Relationships

Many of us have been hurt in the past. But should your past dictate future romantic relationships?

There are many things to consider when you're not sure if you can trust your current boyfriend or girlfriend. Following are some questions you can ask yourself to help you see things more clearly.

How well do you communicate with each other? Usually, a breakdown in communication is the root of the problem, so my first suggestion is always to try and talk it out. If you have a problem or issue, let your partner know. If you don't address problems, they can't get resolved. So, how can you expect things to change?

Is your partner available? By this I mean emotionally available. Does he make promises he doesn't keep? Does he act distant with you? Does he try and avoid real intimacy and a deeper relationship? Observe his behavior instead of his words. Actions are the real indicator of intentions.

Do you respect each other? Maybe you have great chemistry, but does that mean the relationship is a keeper? Not necessarily. If she doesn't treat you or your concerns with respect and is unwilling to discuss them, there is a problem. Trust is based on mutual respect.

Are you afraid of getting hurt again? Sometimes we don't realize where we are blocked in our own relationships. If someone violated your trust in the past, is this preventing you from moving forward with other relationships? If so, it's time to ask yourself if you are willing to take risks. Love is all about taking chances and placing trust in another person. If you aren't willing to do this, you can't build trust within a relationship.

Let's say you're at a point in your life when you're really beginning to know what you want. Maybe you've decided you definitely want children; maybe you definitely don't. Perhaps you've decided that while you do want a relationship, you'll never want to sign a marriage certificate. The question is, how much of this do you reveal when you're beginning a new relationship?

No one wants to scare off a prospective date right off the bat – you've barely met. Discussing marriage, children and other life decisions might seem a little overwhelming on the first date, or in your profile. It's sort of a cliché, isn't it – being interviewed more as a potential genetic donor than as a friend? After all, a relationship with another person is not just a means to an end, and that should be absolutely clear.

On the other hand, there's one thing you absolutely should not do: lie. If you think the man you're dating wants children, and you don't think you'll ever want them, under no circumstances should you string him along because you think he might change his mind later. Do you think you'll be changing yours? Even if lying leads to instant gratification, a relationship based on dishonesty does not have a firm foundation. Eventually it will end, and probably end badly.

So when should those tricky subjects come up? Hopefully, as naturally as possible. One of the benefits of online dating profiles is that they often contain sidebars specifically for the sort of information that you don't want to waste time explaining in the profile – whether you've been divorced, or smoke, or want children, or have pets. If your issue isn't already addressed, and it's something that would directly affect your relationship, get to it before it becomes a problem, but not in a laundry-list fashion on a first date.

Remember, though, to address it in a positive way and not a negative one, just as you would in a profile. Negative: “Let's get one thing straight – I never want a rugrat, so if that's too much for you to handle, there's the door.” Positive: “I've been able to do so many things with my life because I'm child-free – I've really decided this is the right choice for me.”

Ideally, you've gotten a good idea whether your date will be receptive to your life decisions before you've even met. If time goes on, however, and there's just never a good way to bring it up, eventually you'll have to bite the bullet. Honesty is indeed the best policy, and at any rate, don't you want a partner who's on board with the real you?

Recently a friend of mine was feeling down about herself. I asked her what was wrong.

“Well,” she said with a sigh, “I just feel like I'm getting closer to 40, and I don't have a family or a career to show for it.”

“Listen,” I said. “Do you think of all the people in the country, the vast majority of them are doctor, lawyers, and actors? Do you think they all have exciting careers? And of the people who have been at the same job for twenty years, how many of them really enjoy it, and how many have simply kept it due to convenience?”

“Well, true,” she said. “But I don't have a family, either.”

“You've been caring for family members who needed your help,” I said. “There's no shame in that.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “but I have no guarantee that anyone else will understand.”

“What if someone new started work tomorrow, and she was a sixty-year-old widow who had been a housewife all this time? What if she had no idea how to pay bills, and had just learned to drive? Would you judge her, make fun of her?”

“Well, no,” my friend said, startled.

“So why do you judge yourself more harshly than others?”

My friend is not unique. It's something we all do, really. While we might be perfectly understanding of the circumstances that have led others to where they are today, we hold ourselves to a higher standard. Often our overinflated expectations have less to do with our own happiness, and more to do with what we think we should be doing, or what we think others expect of us.

In reality, those “others” would probably be happy if we are, just as you would delight in the happiness of your friends and family. So as you meet people, from an online dating site or otherwise, hold your head up high! You have nothing to apologize for, and the universe does not have a schedule that you should be following. Before you fret over what the world is thinking, remember: hardly anyone is more judgmental of you than yourself.

As a child reading literature in school, I felt tragedies were the most frustrating of all, because the problem often seems so simple: communication. More than a few Shakespearean tragedies come to mind. Othello gets mad at his wife and won't talk to her about it – several people wind up dead. Romeo and Juliet won't just defy their parents, and instead get too clever for their little pre-teen minds – several people wind up dead. When you're reading a play or watching a movie, watching events unfold, it's easy to think, “If they would just talk to each other honestly, this problem could be averted.” But can real, modern relationships really be as simple as that?

