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First published in 1997 in the United States by HarperCollins
First published in 1997 in the United Kingdom by Vermilion
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2003 by Vermilion, an imprint of Ebury Press
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ISBN 9780091887674 (from January 2007)
ISBN 0091887674
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
1 Mars and Venus on a Date
2 Finding the Right Person for You
3 Stage One: Attraction
4 Stage Two: Uncertainty
5 Stage Three: Exclusivity
6 Stage Four: Intimacy
7 Stage Five: Engagement
8 Making It Through the Five Stages
9 When the Clock Keeps Ticking and He’s Not Wearing a Watch
10 Men Are Like Blowtorches, Women Are Like Ovens
11 The Dynamics of Male and Female Desire
12 Men Pursue and Women Flirt
13 Acknowledge Men and Adore Women
14 Men Advertise and Women Share
15 Why Men Don’t Call
16 To Call or Not to Call
17 Men Love a Woman with a Smile
18 Women Love a Man with a Plan
19 Why Some Women Remain Single
20 Where to Find Your Soul Mate
21 101 Places to Meet Your Soul Mate
22 And They Lived Happily Ever After
Acknowledgments
Copyright
John Gray is a psychologist and bestselling author of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. He is a popular and frequent guest on TV and radio, including Oprah's dynamic Change Your Life TV team.
Another bestseller from John Gray, the world’s most famous relationship counsellor.
From the first look and first date to first fight, breaking up and making up, the world of dating can be a minefield for the unprepared. International relationship guru John Gray turns his expertise to the language and behaviour of dating couples.
How should you act on your first date?
How can you tell if your partner means what he says?
Is this love or just lust at first sight?
John Gray helps both men and women play the dating game with its complex rules of etiquette and behaviour, and explains how to separate fact from fantasy in conversation, body language and future expectations. He will also help new couples figure out whether they are partners for life or just enjoying a brief encounter.
His humourous insight and practical advice will help men and women alike to reach closer understanding, love and commitment, and have fun on the way!
I thank my wife, Bonnie, for once again sharing the journey of developing a new book. Parts of this book are directly inspired by the beginning of our relationship when we moved through the five stages of dating.
I thank our three daughters, Shannon, Juliet, and Lauren, for their continued love and for their insight and brilliant feedback regarding many of the ideas in this book. A special thanks to Shannon for managing my office while I wrote this book.
I thank the following family members and friends for their suggestions and valuable feedback to the ideas in this book: my mother Virginia Gray; my brothers David, William, Robert, and Tom Gray; my sister Virginia Gray; Robert and Karen Josephson; Susan and Michael Najarian; Renee Swisko; Ian and Elley Coren; Trudy Green; Martin and Josie Brown; Stan Sinberg; JoAnne LaMarca; Bart and Merril Berens; Reggie and Andrea Henkart; Rami El Batrawi; Sandra Weinstein; Bill Sy; Robert Beaudry; Jim and Anna Kennedy; Alan and Barbara Garber; and Clifford McGuire.
I thank my agent, Patti Breitman, who has always been there at every step of this book, and I thank my international agent, Linda Michaels, for getting my books published around the world in over forty languages.
I thank my editor Diane Reverand, for her expert feedback, direction, and advice. I also thank Laura Leonard, Meaghan Dowling, David Flora, and the other incredible staff members at HarperCollins for their responsiveness to my needs. I could not ask for a better publisher.
I thank the thousands of individuals and couples who have taken the time to share with me their insights and stories about being single and getting married.
I thank Bonnie Solow, Robert Geller, and Daryn Roven for their assistance in producing the audio version of the book as well as Anne Gaudinier and the other staff members of HarperAudio.
In past generations, the challenge of dating was different. Men and woman wanted a partner who could fulfill their basic needs for security and survival. Women looked for a strong man who would be a good provider; men searched for a nurturing woman to make a home. This courting dynamic, which has been in place for thousands of years, has suddenly changed.
The new challenge of dating is to find a partner who not only will be supportive of our physical needs for survival and security but will support our emotional, mental, and spiritual needs as well. Today we want more from our relationships. Millions of men and women around the world are searching for a soul mate to experience lasting love, happiness, and romance.
