3 Things to Look for in a Long Term Relationship

Now, I want to shoot a very quick video for all of you beautiful ladies out there who are getting out there dating, talking to multiple guys, but you're not sure which guy to commit your heart to. And this video actually comes from a story that came up with one of my clients just the other day, and I wanted to share it with you all. So I was hosting a coaching session, and one of my clients came on. She's maybe in her late 50s, early 60s. I've always learned, never ever ask a woman her age. I've learned that lesson the hard way as a male coach helping women find love. But I'm going to guess she's in her late 50s, early 60s. And she came on the session and she was freaking out. It was like, adam, I don't know what to do. The world is falling apart. I'm not sure. And this happens sometimes. It's okay. That's what we're here for. And she goes on to tell me, well, I've been working the process. I've been following the little love steps, and I'm now on little love step number five. And I thought to myself, hm, little love step number five is usually a good thing, right? That means that you're talking to multiple people at the same time. You're pacing, you're evaluating. You're determining who you're going to commit your heart to. So I ask her, what's the problem? What's going on? She says, adam, I have two amazing guys that are pursuing me who want to commit to me. What do I do? And so everyone in the room took a big sigh of relief and thought to themselves, well, this is a problem. But this is what we call a champagne problem. A good problem to have. It's kind of like when really rich people are complaining about how much they have to pay in taxes. Now I get it. And I don't like paying taxes, just like the next person. But it's kind of like a champagne problem. Like if you're making $30 million a year and you're complaining about your tax rate like it's not the biggest problem in the world. You know what I'm saying? Anyways, I digress. This is an equal champagne problem. You got two guys who are really interested in you, who are pursuing you, they want to commit to you. How do you evaluate which guy to commit your heart to at this stage? So I' wanted to share with you all the exercise that I walked her through, because I think it'll be really helpful for all of you as you determine which of these guys you might be getting out there talking to are going to be right for not just the next three weeks, three months, or three years. I'm talking the next 30 years. Because that's what we do around here. At Love Strategies, we want to help you attract long lasting love. Now, with all that said, I did mention the seven little love steps. If you want to learn all the seven little love steps, I'll leave a link in the description so you can watch a very special training. It's going to walk you through the exact process that we walk our clients through. Or you can head on over to thelovesteps.com to get that training. So back to the client's story. Now, when we're thinking about a lasting relationship, we want to look for three core qualities. And I'm going to walk you through all three. The first one is attraction. Now, I talk about attraction first because it's what 95% of people spend 95% of their energy looking for. They're looking for someone they are obviously drawn to, someone that you have great chemistry with, someone that you want, would enjoy, maybe even a little smoochy smooch or certainly more. Attraction is something that is really easy to identify. It's something that is innate within us. You're kind of just drawn to a person. You want to be closer to them, you want to sleep with them eventually. That is attraction. The second thing that we're optimizing for is a long term compatibility. Now, this is a little bit harder to determine. In the early stages of dating, you might not really have a good answer to this until you've been with someone for three to six months. However, there are certainly signs within the first couple of dates where you can determine, are our lifestyles compatible? Do we want the same things over the next 30 years? Do you, for example, want to live in the city for the rest of your life and go to art museums and go to shows and go to great restaurants? And he's the type of guy who wants to live on the farm with the goats and just spend the rest of his days totally isolated from people. That would be bad compatibility. You also want to take into account religion, take into account family life, how it is that you spend your time, hobbies to some degree. Although here at Love Strategies, we don't really recommend focusing too much energy on, you know, finding a guy who also likes to hike. Like, who cares if you like to hike, great, go hike. He can go do his own thing if he wants to play golf on the Weekends, you hang out later that day and you'll have a great long lasting relationship. All of these things are bucketed under long term compatibility. That is the second part of the lasting love formula. Then we get to the third, which is all about friendship. Now, this is probably the most soft of all of them. It can be really hard to determine whether or not someone can really be your friend or is your friend. But this is the most important part of the lasting love formula because this is really easy to forget when you're single, but really important to remember at the end of the day, after the first year of dating and once the honeymoon period is over in a relationship or all the relationship really becomes is being with your best friend that you really like to have sex with. It's a best friend that you're really attracted to is that person that you respect, that respects you, who you enjoy spending your time with, who you enjoy just getting into deep conversations with, who you really admire, who think of your absolute best friend, the person that you trust the most in your life. You'd want to really compare this man who with that connection that you have with your best friend. And so this client was really stuck between these two different guys. So what I had her do is take out two sheets of paper, have guy number one and guy number two. I'm not going to mention their names because, you know, confidentiality over here. But what I had her do was list out attraction, compatibility and friendship. And I had her simply just rate based on the information that she had today, how these two men stack up on those three qualities. Now, I know you might be thinking that immediately. It was just like, wow, I know exactly the man that I want to give my focus and give my energy at this stage. But that's actually not what happened. Interestingly enough, when she went through this process, she realized that she was very attracted to both of these guys, but she wasn't yet sure if she was compatible with either of them yet. She didn't yet have enough information at this stage. And I said, great, so what we're going to do is since we're still in little love, step number five is we're going to continue pacing, continue slowing down before we commit to either of these guys. And let's fill in the informational gaps. We need to learn more about this guy. We need to go to the next date and ask the right types of questions so we can really get an understanding of what makes this guy tick, how he wants to live his life, and whether or not he'd be a potentially great long term partner. This exercise is the epitome of being really intentional in your love life. It's optimizing for something that is going to to last for 30, 40 years and beyond rather than the next three weeks or three months, which is sadly how most people date. So I'd love to hear from you in the comments. Have you ever focused too much on attraction in the early stages of dating? Leave that comment right there below. I'm gonna raise my hand and say that I am guilty as anyone in doing that until I really understood the lasting love formula myself. And finally, if you want to be a part of everything we're doing here at Love Strategies with our Executive Love Coaching program, go ahead and click the link to Apply for Love Strategy session. This is completely complimentary. This is where someone on my team is going to speak with you directly on Zoom. Understand what's been holding you back in your life, what it is that you are looking to attract the man in the relationship that's going to last. And then we'll bridge the gap. We'll create a strategy that you can take with you or you can work with us, and we'll guide you every single step of the way. Thank you so much for watching and I'll speak to all of you beautiful, successful single ladies next week. All right, Bye bye.