Relation Advices Tips

Can you recognize the major red flag of dating? Are you able to discern who you can trust and who you cannot? How can you tell right away that a relationship is wrong for you?

The major red flag indicating future relationship failure is a broken agreement.

As a columnist, I hear from everyone from the heart broken to the hopeful, asking what they can do to make a relationship work. Here is a recent question:

I have met someone I care about but she makes me nervous about one thing. She never does what she says she will do. At least once or twice a week, she will say she is going to look for a new job, or clean up the house, or fix dinner, but she never does any of these things. If I ask her about it, she gets very angry. What can I do to help her?

Signed,

Needs Help

Dear Needs,

Your last sentence should read, “What can I do to help her so I won’t have to notice that she cannot be trusted?”

Alarm bells should be going off for you, and you are looking for ways to help her? You need to help yourself to a place of greater self worth. If you are with someone who does not keep their agreements, what do you really have? You are clinging to the illusion of a relationship and what you have in store for you is the potential of long term heartache.

What can you do for her? Set a healthy example of how to take good care of yourself by getting some counseling. Give her the name and number of someone to call for help, if you want to feel you have made an effort to contribute to her well-being, but move away from each other until you have established a firm foundation of self esteem.

Hold strong to this central point: you deserve someone wonderful whom you can trust.

Start by trusting yourself:

* Trust that you are going to do everything you need to do to get a counselor who will help you understand what you want in life and how to find it.

* Trust that you have an issue larger than a girlfriend who will not keep her agreements.

* Trust that if you go for the learning and growth that you need to do here, this incident will actually have been a gift towards your deeper happiness.

* And finally, trust yourself to have the courage to stick with this until you have worked it through.

Good luck to you both.

Tonja

The Savvy Dating Coach

Visit http://www.tonjaweimer.com or http://www.singlesdatingtips.com for more tips, skills, and insight on dating, relationships, singles, and love. Subscribe to our F*ree Savvy Dating Newsletter from master single’s coach, life coach, and syndicated columnist, Tonja Weimer. Copyright 2006, Tonja Weimer. (Please note source if reprinting this article.)

Tags: dating, Love, Men, red flags, relationships, singles, trust, Womendating, Love, Men, red flags, relationships, singles, trust, Women

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There are some events in life that we just never forget, although sometimes we wish we could. Those are the memorable events that become forever forged in our psyche, only to come back from the recesses of our mind reminding us that we are human and we are made up of a lifetime of experiences.

As a counselor in a junior high school, dealing with adolescents and first love was always an experience for me. I will never forget the day that one of my young female students knocked at my door, tears welling up in her eyes, lips quivering, fighting back her tears. After a moment of composure she told me that her boyfriend finally kissed her and it was awful. “He drooled on me”, she said with utter disgust. “Ugh”, she moaned. I had a moment of compassion for the poor guy thinking that he probably didn’t mean to drool at this most inopportune moment, but my attention went back to this young lady, hopes dashed, fantasy ruined. Would she ever kiss anyone else again?

It makes me wonder about the fantasies that we all have and sometimes share. We build up the fantasy of a perfect stranger to a crescendo that sometimes plummets into an abyss of disappointment. In other words, the build up leads to the let down.

So how do we sustain the fantasy? How can we be assured that the perfect stranger, who we met online or on a blind date or through a friend, is going to be, at least, passable when it comes to the first kiss. Will it be magic? Will it set off the fireworks that we all anxiously wait for? Will they drool?

I remember my first kiss. I was at a Boy Scout camp. I spent the summer there with my family. The boys were across the lake. Except one night they were allowed to come to our side. It happened. Just like that on a dark road, flashlights in hand, one of the scouts kissed me. My head was spinning. I was young, naive, and confused. When I got back to the cabin I stared at my lips in the mirror to make sure that there were no tell-tale signs. My mother would kill me, I thought. Forty-five years later, I remember that moment as if it were frozen in time.

The build up is a big part of growing up and no matter what age you are it remains an important beginning to a relationship. The excitement, the tension, and the fantasy all become the background music for the enchanted journey. The first kiss can seal the deal or it can be a sign to say goodnight and quickly move on.

The first kiss is one of the many lifetime experiences that will stay with you and come back to remind you that chemistry does count. Remember yours?

JJR NY ©

Janet J. Reiss, LCSW, is licensed as a clinical social worker in New York. As a clinician Janet works with children, adolescents, and adults in helping them work through issues that complicate their day-to-day living. Communication, relationships, substance abuse problems and other addictions, psychiatric problems, and family issues are areas that are explored. When Janet is not working as a Clinical Manager or in her private practice she is working on her website http://www.lookingforlove.com which is an online dating directory and marketplace for adult singles.

Tags: dating, looking for love, Love, mature datingdating, looking for love, Love, mature dating

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