It is no longer enough to just find someone who is willing to marry us, we want partners who will love us more as they get to know us: we want to live happily ever after. To find and recognize partners who can fulfill our new needs for increased intimacy, good communication, and a great love life, we need to update our dating skills.
Even if by good fortune you find a soul mate, without the right dating skills, you may not recognize him or her and get married. Eighteen years ago I was lucky enough to meet my soul mate but not skilled enough to make the relationship work. Bonnie and I dated for about a year and half. Although we loved each other very much, we didn’t get married.
We broke up and went our separate ways. Four years later, we got back together. This time, because we dated differently, we eventually got married and have lived happily ever after. By creating the right conditions for love to grow, our hearts opened, and we experienced a “soul love,” which “loves no matter what.” Discovering this unconditional love was the result of first creating the right conditions for love to grow.
The first time we dated, we eventually knew we loved each others, but not enough to get married. We hadn’t yet felt the inner knowing that comes when the right conditions are satisfied. Without an updated approach to dating and relationships, we mistakenly concluded that we were not right for each other.
The second time we dated, with a new understanding of how men and women are different, we were able to make our relationship work. As we grew together in love, our hearts opened. It was then that we were able to experience unconditional love for each other. We were soul mates. With this confidence I proposed marriage and she was able to accept.
As a relationship counselor, I began sharing these new insights in counseling sessions and in my seminars. The results were dramatic and immediate. With this new understanding of how men and women think and feel differently, couples were able to improve communication and start getting what they wanted in their relationships. With renewed hope, they were able to find a deeper love in their hearts, heal and release the old resentments that may have closed their hearts, and rekindle the fires of romance and passion.
Encouraged by these practical benefits in my own marriage and in the lives of my clients and seminar participants, I went on to write Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which has now sold more than ten million copies worldwide. A bestseller in more than forty languages, it has helped men and women around the world.
My office continues to receive more than three hundred calls and letters a day from people who have greatly benefited from the book and workshops. Besides the seminars that I personally teach each month, hundreds more Mars/Venus workshops are being given around the world by trained Mars/Venus facilitators. While this simple message has been helpful to so many couples, something was still missing for singles.
Repeatedly, singles and dating couples have raised questions that were not directly answered or dealt with in Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. In the process of finding practical answers to their questions over the last twelve years, the ideas, principles, and insights of Mars and Venus on a Date were formulated. This book is directly written for singles and dating couples who are interested in finding true and lasting love.
Yet married couples will also find these principles and insights invaluable. Couples who are happily married can enjoy these ideas from the perspective of how they can add to the playfulness and romance in their relationship. No matter how good a relationship is, there is always room for growth. Even the best athletes still listen to their coaches for feedback and direction.
Married couples who are experiencing difficulty in their marriage may discover what is missing in their relationship. Quite often couples skipped one or two stages of dating, and this affects their marriage adversely. By going back and going through the dating stages, many couples have reunited in love.
Married couples who want to rekindle the romance of dating will benefit greatly from this practical guide. By reviewing the elements of a great date and putting them into practice, they can once again experience the passion and romance they felt in the beginning. By applying these simple insights, they will not only rekindle the fire of passion but learn how to keep it burning.
The insights contained in Mars and Venus on a Date provide practical answers for the most common frustrations singles and dating couples experience. So often in our dating relationships we misunderstand and misinterpret our partner’s actions and reactions. With a correct understanding of our different ways of thinking and feeling, dating can be a source of joy, support, pleasure, and fulfillment, instead of a potential source of frustration, discouragement, worry, and embarrassment.
With this new approach, the clouds of confusion associated with dating begin to clear away. As you read Mars and Venus on a Date and begin to experience the practical benefits of this shift in your dating approach, you will begin to discover that you already know a lot more than you thought. When a few missing pieces of the puzzle are found, suddenly everything can fall into place.
Supported by this new approach, you will find the motivation, skill, and confidence necessary to find the right person for you while you enjoy the dating process. As you read though this book, the feelings that you have deep in your soul will be validated. This commonsense approach explains all of the most frustrating moments of dating and provides a clear plan for success.
No book can tell you if a person is right for you, but a book can point you in the right direction and assist you in creating the right conditions so that you can know. When the principles and insights of Mars and Venus on a Date are put into practice, you will be prepared to meet and recognize your soul mate.
