobile extensions of web-based platforms like match.com, eHarmony, and Plenty of Fish to mobile-only or -centric services like Tinder and Zoosk, make the process of finding a mate convenient, ultra portable, and conceivably “always on.” And once you’ve found that special someone, options for staying connected abound in the mobile universe.

In the early stages of our togetherness, my soulmate, Lien, and I unquestionably leveraged the power, convenience, flexibility, and privacy of our smartphones to accelerate our already quickly deepening relationship.

First and foremost, a general admonishment: don’t use smartphones/apps/etc. as a substitute for more intimate types of communication. Even when–especially when!–what you have to communicate is difficult, emotionally loaded, etc.

Ranking the types of communication, the best is in-person, obviously. Nothing, nothing, nothing can or ever will surpass the connectedness of communicating when you’re physically together. One notch down would be talking on the phone (including video chatting via FaceTime, Skype, etc.), and another step down from phone/video chats would be messaging and other communication-related apps.

Messaging apps, including standard text messaging, are fantastic ways to stay in touch when things like work/etc. keep you apart. Via these handy tools, you can send messages like this to your soulmate:

Hey, Beautiful!  Hope you’re having a great day!  Came across this quote and it made me smile: “Someday, someone might love you in a way you’ve always wanted.  If that someday was yesterday, LEARN; if that someday is tomorrow, HOPE; if that someday is today, CHERISH.”

In fact, I sent the above to Lien. At least I thought I did. Actually, in my first-ever text-messaging misfire, I accidentally sent it to–wait for it–my ex wife! D’oh! I realized my boneheaded mistake the moment I pressed the “send” key in the iPhone’s Messages app. And believe me, for a split second I seriously considered snapping my phone in half to prevent the misfire from landing in my ex’s Messages inbox!

She and I have been divorced for going on twelve years now, and fortunately we have a very amicable relationship that revolves around our wonderful teenage daughter, so I wasn’t deeply concerned that my misfire would have a negative impact on our important post-relationship relationship. But at that point, since it was rather early on in my relationship with Lien, neither my daughter nor my ex were aware I was seriously dating someone.

Fortunately, my ex chose to focus on the humor of the situation. As somewhat of a perfectionist, though, the fact that I’d committed such a blunder didn’t sit well with me. I mean, how fucking hard is it to look to the top of your messaging window to make sure you’re sending your message to the person you want to send it to before you send it? Sheesh.

Yet I’m sure virtually everyone who packs a smartphone has misfired a text message at some point. It’s easy to do. You’re thinking of the person you want to message, open the messaging app, where there’s usually an ongoing thread open already, type out your thought, hit “send,” and–oh, shit!! If you realize your mistake during/immediately after the sending process, that is.  To me, that’s the less, well, bad type of misfire. The other, and in my opinion worse type being when the unintended recipient alerts you to your mistake.

At any rate, I was hellbent on not making that mistake twice, at least not with potentially intensely personal, intimate, sometimes risqué messages. I figured there had to be other messaging apps out there and, after some research and field trials, suggested to Lien that we use only Kik to communicate via IM. I had one contact in Kik, and so did she. The chances of a misfire (assuming, of course, we remembered to open Kik instead of Messages): zero. Nada.

Pretty quickly we realized that the particular app we chose, Kik, (not to sound like an advertorial for Kik) offers some cool features that Apple’s Messages app doesn’t. Like the ability to send finger-drawn sketches, and a vast, searchable database of sendable images and GIFs.

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The visual component offered ways to add humor, tenderness and, occasionally, a perfect non-written way of communicating thoughts and feelings. So what started out as a mechanism to preempt the embarrassment of text-message misfires quickly ended up being an unexpected enhancement to our overall communication, boosting our connectedness when work and our other responsibilities prevented us from being together.

I sent Lien this unabashedly romantic “on bent knee” image a few months into our relationship, and it was received with with the heartlifting reply: I accept! By the way, the willingness to put yourself out there expressively, with something akin to a child’s free spiritedness and unwillingness to see anything other than the desired outcome, is a distinct hallmark of True Love–when that dynamic is happening in both directions, that is.

Lemme tell ya, it’s a pretty freakin’ awesome thing to be in your late 40s and be utterly excited about the process of creating and sending your beloved a heartfelt, finger-drawn sketch professing your genuine feelings. I recommend doing everything you possibly can to be in that position, if you’re not already there.

Needless to say, I did a figurative quintuple backflip when, shortly after I’d sent her the “on bent knee” sketch and she accepted my proffered heart, she sent me this “holding hands” sketch. It resonated for me on many levels, including the detail of the yellow dress, as she was wearing and looked absolutely stellar in a fantastic yellow dress the very first time we saw each other. 

