Preparing Commitment and Preventing Unhappiness
While any expectation to onesidedly be able to make a partner happy or to be onesidedly made happy by a partner, are illusions, the real task for a couple is to cooperate to avoid making each other unhappy. There is a lot, that they can do to prevent unhappiness.
As mentioned before, for hypoanimalistic people with an intact promiscuity inhibition, commitment is sealed by physical involvement, but it is preceded by the creation of emotional and intellectual intimacy.
A part of creating emotional and intellectual intimacy is an active endeavour to define together the future relationship. This is done by a conscious working through a list of commitment essentials and finding agreement and consent on the balance of giving and taking for each. Both partners need to put on the table, what they have to offer, where their limitations are, what they expect and what they need. If they are both aware of the paramount importance of this to avoid suffering pain later, they will be motivated, sincere and unrestricted in this process. They need to be very explicit, not to take anything for granted, but to avoid all misunderstanding and misinterpretations very carefully by verifying all assumptions and not jump to conclusions or get trapped in projections.
As an example, mutual trust is a vital basis of commitment. But that requires both partners to be trustworthy persons and also that both are capable to trust, to entrust themselves. Trust needs to be earned and trustworthiness deserves to be honored, both needs to be balanced. Preparing commitment requires here for both to agree on how much convincing the other of the own trustworthiness is fair and reasonable and when to trust.
The following is a list of other essentials, that need consent as a fundament of a relationship. People are different, so what is consent for one couple could differ very much from the consent of another.
This list is different from the mindmate checklist in entry 83, which is a preselection of being compatible or not. The focus in this list is on finding consent, but if no consent is possible, then again it indicates incompatibility.
This list contains, what is important to me. For other people, there might be more or other topics on their list.
While any expectation to onesidedly be able to make a partner happy or to be onesidedly made happy by a partner, are illusions, the real task for a couple is to cooperate to avoid making each other unhappy. There is a lot, that they can do to prevent unhappiness.
As mentioned before, for hypoanimalistic people with an intact promiscuity inhibition, commitment is sealed by physical involvement, but it is preceded by the creation of emotional and intellectual intimacy.
A part of creating emotional and intellectual intimacy is an active endeavour to define together the future relationship. This is done by a conscious working through a list of commitment essentials and finding agreement and consent on the balance of giving and taking for each. Both partners need to put on the table, what they have to offer, where their limitations are, what they expect and what they need. If they are both aware of the paramount importance of this to avoid suffering pain later, they will be motivated, sincere and unrestricted in this process. They need to be very explicit, not to take anything for granted, but to avoid all misunderstanding and misinterpretations very carefully by verifying all assumptions and not jump to conclusions or get trapped in projections.
As an example, mutual trust is a vital basis of commitment. But that requires both partners to be trustworthy persons and also that both are capable to trust, to entrust themselves. Trust needs to be earned and trustworthiness deserves to be honored, both needs to be balanced. Preparing commitment requires here for both to agree on how much convincing the other of the own trustworthiness is fair and reasonable and when to trust.
The following is a list of other essentials, that need consent as a fundament of a relationship. People are different, so what is consent for one couple could differ very much from the consent of another.
This list is different from the mindmate checklist in entry 83, which is a preselection of being compatible or not. The focus in this list is on finding consent, but if no consent is possible, then again it indicates incompatibility.
This list contains, what is important to me. For other people, there might be more or other topics on their list.
- reliability and predictability
- responsibility and caring
- obligations of commitment
- defining exclusivity and priorities
- using combined resources
- respect, appreciation, equality
- gender roles
- sharing information and decisions
- how to handle conflicts
- rationality, evidence, convincing
- earning forgiveness and what cannot be forgiven
While I am writing this, I am daydreaming of sitting at some beautiful spot, like the shore of a lake, talking about these topics with my future partner. Where is he?