This book has many suggestions that may not be right for everyone. They are only suggestions. More than anything, this book will provide you with the information to assess a situation and to make the right decisions for you.
As with my other books, there are many generalizations about men and women. This does not imply that all men are one way or all women are another way. It just means that many men and many women are that way. If you don’t perfectly fit the generalizations, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. When you meet someone whose behavior is different from yours, pull out your copy of Mars and Venus on a Date and use it as a guide to help make sense of that.
Some people may be tempted to keep this book a secret. It definitely gives you an edge in knowing how to win over the opposite sex. But there is an even greater benefit in letting your date know that you have read it. If you both agree with many of the principles and values, you will be able to trust each other more right from the beginning.
Discussing the ideas in Mars and Venus on a Date is a great way to get to know someone. Many dating couples have done this with Men Are from Mars. Reading Mars and Venus on a Date together during the various stages of dating will be even more useful.
Sometimes it is difficult to discuss your want and needs in a relationship. If this book fairly represents what you want, then it will assist you in communicating that to your partner. One of the greatest values of these insights is that they are expressed in language that is fair and supportive to both sexes. You can talk about the differences between Martians and Venusians without stepping on each other’s toes.
If the values in this book resonate with who you are but they don’t resonate at all with a potential partner, it may be a clear sign that that person is not right for you. This is not always the case, though. Someone may just not like my style of writing about dating, love, and relationships. Even if he or she is closed to reading a book about relationships, it doesn’t mean this is not the right person for you.
The real test is going through the stages and seeing if you can get your needs met. Even if your partner doesn’t read Mars and Venus on a Date, you will gain the power to bring out the best in him or her when you read it. Then you will know if this is the right person for you.
Women commonly make the mistake of quoting authorities to change a man’s behavior. Even if a man likes my books it is a good idea not to quote from them. Particularly with men, a request for change is best heard when it is personal and based on what you feel is right for you and not what a book says is right.
For years women have asked me how to get a man to read Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. The answer is the same with this book. A woman should ask a man what he thinks about some of the ideas that describe men. By asking him to read that section to answer her questions, she is not implying that he needs this, but that he is the expert about men and that his expertise could help her. Men love to be experts and they like to be helpful. As he reads the text, he may find that it is very interesting and helpful for him as well. After all, if he is from Mars, how is he supposed to understand Venusians?
When Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus was first published, mainly women bought it. As more men heard about it, this trend changed dramatically. Now, after it has been a bestseller for four years, men buy it just as much as women. Men are also interested in having better relationships; they simply needed to discover that it was a “male friendly” book.
Another approach to motivate a man to read this book is simply to ask him to do it as a favor to you. You should not imply that he needs it, but that you would love to discuss it with him and that it would help you. When approached the right way, many men are happy to read it. Some men just don’t read. If that’s the case, lend him a copy of the book on tape or watch the videos together for fun. These same suggestions could also apply when a man wants a woman to read the book.
As you read Mars and Venus on a Date, lightbulbs will go on in your mind. Suddenly things that never made sense will start to make sense. This shift will help prepare you to find and meet your soul mate. When you can clearly understand your past mistakes in this new light, you will not have to repeat them. With this new understanding, you will be released from past patterns and be free to create the relationship of your dreams. You will quickly discover that you do have the ability to find the right person for you.
It is a great pleasure for me to share Mars and Venus on a Date. It is the culmination of twelve successful years of assisting millions of people like you to improve communication with the opposite sex. By successfully understanding and meeting the challenges of each of the five stages of dating, you too will find true and lasting love.
DURING MY RELATIONSHIP seminars, single women often come up to me and describe in great detail what they thought was a wonderful date. The question that follows is almost always the same. Every one of these women says, “I can’t understand why it didn’t work out.” If everything went so well, each wonders, why didn’t he want to pursue the relationship? To most women, men are still a mystery. Their questions often reveal a complete misunderstanding and misinterpretation of men.
Women ask:
A woman’s questions tend to revolve around one issue: How do I secure a loving, lasting relationship? Women want to make sure they can get what they need in a relationship. Men, on the other hand, have different questions. Their questions focus on making sure they are successful in their relationships but also reveal a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of women.
