Ruth Schwartz breaks down three levels of lesbian compatibility: shared lifestyle and interests, chemistry and spark, and most critically, a shared relationship vision plus the skills to build it. Many couples have strong attraction but fail because they skip Level 3, overlooking differences in monogamy preferences or life goals.
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Hello and welcome to today's video. I want to talk to you today about how to know whether you're actually compatible with a woman whom you're dating as a woman, whether you identify as a lesbian, bisexual, queer, pansexual, something else. You're a woman, you're dating a woman, you feel into her, you like her, there are sparks, You want to talk to her, you want to be around her, but how do you know if you're actually compatible? And I see my— you're not seeing my whole zebra. Okay. That's Zachariah back there. So my name is Ruth Schwartz. I am the author of this book, Conscious Lesbian Dating and Love, and I'm the director of the Conscious Girlfriend Academy, which is the leading global resource helping women who love women Date wisely and love well. We have a ton of classes there. Some are free. Check us out, consciousgirlfriendacademy.com. And among our classes is one that we call the 12-Week Roadmap to Conscious Lesbian Dating and Lasting Love. And this is our signature class. We've actually been offering it since 2015, and women in over 25 countries have taken this class. With amazing results. I get emails all the time from women saying, you know, I'm going to get engaged, I'm going to get married, I've been with my girlfriend for years now, I never would have found her without this class. So what's the magic that we make in this Roadmap class? How does it happen? And how can you get yourself a piece of it even without actually signing up for the class, which I hope you will sign up for the Roadmap class because I think your heart deserves a full level of support. But in case you don't choose to, let me offer you a piece of it right now, and this is about compatibility. Because what I see over and over is that women who are dating women go for sparks. I like sparks. You like sparks? Sparks are amazing. Chemistry is amazing. Feeling attracted to someone is one of the most magical feelings ever, especially if she's attracted to you too. Not so fun if she's not. But if you're both attracted to each other, it can feel like, okay, this is, this is all it's gonna take. We've got the magic. If you're watching this video, you probably already know that's not all it's gonna take. So what else does it take? How can you know whether one of those magical attractions has the right stuff to last you into a long-term, happy, healthy relationship, if that's actually what you want, which is what many, many, many of us want, certainly what I want. So in Conscious Girlfriend, we talk about 3 levels of compatibility. And The third is actually the most important, and it's the one that most of us have never even thought about. But let me, let me do them in order. Level 1 compatibility you probably have thought about, and it has to do with having some things in common— shared lifestyle, maybe shared background. So let's say you're both Jewish, or you're both Christian, or you're both Asian, or you're both Black. Or maybe it doesn't slice along those demographics, but maybe you're both in your 50s, or you both love hiking, or you're both really politically progressive. You both do volunteer work with rescue animals. You're both night people. You're both morning people. Those kinds of commonalities tend to help us feel at home with someone. Now, Lots of us also have the kind of opposites attract thing, so maybe you're kind of feminine of center and you like the more masculine of center, vice versa. Maybe you're Jewish and you're not especially attracted to other Jewish women, or, you know, whatever your particular categories, but oftentimes we look for some level of commonality to make us feel at home. So that's level one. Level two compatibility is the level that the sparks come from, the chemistry, the rapport, the the French call it the je ne sais quoi factor. The I don't know quite what it is, but I'm just into her. I just want to be around her. I like the way she smells. I like the way she smiles. I like the sound of her laugh. I'm just drawn to her. So that's level 2. What I find is that most of us in our relationships look for level 1 and level 2 compatibility because that's all we really know about. And, and we can have a lot of it and think that that puts us in a good position to have the happy long-term relationship that we want. And yet I know in my past, over and over, I would have tons of that kind of compatibility, and yet the relationship would sometimes become a train wreck. Anybody else ever had a train wreck even when there was tons of commonality and tons of chemistry? Okay, many of us have. So what is this magical mysterious level 3 compatibility and why is it so important? Level 3 compatibility actually has 2 parts. The first part is that you and this other person have a similar or compatible relationship relationship vision. And then the second part is that you actually both have the skills to implement that relationship vision. So for instance, let's say that I want a monogamous long-term relationship that is really emotionally and spiritually deep, where we learn and grow together. This is something I personally want. Lots of women that come to Conscious Girlfriend want it. First off, you got to make sure that this person with whom you feel all the sparks Also wants that, because maybe she's just looking to date casually. Maybe she's more looking for a friend with benefits. Maybe she's just out of a long-term relationship and she's not ready for something deep. Um, so ask her and see if her answers are congruent with what you're also noticing and picking up. Um, but then The second part of level 3 compatibility is, do you have the skills for that kind of relationship? And does she have the skills? Because to be able to have that, that kind of relationship, for instance, you need to really know yourself. You need to be very emotionally intelligent and literate. You need to be able to know what you feel when you feel it, be able to communicate your feelings in healthy ways, be able to listen to the other person's emotional communications, have lots of skills to navigate conflict. know how to really show up when the going gets tough, know how to seek additional help and resources when you need it. And oftentimes I find that we might want certain kinds of relationships that we are not yet fully prepared to have. You might yourself be in this category. You also might date somebody who's in this category. So for instance, I just gave that example of the, you know, emotionally deep spiritual complex, you know, growing-together relationship. But what if that's not what you want? What if you want to have kids together or you want to move to the country and have an organic farm or you want to travel the world? Regardless of what your specific vision is, you need to make sure that the other person shares a similar or compatible vision. If she's a homebody who doesn't really like to travel, And you have a deeply held desire to travel the world with your new love, you know, it's not going to work out so well. If you are committed to a monogamous relationship and she's polyamorous, if you want to live with someone or spend most nights with someone or do most of your socializing with someone and she is a deeply independent introspective type that only wants to see you maybe once or twice a week. You know, people run into a lot of trouble this way. And we can even talk about vision as it extends to dating. Some of us basically, even if you haven't really examined this idea, you might have the thought of, well, okay, we, you know, we see each other for a few dates. And then if it's going well, we get exclusive, like, I'm not going to keep meeting other people while I'm dating this person. I want to just see what there is with her. On the other hand, somebody else may think, I'm not going to commit to monogamy with someone after just a few dates. It's going to take months before I know if I want to get exclusive with, with you. Neither person, by the way, is right or wrong. The problem is that we usually don't have these conversations, and sometimes we haven't even defined for ourselves what our relationship vision is, what our dating vision is. I have women come to workshops all the time who basically say, you mean I don't have to live with someone if I don't want to? And I say, no, of course not. There are lots and lots of lesbians, especially over 50, who, who don't have a vision of living with their partner, or at least not anytime soon. But if you are in that category and you get together with someone who just assumes that naturally, if the two of you get along, of Of course you're going to live together. Again, you got to really iron this stuff out, because if you're just tracking for the commonality and the chemistry, and you're not tracking for the similar vision and the skills to implement it, that's where the train wrecks come from, or at least that's a big part of it. So if this class has been interesting to you, We have more. There is a 90-minute class on true compatibility for lesbians. Check it out among our many classes at consciousgirlfriendacademy.com. Again, I'm Ruth Schwartz, and I am here to support you in having the healthy, happy lesbian relationship of your dreams, because that's what we all want. And you deserve it, and you can have it. It just takes learning how.
