Living Victoriously

How To Avoid Falling For A Jerk… OR Jerkette

Session 2 Part 5 – You Can’t Marry Jethro Without Gettin' The Clampetts:  Family Relationship Resource

As mentioned previously in my beginning articles on this topic, I had the opportunity to attend a seminar called “How To Avoid Falling For A Jerk… Or Jerkette.  So, the information I share with you is coming directly from my experience in this class, answers that were given, information from the book I received, and in some cases are a direct copy from the book.  Today, is a direct copy from the book since it deals mostly with testing oneself.

You’ve heard of the saying that ‘good things happen to those who can wait’.  Well the following is a study done in dealing with just that.

“A landmark study on the conscience was conducted back in the 1960’s by Walter Mischel at the Bing Preschool on the campus of Stanford University.  He gave four-year olds a choice of having one marshmallow now, or waiting until he came back into the room a few minutes later and then getting a second marshmallow.  The focus of this study was to measure a child’s delay of gratification and the ability to control his/her impulses.

Some of the children who chose to wait stared at the marshmallow with their chins in their hands.  Others laid their heads down next to the marshmallow and never took their eyes off of it.  And then there were some who couldn’t get enough of sniffing the marshmallow to ease the stress of waiting.  In contrast, some of the children lacked impulse control and had the marshmallow in their mouth before the instructions were even completed.

The most fascinating results came from the follow-up studies on these same children (which are still continuing to this day and even include their marriages and their children).  Fifteen, twenty, and even thirty years later, those who exercised self-control consistently scored higher on just about every test administered than those who immediately ate the marshmallow.  The “waiters” were more assertive, competent, hard working, cooperative and successful at coping than those who were impulsive.  The “instant gratifiers” tended to achieve poorer grades and turned out to be more stubborn, indecisive, and stressed.”

Mischel, Walter.  (1967).  Waiting for rewards and punishments:  Effects of time and probability on choice.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 5(1) 24-31.

Here is a little exercise that you can do in dealing with Family Relationships.  In dealing with a relationship, keep in mind that these experiences mold people into who they are and what their values are with some exceptions.

 PG. 2

Now that you have done the test yourself, let's take a conscience check-up and look at what a healthy vs. an unhealthy conscience looks like.  There are a couple of additional lines.  Can you think of other behaviours in dealing with someone who has an unhealthy conscience vs. someone whose conscience is healthy?

These exercises can help you to rate your date.  Of course you wouldn't go to him/her and ask these questions directly from the Family Relationship section.  However, you can discreetly keep in the back of your mind as many of these as you can so that as you get to know him/her and the family background and upbringing, you can gain a clearer knowledge of where your date is coming from.  Now, as aforementioned, their upbringing is a factor in who they are with some exceptions to the rule.  Sometimes, people come out of the mold of what their family is.  So, you can also rate their conscience by the conscience check-up to get an understanding of who they are NOW.  Look at their behaviour when they are dealing with other people, when they are out, when they make mistakes, when they hurt someone, etc... see what their responses are to different situations.

Well, I hope this helps you to prepare for a better understanding of the person you are with or either someone you've considered dating or building an intimate relationship with.  Just remember, don't go only by the heart.

Join me next time when we begin Session 3:  The Ingredients For A Lasting Relationship.