Many people who come to my office for dating issues have parents who have a great relationship. Love, stability, the same goals, all the makings of a great partnership. These clients are doing everything they learned from Mom and Dad, so why are they struggling with dating?
These clients have learned by watching Mom and Dad that the way you make a relationship work is that you don’t quit, you always give the other person the benefit of the doubt, and you always ask how YOU can help make the relationship better instead of blaming the other person. While these are great relationship skills in the context of a healthy relationship, there is a catch: the only way these skills really work is if BOTH people in the partnership are doing that and being respectful of the relationship, and if both people in the relationship are actually a good fit in terms of shared life and relationship goals. Having observed a binary “all in, never quit” view of commitment that worked really well for their parents, some singles end up with many great relationship skills, except one skill that is critical for singles: knowing when to walk away.
When to Walk Away?
In some cases, walking away doesn’t cross clients’ minds because there’s nothing glaringly wrong with their relationship. I hear that their partner may seem ambivalent about long term commitment. Or that the partner may like the idea of being in a relationship right now, but the future they see for themselves is quite different than my client’s. For others, the red flags are more visible. The partner may have a substance abuse problem, be perpetually unemployed, or have another issue that makes them unable to actually work towards marriage. In other situations, because the client has invested so much time in the relationship already, they seem to just be stuck by inertia. Or maybe they are struggling to leave because they still love their partner and know that their partner loves them too; even though deep down they realize that love alone isn’t enough to sustain a lifetime of romantic, legal, and financial partnership.
These singles are displaying a level of commitment that is appropriate for a marriage, even though they are not actually married. They often say they fear feeling like they’ve failed or been immature if they walk away. They feel guilty for even privately seeing me to reevaluate their situation. What I try to do is reframe it for them: When you are single, ending a relationship with the wrong person is a smart move that requires maturity and integrity. It’s a success. It ultimately helps you get where you want to go.
How to Stay ABLE to Walk Away
Many clients know intellectually that they are with the wrong person, but they’ve somehow gotten “in too deep” and it feels unbearable to walk away. They allowed their genuine desire for a serious relationship go a little haywire in the early/mid stages of dating, leading to a marital-type of emotional commitment before they had even actually gotten engaged.
So how do you keep yourself in the appropriate “evaluting mode” rather than “married mode” when you’re single and have met someone who excites your sense of future possibility? You can start by ensuring you have the right mindset from the very beginning. My book, Dr. Chloe’s 10 Commandments of Dating, discusses this in detail, but the special selection of three tips below can help set you up for success if you tend to “play house” before it’s really the right time to do so:
Don’t become “exclusive by default”. When you are single and you finally meet someone that you have a strong pull towards, it’s natural to suddenly feel a dip in your desire to make time for new first dates. But you should deliberately continue to meet and date other people, especially when you’ve just met someone new who excites you. By definition, have no idea if this NEW person has the ability to sustain a long-term relationship. Don’t “commit by default” where you stop seeing others just because you’re so smitten with one person that you suddenly become closed off to other possibilities before you even really know much about your new crush.
2. Don’t agree to exclusivity unless it’s future-oriented. Many singles with happily married parents think they’re being appropriately cautious in romance because they wait till they’re monogamous before having sex-- but they forget to understand WHY the person wants to be monogamous: they assume the interest in monogamy is because the person is on the same “dating for marriage” track as they are. They don’t understand that many men want to have a monogamous sexual relationship because it’s a great way to enjoy closeness and intimacy, yet they do not actually share a desire for marriage anytime even relatively soon; they basically just want to “go steady”. If someone tells you they want to have sex and be monogamous for a “serious relationship” and you have a desire for a marriage proposal sometime in the next 1-2 years, ask them what exactly they mean by “a serious relationship”. If the person is unable or unwilling to articulate a reason for sex and exclusivity beyond “I just really like you and I think maybe this could go somewhere” yet they can’t actually explain what “going somewhere” would mean beyond “you know, something... um, serious”, think twice about whether you want to become physically and emotionally vulnerable to that person by having sex and closing yourself off to other dating options. A nice compromise might be to keep seeing the person, but tell them you’d rather “take it slow” and hold off on sex while you keep dating other people and get to know each other a bit more over time.
3. Understand the difference between saying and doing. Know the difference between being saying you want a long-term committed relationship and actually having the maturity to create one. Many people will say with great sincerity that they want to get married someday. They really do mean it when they say it, just like I “mean it” when I say I’m going to start going to the gym more often-- I may mean it in the moment, and I may even genuinely believe I’ll do it; but will I actually follow through? Saying all the right “relationship things” in the early stages of dating is not indicative that a person is actually able to sustain the relationship that they’re expressing a wish to have “eventually”. Hold onto your heart a bit longer and get to know the person before you start behaving as if there is a genuine potential for the future.
It may sound cold to hold back a little, keep dating others even when you think you may have met “the one”, and basically take everything a person says with a grain of salt in the beginning, but learning to have good boundaries will actually help you to stay more open for when the right person comes along. People who open up and commit too soon often get hurt and become jaded over time; and they tend to waste precious years with the wrong person-- so do yourself and your future spouse a favor by learning to hold onto your heart till the right person comes along. For more dating advice from Dr. Chloe take a look at The 10 Commandments of Dating, available on Amazon.com.