In short, yes. Most of the problems of couples I know all come back to communication. This doesn't just apply to romantic couples, by the way; roommates, best friends, family members all seem to have the same problems. “I don't like it when Fred leaves his dirty dishes out on the counter. I was raised to believe it's disrespectful to the living space,” I'll hear. “And have you explained this to Fred?” I'll ask. “Well, no,” the girl might say. “I've asked him not to leave his dishes out – shouldn't that be enough?” Well, maybe, but a little extra context and explanation might have driven the importance of the request home to poor Fred.

When it comes to two compatible people, there's very little that can't be solved with communication. It's understandable that there might be misunderstandings from time to time; after all, two people with completely separate histories and habits might clash over day-to-day routines. And, of course, no one is perfect; sometimes a person is simply inconsiderate and doesn't think to call when she's late, or maybe someone is feeling lazy and doesn't want to clear up the dishes. Humans aren't robots, and really that fact makes it all the more important to keep the lines of communication open, so resentment doesn't build.

As you go out into the dating world and meet new people, you'll be forging brand-new relationships, whether they wind up as friendship or something more romantic. Wouldn't it be nice to start off these relationships on the right foot? Wouldn't it be wonderful to say, “We've been open and honest with each other from the very beginning”? You have a chance to avoid a communication problem before it even begins. To pass up such an opportunity would, indeed, be a tragedy.

Today, we think differently about online dating than we used to. Ocassionally you'll run into people who still have antiquated ideas about some shady person who doesn't look at all like their picture, but on the whole, that's changing, and many people know it. But when we contemplate the social life of the Internet, it's not really that much of a surprise.

Think back, to the last time flannel was in: the early 1990's. The Internet was really beginning to take off, an unexplored frontier, and for many, the appeal socially was that you were totally anonymous. You were expected to provide your own age, physical description and gender to strangers who couldn't confirm or deny. If you struck up a friendship, it was totally based on the words and online actions of your persona.

Some of these friendships carried over into real-life relationships, with mixed results. For one thing, in person there does have to be some level of chemistry; sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. For another, the level of anonymity actually inspired others to behave differently than they would when they met their friends in person. In essence, it's hard to fall in love in real life with someone based entirely on “their personality” when even their personality is different in person. For some, starting out anonymous might have worked, but it ultimately created many additional problems.

Now flash forward nearly 20 years, to the present. People often have tons of real-life, accurate information about themselves all over the Internet. There's Facebook, where people can tag you in less-than-flattering photos; Twitter, where you can check in from real-world locations; some forums are even contemplating switching from aliases to real first and last names. Since we're so accustomed to having so much information already out there, it's not as big of a deal to continue the honesty as we're constructing dating profiles. Some people even get lazy and copy their profile information over from other social networking sites (with mixed results; you do want to make a nice first impression in a dating profile, after all).

Every situation has pros and cons; it's great that you now have a better chance of getting what you see from an online dating profile, but what are the cons? Well, with all this information out there, we have to still think of our safety. Just as you wouldn't tell a random stranger on the subway where you work and which Starbucks you head to alone every evening, you might not want to add someone you've just met on a dating site to your Facebook, where they could get than information and more.

Still, I feel the online dating world is a brighter, happier place today and getting better all the time. So next time someone questions you about joining a dating site, you can tell them to get with the times – the frontier is becoming settled.

Imagine that somehow, a clone was created of you. This clone is your same exact age, and it has memory of all the same experiences you have had. And, naturally, the clone has all of the same likes and dislikes and opinions you have too. What might a conversation about you and your clone sound like?

“Don't you love this movie?”
“Yeah, I totally love that movie, especially part X.”
“Yeah, part X is great.”
(Silence.)

It might be fun to do nothing but agree at first, but it gets old really quickly. Whether we like to admit it or not, human beings thrive on conflict. That's why our movies and novels aren't about people sitting around talking about how great their lives are. Some might ultimately want a happy ending, but everyone wants to be thrilled along the way. And that means conflict.

Why, then, when we're searching on an online dating site, would we only contact those people who seem to be as close to clones as we can manage?

It's completely understandable that we would want to meet someone with whom we have some things in common; it might help to get conversations started. But I recently met someone who was an art major, and he told me he would mentally dismiss potential dates immediately if they weren't familiar with some obscure artists. Yes, that's right: he expected his dates to be so knowledgeable in art that they could potentially have a degree in it. His reasoning? “Well, a guy's got to have his standards.”

Here's a thought: if his date seemed interested in art, why couldn't he teach her a bit about it? Why should she have to arrive a ready-made clone? And here's an even more novel thought: what could he learn from her?

When you're trying to find a romantic match, you're also trying to find a friend. Romantic chemistry is good, but friends also need to be able to have conversations. It's just as easy to talk about what you don't have in common as what you do (provided the topics aren't the kind that raise blood pressure, and maybe even that's not so bad in moderation).

The next time you peruse online profiles or prepare to go on your first date, keep an open mind. Who knows what you might learn, or discuss? Do you want a clone, or a conversation?