The Do's and Don'ts of Entering a Relationship (2 page)

If you have a hobby that you love, or that you used to love then bring it back into your life and spend time doing it. Improve the skills you already have or learn new skills. Improving yourself and growing as a person improves every area of your life. My Book “Important Lessons for True Happiness: Live Your Life” gives you activities to do every week to reach your goals and become the person you want to be. You can find it here:
http://goo.gl/wZkEt

4. Don’t have arguments over text message
– this is so important in the modern world. So important in-fact that I have a whole chapter on texting do’s and don’ts that I am going to include in this book.

5. Do be yourself
– what I mean by this is do stay the way you are as a person. I believe everyone should have strong values and morals, and these can’t change just because you’ve entered a new relationship. If you don’t have any particular morals and values already, then I strongly suggest you take some time to yourself and work out what you find important in life.
Values are the things that you see as the most important to you. It varies in everyone. Some people value material possessions very highly whereas other people might not see them as being as important as other things. It doesn’t matter what your values are, it just matters that you know what they are. You need to have a passion, a drive to keep and get all things that align with your values in your life. If you value your family, you need to make sure you are close to them. If you value money, you need to make sure you’re working hard and getting the money that you want. When you’re passionate about your values you become passionate about getting the things that you want out of life. You get drive, you’ll work hard for things and not only will this improve your life but it will make you a much more attractive person to others and you your relationships will kick off to a great start.
One good way to define your values is to set some goals. There are hundreds of goal setting techniques out there that are all extremely intelligent so here are my top tips for setting goals that will help you develop a strong drive and maximise your chances of achieving them:
 

#1
Physically write your goals down, and put them where you can see them

The act of physically writing your goals down does a lot inside of your brain subconsciously that can trigger action a lot quicker than just keeping them inside your head. It re-affirms them and then having them where you can see them means they will be on your mind a lot of the time. Remember; we become what we think.
 

#2
Get yourself emotionally involved when you write your goals out

For every goal, you need to think why you want it. What has made you decide that this is something you want? If it’s just a small goal, like passing a test, why do you want it? Will it help you in the long run? Will it make people proud? Think about whether achieving this goal would affect other people. If passing a test would make someone close to you proud then that can only add to your motivation to achieve that goal.
If your goal is un-selfish, and you’re just trying to help someone else out then think why you want to help them. What does that person mean to you? What would it mean to them if you achieve this? You really have to get inside of your body and feel that emotion. It will create a huge sense of passion inside you to reach your goals.
 

#3
Set 3 types of goals: Short Term, Mid Term and Long Term

Your short term
goals are things you can do within around 3 months. So things like wanting to be able to run 10 Kilometres by the end the next month, or getting full marks on a test coming up. If you actually make a conscious effort to think about these goals you are so much more likely to not only achieve them but do more than you wanted. Going through life just doing things as they come around is lazy, and you won’t reach your maximum potential.
Your mid-term goals are things that are going to take a bit longer to achieve. Only you can set the limits on how long you will take to do something, but some things do take more time than others. Mid-term goals are also slightly more permanent or long stretching that short-term. For instance you might want to go travelling. This could mean saving up, then travelling for however long you choose etc. These goals will probably excite you a bit more than your short term goals, and you should use that excitement to boost your passion towards the goals.
(Don’t worry, this does relate to entering a new relationship)
Your long-term goals are your life long dreams. You could say they are a mix between your bucket list and what you want to end up with in life. You should have a view of what you want out of life in the long run, and what you want to end up with. The idea is that your short-term goals and your mid-term goals will generally be connected to you long-term goals. They may not do, some goals can be purely for personal satisfaction and won’t have anything to do with the long-term of your life. But usually people are driven by the end goal that is in the back of their mind. You should always be striving to achieve your goals, whether they’re big or small.
 

#4
Write them again as if you’ve achieved them

Now that you’ve written your goals out, you need to re-write them again. But when you re-write them, change them to being in the perspective that you have actually achieved them. So for example; “I want to get that expensive care before I’m 30” will be changed into “I have the expensive car I always wanted.” Although, be specific of course in your own goals. Be as specific as you can actually, but try to keep your goals to one sentence.

I have a co-authored with Jag Chohan called “Successful Goal Setting: Guarantee Yourself Success.” I strongly recommend looking at this if you have never set yourself goals before, or you simply want to achieve more in life. You can find it here:
http://goo.gl/UvxTs
Ok so where does this fit in to entering a new relationship. Well, it actually ties a lot of the dos and don’ts up. If you have your goals set and you’re passionate about them, then you will have your values. You will be a more routed person so you won’t change yourself. You will be far more attractive (usually) to others because going for what you want in life is actually quite uncommon as most people unconsciously fear achieving success. And finally, these goals will start to take fruit with-in a relationship and will help the relationship to move forward and become stronger. If the goals end up getting in the way of the relationship, well then that’s a decision you need to make. Remember what we said about values? You need to know what’s more important to you, your personal goals or your relationship.

A side note for males: Studies have found that part of the excitement for women in new relationships is trying to get their man to be how they want them to be in certain ways. They love the challenge of changing a guy and it excites them. Now, are you just going to give in and let all the excitement slip out of the window? Or are you going to carry on being yourself and let your girl keep trying?
Now morals are different to values, and you will usually have developed these as you grew up and believe it or not they are quite hard to change. As far as relationships are concerned, morals include your views on lying, cheating and manipulating. If you don’t think these things are morally right and you would be hurt if someone did this to you, then don’t be a hypocrite and makes sure you play by the same rules. This also applies if you do think it’s ok to do these things, don’t expect anyone to feel sorry for you if it ends up happening to you too.
So I’d say before you carry on, it’s time to make sure you’ve got your values and morals in place, wouldn’t you? And remember “People aren’t unsuccessful because they aim too high and miss, it’s because they aim too low and hit.”