Men ask:
Although men’s and women’s questions reflect different orientations toward dating, they do have two things in common: Men and women want their relationships to be loving, and they definitely don’t understand each other. We feel powerless at times to get what we want in our relationships.
It might seem hopeless, but it is not. Once men and women learn how they approach dating and relationships differently, then we have the necessary information and insight to begin finding the answers to our questions. Without a deeper understanding of our differences, it is inevitable that we will continue to misinterpret our dating partners and create unnecessary problems.
When we misinterpret each other, it can cause us to sabotage our relationships unknowingly. A woman may mistakenly conclude her date is “just another man incapable of making a commitment” and give up. A man may think his date is another woman whose needs may smother him and take away his freedom. As a result, he loses interest.
No matter how sincere you are, if your partner is misinterpreting your innocent and automatic reactions and responses, your attempts to create a relationship may be unsuccessful. It is not enough merely to be authentic in sharing yourself; to succeed in dating you need to consider how you will be interpreted as well. For this reason there are times when we cannot just “be ourselves.” Instead, we must hold back our initial gut reactions and measure our responses in ways that will communicate where we are coming from.
Making sense of the opposite sex frees us to make decisions and choices conducive to getting what we want, but in a way that works. To do this, it is essential that we have a deeper understanding of the different worlds we come from. While I have explored many of these differences in my previous book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, there are many issues specifically relevant to being single that were not covered.
A deeper understanding of single men and women can be immensely helpful in navigating through the five different stages of dating: attraction, uncertainty, commitment, intimacy, and engagement. With this new insight, it will be easier to interpret each other’s behavior correctly and act accordingly.
In stage one of dating, we experience our initial attraction to a potential partner. The challenge in this first stage is to make sure you get the opportunity to express that attraction and get to know a potential partner. With a clear understanding of how men and women approach dating differently, you will be able to put your best foot forward.
In stage two, we experience a shift from feeling attraction to feeling uncertain that our partner is right for us. The challenge in this stage is to recognize this uncertainty as normal and not be swayed by it. To become uncertain doesn’t mean that someone is not right for you. When you are dating someone who seems really special to you, it is quite normal suddenly to wonder whether you wish to continue dating that person. Without an understanding of this stage, it is too easy for a man to drift from one partner to another and for a woman to make the mistake of pursuing a man more than he is pursuing her.
In stage three we feel a desire to date a person exclusively. We want the opportunity to give and receive love in a special relationship without competition. We want to relax and have more time to share with our partner. All of the energy that went into looking for the right person can now go into creating a mutually loving and romantic relationship. The danger in this stage is that we become too comfortable and stop doing the little things that make our partners feel special.
In stage four we begin to experience real intimacy. We feel relaxed enough to let down our guard and share ourselves more deeply than before. The opportunity of this stage is to experience the best in ourselves and our partner, while the challenge to deal with our less-than-best sides. Without an understanding of how men and women react differently to intimacy, it is easy to conclude mistakenly that we are just too different to proceed.
In stage five, with the certainty that we are with the person we want to marry, we become engaged. In this stage we have the opportunity to celebrate our love. This is the time to experience our relationship joyfully, happily, peacefully, and lovingly. This is a time of great excitement and promise. Many couples make the mistake of rushing into getting married. They do not understand that this is a vital time to gather positive experiences of sharing together and resolving disagreements and disappointments before the bigger challenges of being married, moving in together and having a family. This stage provides a strong foundation for experiencing a lifetime of love and romance.
Throughout Mars and Venus on a Date, we will explore in great detail the five stages of dating and the various questions that come up in each stage. Each chapter will provide you with fundamental insights about how men and women approach dating differently so that you can correctly interpret your partner and then choose to respond in ways that will not be misunderstood. In this way you will make use of every opportunity to create the relationship of your dreams.
Whether you are starting over, just starting to date, or have been dating for years, one thing doesn’t seem to change: Dating is awkward and has definite moments of pain and discomfort. For some people, one of the primary motivations for getting married is to avoid dating. Yet dating doesn’t have to be so dreary or difficult, nor does it have to seem endless. As a matter of fact, if you are looking for that special someone, the fastest way of finding him or her—and being found—is to create positive dating experiences.
