How To Avoid Falling For A Jerk… OR Jerkette

Session #2 - Part 1:  You Can’t Marry Jethro Without Getting’ The Clampetts

Well, we finished the first session of "A Bird’s Eye View Of Dating".  Let’s move on to "You Can’t Marry Jethro Without Getting’ The Clampetts".

In this session we are going to search through two areas in dating:  Our childhood and family experiences.  These two inherently shape who we are and what roles we hold in dating and marriage.  Of course, your expectations and feelings also are affected by these.

When you have an experience, it becomes imputed and helps to form the conscience.  Question is… "Is his/her conscience functioning appropriately and mature?  This session will help you to know what the conscience is and favor you with some realistic ways of measuring it.

In dealing with  the Relationship Attachment Model (RAM), these things are important to the initial bonding link in what you need to investigate about someone in order to really "know" him/her.

We will cover in this session:  The Big Lie Of Love, Necessary Ingredients For Effective Personal Change, Exploring Family Background, and Exploring the Attitudes and Actions of the Conscience.

The Big Lie Of Love

The Big LIE in dealing with love is that "family doesn't matter".  This is a humongous farce!  Knowing the family is a must.  As hard as it is to believe and understand, when you marry someone, you marry their family also.  Their family is permanently a part of your life.  You have to deal with the ins and outs of your partner's family issues and they have to deal with the ins and outs of your family's issues.  YOU CANNOT MARRY JETHRO WITHOUT GETTIN' THE CLAMPETTS!

The Big LIE has 4 additional contributing causes:  the social revolution of the sixties, increased mobility, “incubator” relationships, and 2^nd marriages.  While we are not focusing on whether these factors have good or bad in them and reasons for them, we are just stating the facts, and the fact is, they are contributing factors to The Big LIE.

Necessary Ingredients For Change

“Personal insight and change are much more easily accomplished before marriage.”  Let’s explore the 4 ingredients necessary for effective personal change.

-         Insight:  This includes recognition, acknowledgment, willingness and a desire for change.

-         New Information:  This includes the willingness to replace negative talk to another action that is more positive.

-         Deliberate Effort:  This is the “action and implementation” area where you actively putting forth great effort be the person that you want to be.  “LIVE ON PURPOSE”!

-         Time and Practice:  It takes time and practice to change.  You did not develop bad habits overnight and they will not leave overnight.  It will take you giving it a lot of time and putting into practice what you have discovered.

So, that means in order to accomplish change, it has to be something where you realize that change is needed, have a willingness to change, willing to work at it until the change is accomplished thus putting time and effort til you have reached your goal.  You have to do this for yourself.  If you are trying to change for someone else, it won’t work.  You may see change for a short period of time but it won’t last.  If it is something begrudgingly done or done by force, it will not hold because it is not a change that is being done inside of you.  It is only an outward action that you are doing, therefore you are still the same person inwardly and that, eventually, will come out again.  How your state of mind is is how your behavior will be.

Question For The Readers:  So, what areas would you like to improve about yourself?  Take the time to evaluate self and prepare a plan that puts the 4 ingredients into effect for a personal change.  Try it today!

Join me again next week, hopefully on Monday, where we will go over Exploring Family Background.  "How To Avoid Falling For A Jerk... OR Jerkette" Session 2 - Part 2

How To Avoid Falling For A Jerk… OR Jerkette – Part 6

(How to avoid falling for the wrong person)

The 90-Day Probation Period

Again, "jerks" are not gender specific.  They come in all shapes, ages, sizes, beliefs, and both genders.  So, these articles are talking about both sexes and is not putting a preference of one over the other.  The behavior is found in both male and female.  

"Did you know that people who marry after dating less than two years have close to twice the divorce rate than those who date for two or more years.  The most common way you become set up to get involved with the wrong person is by accelerating the pace of your relationship."  So, let’s take a look at the 90-day probation period.

“Whether you are fifteen or fifty, growing to know someone intimately requires certain amounts of time.  Some of you have been in a relationship where you shared everything imaginable, trusted this person with your life, felt completely in sync, and even talked about marriage only to have a rude awakening around the third month.  This is the “magic number” – 90 days!  It is not until around 3 months that deep-seated patterns start to become evident.  In a study conducted by researchers who have been studying dating relationships for over twenty years, it was found that about half of all dating attraction is significantly altered by some newly found characteristic within a three-month period; significant enough to cause a breakup of half of all relationships.  Therefore, many initially hidden patterns seem to become evident within the first 90 days.  By definition, a pattern is a behavior that repeats in a sequence of time.  Without time, there is no such thing as a pattern.  Therefore, if you are always living in the moment you are seriously disadvantaged when it comes to understanding what a dating partner is really like.  The 90-day probation period states that “it takes three months for many subtle but serious patterns to begin to surface.””

  

Fletcher, G.J.O., Simpson, J.A., & Thomas, G. (2000).  Ideals, perceptions and evaluations in early relationship development.  Journal of personality and social psychology, 79, 933-940.

Well, there you have it!  It takes at least 90 days for a behavior pattern to even begin to show.  So, if you are rushing into a relationship with someone and in 90 days you think you are in love with this person, you’re going too fast.  Slow your relationship pace and take some time to really get to know this person in many different settings and situations.  Some people are very good at hiding who they really are underneath but eventually they will let their true colors show.  If you are rushing your relationship or being rushed in a relationship, your state of mind will not be where it needs to be in order to evaluate a situation correctly.  You just have to allow time to take its course to really get to know a person.  So, open your eyes, wake up, get some eye salve for those who are blinded by this romantic love already and be aware of your partner.  

Question:  Okay, I did the 90-day probation period.  Now what?

Answer:  Continue to give it time to know more about the person and who he/she is.  Pay attention to behaviors, attitudes, character changes, temperaments, their behavior around friends, family, enemies, strangers, and etc. so that you know what kind of person you are getting involved with.  This will save a lot of time, pain, trouble, and possibly a future divorce.  It is not easy to do when your heart is racing ahead of you but it is a necessity that will help you, in the end, to make the right choice.  Just give it time to be sure that she/he is the right person for you.

Let’s revert back to the RAM Model:

It is important that we stay in the safe zone relationship.  In other words, beginning from left to right, never allow one level to exceed the previous.  So “trust” should never exceed past “know”, “rely” should never exceed past “trust”, “commit” should never exceed past “rely”, and “touch” should never exceed past “commit”.  

“Know” should always be the highest level of your RAM Model.  It is most important to know someone before you trust them, rely on them, commit to them or allow them to touch you in various ways.

Again, getting to know someone takes time… a lot of time.  It is important to have this togetherness and time if you are to get to know who someone really is.  “It is crucial to realize that your ability to form strong loving bonds can betray you if you do not intentionally pace a new relationship.” 

Well, we have completed the first session of How To Avoid Falling For A Jerk… OR Jerkette.  (A Bird’s Eye View of Dating).  Join me Thursday as we begin Session 2:  You Can’t Marry Jethro Without Gettin’ the Clampetts.