Choosing a Partner

Son, 

Well  - there is nothing easy about this one, as you are destined to be an ever-evolving person and soul.  Finding a matching partner for today is not so difficult.  A partner for 5 years, believable. A partner for life - a blessing, or a miracle.  

I feel the reason is simple.  As we evolve personally, our presence in any and all relationships is also flexing and changing.  Rare are the folk that are at 60 who they were at 25.  Let’s take a stereotypical scenario that could have been in the 1990’s and we can envisage it in the 2020’s-  the residential plumber and his bride - add 30 years, may still be the residential plumber and his bride.  However, if the plumber built his business, then moved to large projects, and ultimately, contracting for all WATER SUPPLY and SEWAGE pipes for new cities, this guy is going to change very significantly and this may challenge all his relationships (not just his bride).  Equally possible, is ‘his bride’ starts a home business making clothes, opens a shop and ends up with a global chain of fashion stores while ‘hubby’ is still a residential plumber.  It goes both ways.

In this age, with an advanced human potential so possible for so many, the key to a longer term partner may be closer to how they feel about you evolving and changing, as well as how you feel about them evolving and changing, mixed with how ‘we’ feel about ‘us’ evolving and changing.   

It seems to me that many, many partnerships have one partner looking to control, suppress and/or change the other from their natural self.  Maybe unconsciously, they want their partner to be more like a) themselves or b) their parent of the same gender. Possibly, they feel so appreciative to have you, but do not feel ‘worthy’ of you, so they will imagine another person could ‘catch you’ at any time, so your ‘most attractive’ features should be modified.  This is the jealous type.  Fit people become fat. Social people become TV watchers. Adventurers become stay-homers, and so-on. 

Spot the early signs of discord  - it is often the first disagreement that is also your last disagreement (even if it is 10-20 years later).  We all have some programming - you do not want to be in the business of programming or de-programming your partner, however being observant of, and empathetic to their unique programming will help you both. 

And, in addition  - opposites attract, but that is not necessarily the right way to find a life partner.  Pessimists like Optimists and vice versa, Givers love Takers and vice versa.  Whom you seek is neither like, or unlike you - but rather some one who likes you, and seeks to support you in your life’s pursuits and vice versa. With this in mind, you are both evolving and enjoying it, wherever that may take you.  Better still, they will push you to keep evolving when you ‘settle’, and hold you if you are broken, but patch you up and kick your butt as you recover. 

SUMMARY

Don’t settle with someone who wants to change you. 

Settle with someone who wants you to change! 

And vice versa.

Dad.