Knowing what to expect in each of the five stages of dating makes it incredibly easier. For example, in the first stage—attraction—when a woman understands why a man doesn’t call back the next day, even when he is attracted and interested, it frees her from worrying unnecessarily. By learning a new approach for calling him that doesn’t minimize her position with him, it frees her even more to enjoy the dating process: no more sitting by the phone wondering when he will call.
In a similar way, this understanding of our differences makes the whole process of dating much easier for a man. For example, when a man understands exactly what women need and what he needs to do to satisfy those needs, then it gives him the confidence that he can succeed in winning over the woman he wants and loves. Quite often, what he would want is not necessarily what she wants. By learning these differences, he can understand what to do at each of the five stages.
When we are prepared for what is to come, we are not thrown off guard, nor do we have to doubt ourselves. When our relationships make sense to us, we don’t make as many mistakes; we are also able to learn from mistakes and are thus released from making the same mistakes again and again. With this understanding of differences, we can be released from repeating negative patterns.
Understanding that men are from Mars and women are from Venus will not necessarily make any date a lasting relationship, but it will make the process of dating more fun, more comfortable, and more rewarding. Sometimes it will help you to realize sooner that you are with the wrong person. This clarity will make it easier for you to move on to finding the right person. The sooner you discover that a person is not right for you, the sooner you can move on and find the right person.
Through understanding the five stages of dating, you will clearly know where you are and where you want to go. When you are stuck in a pattern, you will be able to realize how to break free and move on. Without a doubt, when you are ready to fall in love with your soul mate, someone you connect with from your soul, your mate will be there. Through taking the risk of following your heart and exploring relationships with the intent to find the right person for you, you are preparing yourself to find true and lasting love.
FINDING THE RIGHT person for you is like hitting the center of a target in archery. To aim and hit the center takes a lot of practice. Some people may hit the center right away, but most do not. In a similar way, most people date several people before finding the right one. Some people take much longer than necessary because something is missing in their approach. By exploring this metaphor from archery, we can clearly see what may be lacking.
Imagine that you aim for the target and you miss. Your shot is too far to the left. By simply acknowledging that you went too far to the left, your mind will automatically self-correct, and next time you will shoot more to the right. Through a series of attempts, your mind will continue to self-correct and you will eventually hit the target.
It is the same in relationships. Each time you go out and discover that this is the wrong person for you, your mind will self-correct, and next time you will feel more attracted to someone who is closer to being the right person. To make this self-correction in the kind of person we are attracted to or find interesting, we must clearly experience how far off the mark a shot was.
If we are way off the mark, then we know to compensate a lot. If we are closer to the mark, then we compensate much less. In a similar way, if someone is clearly far from our type, then we need to compensate a lot, but if he or she is close, then we should compensate only a little. Correctly assessing someone is important for fine-tuning our ability to be attracted to someone who is either right for us or at least closer to the target.
If you were blindfolded and every time you got closer to the target someone misdirected you, you would probably never hit the target. To self-correct after each shot, we need to get the correct feedback. With accurate information we can make the necessary adjustments in our next trajectory. Eventually we will just aim and hit the target.
How we end a relationship and how we evaluate a date are essential to fine-tuning our ability to be attracted to the right person for us. The secret of making sure one relationship leads you to another one, closer to what you want, is to pay a lot of attention to how you end a relationship. How you end a relationship has an enormous impact on the quality of your next relationship. Good endings make good beginnings.
When you end a relationship feeling either resentful or guilty, it is much harder to move on to find a person who is right for you. Quite often, when a relationship ends, we may feel angry that our partner let us down or didn’t fulfill our expectations. Women most commonly feel that they gave a lot to a relationship and they didn’t get what they needed in return. As a result, they feel resentful. Men, on the other hand, tend to feel more guilt. They feel bad that the relationship didn’t turn out well and guilty if their partner felt unfulfilled.
Although these dynamics—men feeling guilty and women feeling resentful—are common, it can also be the other way around. Generally the person who feels most rejected or abandoned feels resentful. The rejecter feels guilty. In either case, the result is the same. We end a relationship with a closed heart.
Without an open heart, it is much more difficult to find the right person. When our hearts are open, we are able to be attracted to and even fall in love with the right person, or at least make progress in finding someone closer to the right person. When our hearts are open, we can be assured that we are getting closer to our goal. When our hearts are closed, however, we tend to repeat the same experiences.
