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Title: The Dating Scene - Signs of a Promising Relationship Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2005 by Margaret Paul URL: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 848 Category: Relationships

The Dating Scene - Signs of a Promising Relationship By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Celine was just starting to date again after a difficult breakup. She was feeling anxious because she didn’t want to go through another unhappy relationship, but she didn’t trust herself to make good choices. She sought my help in learning how to discern a promising relationship from one that is bound to fail.

In Celine’s last relationship, she had been pulled in by Gary’s ardent pursuit of her. She had wanted to go slower but didn’t listen to herself. Instead, she gave herself up to Gary’s attention and compliments.

“Celine, my experience with men who come on strong right away is that they are often controlling and needy. Is that what happened with Gary?”

“Yes. He seemed so loving and open at beginning, but once we were in a committed relationship, he started to pull on me for time and attention. He became critical and angry and petulant when I didn’t give him what he wanted. How could I have known all this at beginning? What should I look for now that I’m dating again?” Celine had gone on one date with a man named Mark. After this first date, Mark emailed her, saying that he wanted to spend a lot of time with her and go on a trip with her.

“Shades of Gary,” she said. “This is a red flag, right?”

Celine and I explored some of red flags as well as some of signs of a promising relationship.

SOME RED FLAGS

• Comes on strong at beginning of relationship.

• Becomes angry, critical or withdrawn if you say no.

• Becomes logical and tries to talk you out of your feelings or your experience. Tries to make you feel that you are wrong for your feelings or your position.

• Talks on and on about himself or herself and doesn’t ask you much about you, or is uninterested when you do talk about yourself.

• An older man or woman who has never been married and has been in a series of broken relationships.

• Numerous broken marriages.

• Has an abusive background and has not had therapy.

• Has abandoned his or her children.

• Not open to learning from relationship conflict.

As a being of thought, your dominant mental attitude will determine your condition in life. It will also be gauge of your knowledge and measures of your attainment. The so-called limitations of your nature are boundary lines of your thoughts; they are self-erected fences, and can be drawn to a narrower circle, extended to a wider, or be allowed to remain. You are thinker of your thoughts and as such you are maker of yourself and condition. Thought is causal and creative, and appears in your character and life in form of results. There are no accidents in your life. Both its harmonies and antagonisms are responsive echoes of your thoughts. A man thinks, and his life appears.

If your dominant mental attitude is peaceable and lovable, bliss and blessedness will follow you; if it be resistant and hateful, trouble and distress will cloud your pathway. Out of ill-will will come grief and disaster; out of good will, healing and reparation. You imagine your circumstances as being separate from yourself, but they are intimately related to your thought world. Nothing appears without an adequate cause. Everything that happens is just. Nothing is fated, everything is formed.

As you think, you travel; as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. You cannot escape result of your thoughts, but you can endure and learn, can accept and be glad.

You will always come to place where your love (your most abiding and intense thought) can receive its measure of gratification. If your love be base, you will come to a base place; if it be beautiful, you will come to a beautiful place.