6. Don’t talk about your ex
– Ok if you’re mature then you will accept that it is almost impossible not to compare a new partner to an old one, especially if there hasn’t been much time between the 2 (not recommended!!). Thoughts will often creep up on us about how our new partner does something differently to our old partner, and this is completely normal and I’m sure your new partner does this too. But it’s how you see these thoughts, and whether you actually say them out loud that makes a difference.
 
  Now a quick step back to the first “date” for anyone who is completely new to “dating.” You should absolutely 100% NOT talk about your ex partner on your first date. Nope, shh, stop….don’t do it! You are there to get to know each other, not someone you’re not even with anymore. If you want to talk about your ex so much that you can’t help it, then I don’t think you’re quite ready to be dating just yet. Some would argue that if the topic was to come up, or even if the person on the date was to ask you about your ex that this means it’s ok to talk about them. Well personally, I would say….NO! Just don’t do it. Change the subject, make a joke out of it and say “I’m not here to talk about my ex, I want to talk about you.” Let’s face it, if the conversation is getting so desperate that your date asks you about your ex, it’s probably not going to work out.
OK back to entering a new relationship. Talking about your ex all the time is probably going to make your new partner insecure. Imagine if they were saying how often they used to go to this place together, or how much they loved it when their ex did this. You’re not going to want to go where ever that was and you’re not going to want to do whatever it was they did. So when you can, just don’t talk about it. This is where I would differ from the date situation though. Sometimes people have their own insecurities and when it’s your partner it’s your duty to help them feel more secure if the opportunity comes along. Sometimes these insecurities will present themselves in the form of asking questions about your ex’s. This is often because they feel like maybe they’re not good enough compared to your ex, or that you don’t love/like them as much as you did your ex. Well it’s important here that you do talk about your ex, but in the right way. You need to be considerate of your new partner. In no way should you lie, at all. But if you are fully over your ex partner then you should be able to talk about them and play things down without feeling bad about it. And remember, you most certainly should be fully over your ex partner if you’re entering a new relationship. If your new partner asks about something you and your ex used to do and it just so happens that yes you did absolutely love doing that together, it doesn’t mean you have to tell them that. Just play it down, casually say “yeah it was fun; that was a long time ago” or something along those lines. Don’t get too attached to the conversation because let’s face it, you shouldn’t be.

7. Do let them know your boundaries
– Let me get this out in the open straight away, this includes in the bedroom as well as in your general relationship. I’ll talk about general things first and then get to the naughty stuff…
So everyone has their own boundaries, their limits as to what takes them from being comfortable to uncomfortable. And it’s important in a relationship to express this right from the start.
Public displays of affection: This varies from person to person and couple to couple but it’s very important that you get this kind of thing out of the way before you find yourself in a very embarrassing situation. Not being open about this could land you in two opposite ends of an embarrassing situation. On one hand, you could find your new partner to be extremely comfortable with public displays of affection and you quite simply are not. So you’ll get embarrassed when they start playing tonsil tennis with you in-front of everyone eating in the same pizza place as you and you have to ruin the mood by pushing them away. Switching to the other hand, you couldn’t care less about wrapping your arms around your new partner in-front of everyone but it turns out they hate it and push you away. You’re going to feel pretty foolish after that. So just talk about it. Downright ask them whether they are comfortable with or, tell them if you’re not. This will save any embarrassment and awkward moments that could completely ruin the mood in your relationship.

On a quick side note, it’s possible that if one partner doesn’t like public displays of affection that the other will think this is because they don’t want to be seen with them.
That’s why getting this out of the way before it actually happens could prevent a serious argument.
Flirting… Right now this is a tough one. Flirting can mean all kinds of things, and some people will consider things to be flirting that others wouldn’t. This is another thing that really depends on the individual. As long as you know what you’re comfortable with, then you should be able to sort this out before any arguments come along. There are all sorts of different kinds of flirting; flirting to get your own way, flirting to get some attention, flirting because you fancy someone. First of all let’s think about what you’re going to allow yourself to do in terms of flirting now that you’re entering a committed relationship. You might believe that a bit of harmless flirting is fine as long as there are no intentions behind it, you might think flirting to get something like a free drink at a bar is fine. It’s entirely up to you but you should have a think about what you think is acceptable for you to do. That way, if your new partner doesn’t like it, you have the choice whether to stick to your values and tell them if you can’t accept that this is how I am without getting insecure then this isn’t going to work or you can change your ways to suite your partner…your call.
 
  Now let’s look at what you’re going to accept as ok for how your partner flirts with other people. This will often come down to how secure you are in yourself, but remember if you think it’s ok to do something, but you don’t think it’s ok when your partner does it, you need to re-think your values. If you can work out how far or how much flirting would be acceptable for your partner to do, then you can express this to them before it actually happens and they can decide whether they accept this as fair or not. If they do, then there will be no problems as they will know their boundaries, but if they don’t accept it then this is where they will have the choice to change or to stick to how they are and put the relationship at risk. Getting these things out in the open early on in the relationship means that there are more opportunities to go your separate ways quickly, but in the long run this is far better than staying with someone who you’re not going to get along with.
You will come across all kinds of boundaries that you may not have even realised you had before you entered this new relationship. But the important thing to take away is that you should be open and honest about them as soon as you can.