When we end a relationship with resentment or guilt, we are attracted to someone who will help us deal with unresolved feelings and issues. Everyone has the experience of making a mistake or doing something that he or she regrets. It is perfectly normal to think back and feel, “I wish I hadn’t done that,” or, “I wish I hadn’t said that,” or, “I wish I hadn’t reacted that way,” and then feel, “I wish I could go back and do it differently.”
It is human nature to want to go back and fix things or change things that we regret. When we regret a relationship, our automatic tendency is to be attracted to another person we will regret meeting. We will repeat this pattern until we get it right. On the other hand, when we feel positive about a dating experience or an exclusive relationship that ended, we gain the ability to self-correct and move on. Instead of repeating the pattern the next time, we are attracted to someone closer to what we want.
One of the reasons people end relationships with negative feelings is that they stay together too long. They do not recognize they are with the wrong person and move on. Instead, they try too hard to make a relationship work. They either try to change their partner or try to change themselves. In the process of trying to fit together, they make things worse. In trying to make a relationship that is close to the right one into the right one, they create frustration and disappointment. In the process of trying to make things better, they bring out the worst in their partner and themselves.
This explains why so often after breaking up, many couples find that they can be better friends. When they were together, they would fight because deep inside they were either trying to change their partner too much or changing themselves too much in order to make the relationship a marriage. After they gave up trying to make a relationship more than it was, they could relate in a much more friendly and loving manner.
When you try to fit a square peg into a round hole, it is just not going to fit no matter what you do. In the process of trying to make a fit when there isn’t a real fit, unnecessary struggle and strife are created. At a certain point you need to recognize when a partner is not a fit and move on.
Bill and Susan dated for three years. After the first two years, Bill was not sure he wanted to be with Susan and Susan tried to convince him that they could make it work. The longer they tried, the worse things became. Susan was always suspicious that Bill was interested in other women. Although he stayed faithful, she would ask him questions all the time about what he was doing, where he was going, and how he felt about her. Susan became closed and mistrusting, while Bill reacted by feeling trapped, irritable, and distant. Finally, after many bitter arguments about trivial things, they broke up, both feeling rejected and angry.
Instead of bringing out the best they had to offer, their relationship brought out their worst sides. They would argue and bicker all the time. Certainly they were also lacking good communication skills, but even that would not have saved their relationship. They were not right for each other, but didn’t know how to end the relationship.
As Bill and Susan moved through the first three stages of dating, everything had been fine, but in the fourth stage it went downhill. As Bill got to know Susan, he began to think he was not right for her and she was not right for him. He loved her, but he didn’t want to marry her.
This didn’t make sense to him, and it definitely did not make sense to Susan. She would feel his hesitancy in continuing their relationship and confront him. She would say, “If you love me, then why don’t you want to be with me? How can you just end this relationship? It’s not fair. I thought you loved me. How can you love me and want to leave me? We have something special. You’re just afraid of intimacy. You’re not giving us a chance.…”
Bill’s only answer was the same, “I love you, but I don’t feel you are the one for me.” Susan could not hear this, and finally they had so many arguments that they broke up. They couldn’t even decide where to go to eat without getting into an argument.
Neither Bill nor Susan knew that it was perfectly healthy to get to know a person, fall in love, and then discover that this person is not the right one. Instead of ending their relationship with love, they ended it because they had so many arguments that they just didn’t like each other anymore. Without this important insight, many people end relationships by focusing on the negative instead of by focusing on the positive.
Quite often single people ask, “How do you know if someone is right?” When you ask people who know they are with the right person, they will generally say something like, “Well, I don’t exactly know what to tell you—you just know.”
When soul mates fall in love there is simply a recognition. It is as clear and simple as recognizing that the sun is shining today, or the water I am drinking is cool and refreshing, or the rock I am holding is solid. When you are with the right person you just know. This knowing is not in any way dependent on a long list of reasons or qualifications. Soul love is unconditional. When the right person comes along you “just know,” and you spend the rest of your life discovering why he or she is the right person.
While this answer is true, it is also very misleading. It could imply that if you don’t “just know,” you are with the wrong person. This is not necessarily true. The most accurate answer to this question is that you “just know” when you have created the right conditions to know, when your heart opens and you happen to be with the right person. If you open your heart and you happen to be with the wrong person, then you “just know” that you are with the wrong person.
