I have many sayings in this business, but the one that is most true is “The ones that start fast, end fast.” If you have dated at all, it has probably happened to you. You meet someone, you are very attracted to them, you like what you hear, and they make you feel special. You can’t wait to see them again, you think about them when you aren’t with them, and it all feels a little scary. You are flattered because they seem to feel the same way about you. They become your number one priority and you do whatever it takes to spend more time with them. Then, as fast as it started, it ends.
Lasting relationships rarely start off this way. When I interview a perspective client I encourage them to focus on a friendship for the first three months. It takes most people about three months to relax and be themselves, and that is when you start to identify the things that do, or don’t work. Included in focusing on a friendship for the first three months is no intimacy. Once you are physically involved, you are emotionally involved and it takes the focus off the friendship and puts it onto the intimacy.
Just about everyone will agree with me that they have learned the hard way not to become intimate in a relationship too quickly, and yet, it happens time and time again.
I am sharing this tonight because of a conversation I had with a client today who said they wished they had listened to my advice to not be intimate too quickly. I have probably had a similar conversation with other clients hundreds of times in my 25 years of matchmaking.
My second most true saying is “If it’s right, you wait.” Three months is not a long time to wait to be intimate with the right person and if the relationship ends quickly, it was obviously not the right person, and it is much easier to walk away if you have not been intimate. This has nothing to do with morals, or values, or standards. It is just good common sense.
So if you are being swept away by someone right now, I encourage you to slow down, focus on a friendship first and if the friendship is right, everything else will naturally fall in place. You could save yourself a lot of heartache.
To be continued……………………….