The Track Record for “Listening to Your Heart” Is Terrible

We are advised to “just listen to your heart” in order to discover “authentic love.” However, irrespective of how careful we “listen,” 42% of first marriages, 66% of 2nd marriages, and 75% of 0.33 marriages lead to divorce.

Logically, we might assume the divorce possibilities to head down rather than up with every successive marriage. However, the odds move up, no longer down. Why is this? The most possibly purpose is that we do not examine from our past enjoy with divorce, and pick a new dating using the identical standards we used before in our failed relationships.

Requirements: What People Logically Need to Make Their Relationship Successful

Any a hit courting have to meet the specific necessities of each companions if it is to live on and thrive over time. This is the primary aim of the Pre-Commitment1 stage of relationship improvement.

If listening to our coronary heart is incomplete,   what are we imagined to concentrate to in addition to our coronary heart? Our head! You ought to choose a mate who not only stirs your heart however who also can give you what you need. Hence, it’s far your responsibility (1) to logically discern out what you require in a dating, and (2) have the courage and area to adhere on your necessities whilst attempting to find a new accomplice.

As described by David Steele, a Requirement2 is a “non-negotiable event or thing required for a courting to give you the results you want.” It is a characteristic of a dating that is truly necessary for the relationship to live to tell the tale. By definition, the relationship will die without it.

Steele uses the metaphor of air and water to describe dating necessities. Humans require each air and water to live. Having one but not the alternative will lead to sure demise. Relationship requirements have the same exceptional of needing all your requirements met if the connection is to last. That is, when you have 5 necessities for a relationship and best 4 are met, the connection will die, subsequently, one way or another, if it’s far definitely a demand.

Problems rise up whilst we confuse what we “require” with what we “need.”

Wants: Nice to Have but Not Necessary for the Survival of the Relationship

Wants3 are “items and sports that provide stimulation, amusing, and delight.” They are traits of a relationship that are desirable, but not necessary for the connection to final and achieve success.

A need is like having a dessert after a meal. It tastes exact and makes the meal greater pleasurable, however you’ll no longer die if you do not have one. Wants, likewise, add fun and delight to our dating, but will now not threaten the connection if now not met.

Requirement vs. Want: Why Is the Distinction So Important?

Many dating issues can be traced to getting needs and requirements harassed.

So why is the distinction critical? The solution has to do with averting types of mistakes:

1. Ending a terrific dating which you need to hold by means of treating an unmet need as an unmet requirement, or

2. Keeping a disaster-prone relationship that need to be ended by way of treating an unmet requirement as an unmet want.

One Woman’s Close Call

A customer of mine had been relationship a person for 9 years. He wanted to get married, but she was hesitant. She wanted to have an emotionally intimate courting along with her associate in which they could freely reveal their deepest feelings to every different, however he refused. Periodically, she asked him to speak about his emotions. He declined. Again and once more over the 9 years they were together she pleaded with him to explicit his emotions to her. He claimed his father did no longer speak approximately his emotions and neither might he.

Everything else about him and their relationship became first rate. He ultimately wore her down to the point that she concluded, even though it could be nice to have a partner who would open up about his feelings, she could stay without it because the whole lot else about the relationship was so exceptional. She chalked it up to “that’s just how guys are” and started planning their wedding.

Then six weeks earlier than the rite, whilst on an harmless night time out together with her girlfriends, she met a man playing pool. They struck up a communique and it hit her like a bolt of lightning out of the blue. He became sincerely speaking about his emotions! He no longer handiest changed into willing to proportion his emotions, but he simply enjoyed disclosing his emotions to her. They talked for hours until final time.

Out the window went her rationalization that “it is just how men are” and into her lifestyles got here the catch 22 situation of what the hell do I do now with a marriage looming at the horizon?

Two weeks before her wedding she realized that needing to have a marriage with a person who might percentage his feelings was now not just a few exceptional-to-have want, however was in reality a complete-blown, non-negotiable requirement. Fortunately, she had the braveness to interrupt off the connection earlier than it have become a prison as well as even greater of an emotional mess.

What become the important thing to her knowing that her choice for a partner who would speak approximately his emotions was a demand not a need? She requested herself the question, “Now that I know that men can communicate about their feelings, will the connection eventually die if he keeps to refuse to do it?” She reluctantly answered “Yes.” It was a demand for her, and now not simply any other want.”

So, What’s the Point?

Finding an amazing relationship requires both chemistry and brains.

While chemistry speaks from the heart, necessities rule from the head. Both must be heeded if the connection is to skip the check of time.

A persistent trouble is that our culture offers us awful recommendation. It tells us that “authentic love” have to now not require any mind energy. Such questioning sinks over 66% of all re-marriages.

So, your challenge is to pay attention for your heart, assume along with your head, and ignore your friends and family who inform you that you are “over-questioning” it and risking losing a exceptional companion.

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1 David Steele, Conscious Dating (Campbell, CA: RCN Press, 2008), p. 301-320.

2 Ibid., p 337.

Three Ibid., p. 301-320.

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