This knowing who you want to spend your life with comes from opening your heart. Even if you are with the right person, you cannot “just know” if you do not first create the right conditions to open your heart to someone. Moving through the five stages of dating creates the right conditions for you to develop the ability to “just know” when the right person comes along. It also allows you to “just know” when you are with the wrong person. Once you are able to “just know,” then the easy part is to find or be found by the right person. Each decision you make will lead you closer to hitting the target.
Many single people don’t understand this basic truth. They mistakenly believe that if you love someone, you should want to have a relationship with them. This is not right. The closer someone is to being the right person, the more you will be able to see him or her as worthy of your love, but still this might not be the right person for you. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean he or she is the one for you.
Many people become confused when they fall in love. They think that if you love someone you should want to be together forever. If you break up, they mistakenly assume that you didn’t really love them and as a result they feel betrayed. People do not realize that love is not enough. If they discover that their partner is not right, either they feel guilty ending the relationship or they unnecessarily focus on what does not work in the relationship in order to justify leaving.
Some people will automatically become more critical and judgmental to justify ending a relationship. When couples don’t know how to end a relationship with love, they bring out the worst in their partners and the worst in themselves. Not only is this unnecessary, but it makes it more difficult to find the right person next time.
In most cases it takes both time and progression through the five stages before you can recognize your true life partner and soul mate. Certainly there are games and manipulations to make someone love you and want to marry you, but if a person is not right for you, then you will not necessarily live happily ever after. One of the reasons there is so much divorce today is that people do not move through the five stages. They rush through them or skip a few stages.
It was fine in previous generations to marry someone without first getting to know him or her, because the need for security was the basis of marriage. Our ancestors were primarily motivated to find a mate in order to secure their survival and the survival of children. In our parents’ generation, they learned to be loving and grew to love each other. But this did not guarantee that romance would last.
For most couples in history, marriage meant the end of romance. Never in history has lasting romance been associated with marriage. If we are to find a partner with whom our love and passion can grow, he or she must be very special—someone picked out and recognized by our soul. It is a decision made in our hearts that sometimes feels as though it were made in heaven.
A soul mate is someone who has the unique ability to bring out the best in us. Soul mates are not perfect, but perfect for us. While they can bring out the best in us, without good communication skills they can also bring out the worst in us, and vice versa. We are not just physically turned on to them; our soul gets turned on as well.
There are basically four kinds of chemistry between dating partners: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Physical chemistry generates desire. Emotional chemistry generates affection. Mental chemistry creates interest. Spiritual chemistry creates love. A soul mate includes all four.
Physical chemistry alone is very short-lived. A man can easily be turned on by a seductive woman who promises sexual gratification without any strings. For many young men, just the opportunity for sex causes physical chemistry. After a few brief encounters of physical passion this chemistry will quickly dissipate.
I was amazed as a counselor to discover a striking pattern. Quite often women who were extremely attractive, who looked like models and movie stars, and in some cases were, would share the same complaint. Their husbands were not sexually attracted to them. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t imagine any available man not being attracted to these women. Yet it was true. I eventually realized why.
These women had been pursued by men who were primarily sexually attracted to them but didn’t really get to know them. When a man feels sexual chemistry, quite often he thinks he knows a woman; he feels interested in her, he likes her, he even thinks he loves her. The real test is whether he still likes and loves her after he gets to know her. Although it may feel like love, it is not necessarily real or lasting. When a relationship passes the test of time, the love is real.
These men who stopped being attracted to their partners did not betray these women. Both partners were responsible. They put too much emphasis on the physical aspect of the relationship and didn’t create the opportunity to know and love each other enough to discover if they were soul mates.
When physical chemistry is not backed up by chemistry in the mind, heart, and soul, then it cannot last or grow in time. Once the pleasures and passions of the body are experienced without corresponding passions of the mind, heart, and soul, the physical chemistry will dissipate. Physical attraction can be sustained for a lifetime only when it springs from chemistry of the mind, heart, and soul as well.