Kik works well for me and Lien, but there are lots of other apps like it out there, including but hardly limited to What’s App, Viber, WeChat, Skype, ooVoo, and MessageMe.

Some of these offer free voice chatting in addition to instant messaging, synchronization with computers, which is a boon for anyone who spends a good chunk of the day on a computer and does better typing on a full-size keyboard than the tiny digital tiles comprising most smartphone keypads these days. Each of these apps has has its own look, feel, and twists on basic functionality.

Beyond the spectrum of apps that are more related to identifying a mate and facilitating your relationship via enhanced ways to communicate directly, there are turn-based asynchronous games like Words With Friends, Draw Something, Letterpress, SongPop, and more that provide fun and competition-oriented ways to stay connected.

I feel this post would be incomplete if I didn’t mention what some might consider the negative side of the enhanced connectedness afforded by smartphones, namely the facilitation of what I’ll call extra-relationship romantic/sexual activities. While there’s no doubt that folks can and do use smartphones and other mobile devices in ways that cause distress for their wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc., my feeling is that it’s wrongheaded to label these activities inherently “bad.” After all, it’s not the smartphone that caused whatever problems a given person has in their relationship that makes them look outside of it for…whatever it is they’re not getting from said relationship, is it?

And, ultimately, since the potential for a relationship characterized by infidelity to represent Everything to both parties is slight, in one sense technology that could expedite the end of a non-Everything relationship and afford both parties another shot at finding their respective Everythings with other people ultimately can only be considered beneficial.

Bottom line: smartphones and a profusion of apps, many if not most available for free, are kick-ass tools to help you connect with that special someone and enhance your togetherness as your relationship develops and flourishes. If you’re dating with an eye toward finding your relationship Everything–or if you’re fortunate enough to be enjoying your Everything–and don’t yet have a smartphone, definitely consider getting one.  If you’ve got one already, I wholeheartedly encourage you to look into apps that could empower you in your quest and enrich your connectedness.

Hard to see how you and your future (our current) beloved wouldn’t benefit.

 

Everything or Nothing

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Romantic relationships come in infinite forms, comprised of a multiplicity of attributes, including but hardly limited to degrees of emotional intimacy, love, friendship, trust, physical intimacy, loyalty, sexual attraction, respect, shared interests, common goals, honesty, fun, and many more.

Regardless of the specific ingredients, the overall spectrum of the quality of relationships, from bad to good, goes from unhealthy/dysfunctional–of which there are also myriad varieties–to True Love, that most rarified, desired, vaunted form of romantic connectedness that joins two people in a way that simultaneously blurs the line between them yet bolsters them individually, that only gets more exciting, deeper, and more heartlifting, more amazing over time. And while there are varying degrees of being in a romantic relationship there are really only two possible statuses: in one or not in one.

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If you believe that True Love is not only possible, but possible for you–if it’s something you want insist on having in your life, then there’s only one route to take: Everything or Nothing. Defining what and who you want as your ideal romantic partner and refusing to compromise is the only way to get to Everything. Concepts like “enough” or “good enough” need not apply, as they won’t get you there. Equally important: knowing who you are and being willing to offer Everything fearlessly and authentically.

There’s long been a movement out there in the Self-Actualization universe revolving around the concept of learning to want what you have. Outside of the one relationship scenario where this strategy makes sense, namely the case of not having previously grasped that what/who you have actually does represent your Everything, so you come to the realization that you actually already do have exactly what you want, actively accepting less is a surefire pathway to disappointment. Granted, it may take years, even decades, for the realization that your relationship isn’t an Everything relationship to set in, but given how brief our time is, is spending any more of it than necessary in a relationship that you know is somehow lacking really the best approach? (this topic will be further explored in an upcoming post)  I suppose that depends on your priorities and your sense of what you deserve.

My pathway to my relationship Everything is an interesting and circuitous one. It involved a late start with respect to sex (virginity lost junior year of college), a first love that led to marriage, then parenthood quickly followed by divorce. Then a near-miss with marriage to the wrong woman. Followed by a more-than-five-year period of dating and not dating, that chunk of time most notable for my having only at the very end of it defined who it is that I want as a romantic partner. Sometimes I look back in amazement that I dated sporadically for over five years without having defined who and what I wanted in terms of a woman and a relationship!