The soul is that aspect of who we are that is most lasting. When the soul is attracted to someone and recognizes a mate, then with that person, because we experience a soul chemistry, the physical, emotional, and mental chemistry can also be sustained. Lasting physical attraction must find its source in our souls.
On the level of the soul, you are the same throughout your life. The person who was a little child is the same person you are now. You are you all of your life. The soul is that part of you that doesn’t change. The way you physically look, the way you feel, and the way you think about things, however do change.
The most change happens on the physical level. Everything on the physical plane is always changing. As we progress to the emotional plane, we change less. All adults can easily reflect back and still feel many of the feelings they had in childhood or young adulthood. On the mental plane, change is even less. We tend to be interested in the same sort of things our entire lives. Certainly there is some change, but definitely not as much as on the physical level. On the soul plane we are always the same.
The soul is who you are when you strip away the body, mind, and heart. Your soul has a potential that takes an entire lifetime to be fully realized. When a couple are soul mates, when their souls recognize and love each other and they are attracted to each other physically, emotionally, and mentally, then this love not only can last but can continue to grow and become richer as the years pass. This does not mean that everything will flow easily and effortlessly. It simply means you have the potential to be successful.
In the early stages of dating, when our hearts are not fully open to each other, we depend on our feelings of attraction and interest to find the right person. Feelings of attraction and interest can only lead us into a relationship that meets our emotional needs. Once we begin to get our emotional needs met in a relationship, our hearts begin to open and we experience real love and intimacy. As we get to know our partner with love, it is still not certain that we will pick him or her as our soul mate.
We may feel a deep soul love, but still that person may not be the one. Finding a deep and lasting love does not mean that a person is the perfect person for you. When some people mistakenly assume that loving a person means marriage, they can never open up to feel the love in their hearts because they are not sure that they want to marry that person.
This catch-22 happens a lot to men. A man can sense that a woman wants to know if he loves her. He doesn’t want to share those feelings because, if he does, she will expect him to marry her and be greatly hurt if he doesn’t. In romantic movies, loving someone meant that you wanted to marry her. In real life, it is not always the case.
Marriage is a choice, but not like any other choice. You don’t marry just any person you love. Instead, you first find love and then you are capable of making the right choice. As we have already explored, the experience of real love for a person doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is the one for you. The experience of real love does connect us to our soul. With this connection, we are then able to know what our soul wants to do.
Choosing a soul mate is not a mental decision based on the pros and cons of a relationship. It is not an emotional decision based on comparing how a person makes you feel. It is not a physical decision based on how a person looks. It is much deeper. When our soul wants to marry our partner, it feels like a promise that we came into this world to keep.
It feels as if we are supposed to be together and share our lives.
When our soul wants to get married, it feels as if we have no choice. We have to do it if we are to be true to ourselves. It is this kind of commitment that can sustain a lifetime of love. It empowers us to make the necessary sacrifices and overcome the inevitable challenges that come with marriage; it graces us with the experience of incomparable joy and fulfillment.
Many people mistakenly associate love with the right person for marriage because it is only when our hearts are open, and filled with love, that we can truly know someone and know the truth in our hearts. We can pick the right person only when our hearts are open, but it is also true that we can know for sure that a person is wrong only if our hearts are open as well.
With a clearer understanding of this, we are then free to end relationships without feeling guilty or resentful. Instead of feeling betrayed because someone loved us and rejected us, we can instead realize, “Yes, you loved me, but we were not right for each other. I was not the one for you. I feel disappointed and hurt, but I can forgive you and wish you well. Now I can move on to finding the right person for me.” Let’s look at an example.
When Bill rejected Susan, her attitude was, “We could have made this work if only you had made a commitment to me, if you had only gotten help. If you had cared more and tried harder, we could have made this work. If you had not given so much of your time to your work and been more supportive of me, then we could have gotten married and lived happily ever after. But no. You had to ruin everything and give up. My life is ruined by this. You were the person for me and now you have wasted three years of my life.”
In personal counseling she would pine away, feeling, “How can someone you love so much not be the right one? Why does this relationship have to end?” When I assured her that she would find someone better she just wouldn’t believe it.
To some extent, almost anyone who has ever been rejected in a relationship that ended has felt some of Susan’s feelings. Certainly, it is normal to have these kinds of feelings, but they must be released and replaced by positive feelings of love and forgiveness.