In retrospect it’s absolutely no surprise to me that I didn’t find my relationship Everything until after I–duh!–defined it. Then, probably about six months later, a woman walked into my life who embodied it to a tee. She and I now reflect on the two chance encounters that set in motion our eventual togetherness, how strong and heartlifting our connection was from the very beginning. Strong enough to power us through complicated and at times trying circumstances. As I write this post we’ve been together for eighteen months, and our connection continues to grow and deepen, our excitement about being with each other, our wonder, sense of awe, and gratitude about having found each other, continues to go only one way: up. And that’s the only way it will go, forever. About that neither of us have any doubt.

The Love of My Life, Lien, and I are living proof that it’s possible to have your relationship Everything. If you’re not in a relationship and feel the beck and call of True Love, sensing in your heart that it’s out there for you, the first step is to define who you are, and the next is to define who and what you want, what you deserve, romantically speaking. Then think about the latter (who/what) nonstop. Visualize it, dream it, manifest it. And trust that it will happen. Your unwavering conviction and certainty will ensure that it does. Then be willing to give Everything, knowing that it’s the contentedness and bliss associated with that–the giving–that will create the environment for your partner to do the same, each of you offering your unique gifts in a selfless, fearless way, without expectation of any return or reciprocation. It’s this that nourishes True Love, that allows it to be ever expanding, ever deepening,

If you’re in a relationship and have come to the realization that your partner and the situation do not represent an Everything dynamic, and never will, you have to decide whether or not following your heart, pursuing and realizing Everything, will ultimately be the rising tide that lifts all proverbial boats (like your responsibility to your kid/s, for example).

Basically, reduced to its essence, it becomes a choice between hope and fear. How do you want to live your life? You can fear that your decisions will have negative ramifications for you and those you love, or fully believe, to the deepest part of your core, that hope, specifically the hope for penultimate Love, will lead you to exactly that, and touch every part of your life in amazing ways.

To me, it’s a no brainer. And it’s that positivity, that unwavering certainty that Everything is possible, that compels me to write about what I’ve been lucky enough to experience, hoping that doing so might in some way help others realize their Everything.

image source:  debretts.com

Discussing Past Relationships

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While we all have the desire to be attractive to the opposite sex (those of us who are heterosexual, that is), and for members of the opposite sex to know that we are, in fact, attractive to their kind, be sensitive to how the words you’re using to describe your exes, what about them appealed to you, how you felt about them, etc. may be received by your partner.

As a guy, clearly it’s an ego stroke (self-applied) for a drop-dead-gorgeous woman you’re dating to register the fact that you were previously involved with another attractive woman (or women). On one level this can be a positive, even productive bit of knowledge, since to a certain extent it can be validating of her attraction to you. But don’t overdo it. Also—and it hopefully goes without saying—specific mentions of sex you had in the past could turn into a minefield you may find yourself trapped in for a while.

At a certain point in time in the development of a relationship characterized by True Love, any topic can be discussed openly, productively and in a way that further fortifies your connectedness, but even in cases of True Love, the establishment of a safe, loving, accepting, honest environment wherein both parties are at liberty to discuss anything typically doesn’t happen overnight.

image via savorhomeblog.com

image via savorhomeblog.com

Does this imply that you should plead the 5th if asked about past relationships? Absolutely not. Just be mindful of the possibility that, although it’s not entirely rational and is typically sub/unconscious, a woman you’re getting serious about may—understandably, as she is, after all, a complex emotional being—on some levels want to believe that she’s the only woman who’s ever mattered to you, whom you’ve loved, etc.

Additionally, the more praiseworthy you are of your exes, in whatever regard, the greater the chance that she will wonder about the sincerity of your praise for her in those areas…or your lack of praise in those areas. Or whether your attention might be diverted by someone else who’s strong in those areas.

Likewise, we guys can be susceptible to these perfectly natural feelings and insecurities. After all, we want to be special, to stand head and shoulders above those who came before us and be so perfect for our prospective soulmate that there’s no chance she’d ever be open to the temptations of another guy.

But I submit to you that wishing your beloved had never loved anyone before she loved you, or that she never had sex before you, or climaxed with another guy—or a boundless number of other actions/thoughts/feelings that are important to you—is entirely and utterly counterproductive.

While I’m not saying you should run out and have a tee shirt made emblazoned with “Ask me about the love of my life’s ‘pre-me’ orgies!” the reality is that it is precisely her individual experiences, and yours, that brought you together so powerfully. Had one thing been different for her, or for you, or even had they happened in a different order, it’s probable that you wouldn’t have connected the way you did.

Think about that for a moment.

So rather than harbor any negative feelings or insecurities about her past, you should (privately—no tee shirts!) be thankful for and genuinely celebrate it. And while the reverse also obviously applies, again, use good judgment and sensitivity when covering this type of potentially loaded ground, especially when your relationship is “early days.”