For many single parents, dating relationships are simultaneously a source of energizing excitement and numerous questions. In the midst of the euphoria of new love, the questions of "How?" and "When?" to introduce children into the mix become some of the most pressing issues. When it comes to introducing your children to an individual who has become very important to you, consider the following factors: Look at Your Relationship A lot of parents want to know, "When should I introduce my kids to the person I'm dating?" Peter Sheras, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia, and the author of I Can't Believe You Went Through My Stuff!: How to Give Your Teens the Privacy They Crave and the Guidance They Need, advises parents to look first toward the quality of the dating relationship before worrying about how or when to introduce children. "The commitment is the most important piece because, when there's commitment, that becomes obvious to the kids." Being honest with yourself and your partner is key. Not every dating relationship reaches the level of commitment that necessitates including the children. You may very well be enjoying a casual, lively social life with a person who is fun to be around, but with whom you simply don't envision a future. This is critical because once you introduce children, you leave them vulnerable to becoming attached. Frankly, doing so before you've even determined for yourself that this will be a long-term relationship is unfair to your children and could potentially be as painful for them as your initial separation or divorce from the other parent. Before you introduce children, you should:
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WARNING: This might get you an awesome spouse. Here are five steps to becoming marriage material. 1. Know who you are. - Knowing who you are is key. The last thing you want to do is go into a marriage thinking it will fix your identity problems. Although being a husband or wife will definitely play a role in WHO YOU ARE as an individual, you need to realize that you must first have a personal foundation to build upon. Begin evaluating who you are, what you do, and exactly what your purpose is. Knowing your purpose is a wonderful start to becoming grounded in personal identity, and it will take you a step forward towards becoming an excellent catch. Read (2 Corinthians 6:18) 2. Say goodbye to mommy and daddy. (Directed more towards the men) - Recent studies show that the average person doesn’t move out of their parents house until they are 24-26 years old. This doesn’t mean that these people aren’t mature or responsible, but I can tell you that the experience of living on your own is something that cannot be taught while living with ones parents. Moving out on your own will play a big part in taking ownership of yourself. The responsibilities you encounter in life will not only help you in your personal growth, but they will also help prepare you for a future with someone. Say goodbye to mommy and daddy, jump into the real world, and start building your responsibilities from the ground up. Respect your future spouse enough to grow in maturity and knowledge. Family hardships and medical reasons are obvious exceptions to this step. Read (1 Timothy 5:8) 3. Learn how to manage. - Understanding how to manage your time, money and energy will not only help you as an individual, but could also help you avoid potential arguments on these topics in the near future. Having management skills will not only show people you are diligent, but that you also put time and effort into the things you care about. Most married couples will tell you that money is the biggest topic of discussion when it comes to arguments. And although these arguments can’t always be avoided, going in to a marriage or relationship with management skills will always be a plus on someones radar. Read (Proverbs 21:5) 4. Admit when you are wrong. - This is one of my biggest pet-peeves, and also one of my biggest flaws. Although I still struggle with admitting when I am wrong, the struggle is nothing compared to how I once was. Pride can be something that can ruin a friendship or relationship before they even begin. And although not everyone is perfect, nobody wants to be with someone who thinks that they are. The reality of life is that you are going to be wrong sometimes! Even though sometimes it’s really annoying to admit it, confessing your mistakes will show a sense of humility to those around you. Drop the pride. Nobody wants to marry an arrogant know-it-all. Read (Proverbs 11:2) 5. Honor and respect. - I’m positive there are thousands of books on the shelves that unpack this topic on a much deeper level than I can, but the reality of it’s core is pretty simple. You will need to learn how to honor and respect those around you if you are looking to be taken seriously. It’s tough to be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t respect you, and it’s even tougher to love somebody who doesn’t honor you. Take time to learn the disciplines of love and respect. Any guy or girl who is serious about getting married will always be on the lookout for someone who is honorable and respectful. Read (1 Peter 2:17) - Jarrid Wilson You and your partner have decided to make a life together and form a new, blended family that includes children from one or both of your previous relationships. Congratulations. What lies ahead can be both a rewarding and a challenging experience. It can take a long time for a blended family to begin to feel comfortable and function well together. While you as parents are likely to approach remarriage and a new blended family with great joy and expectation, your kids or your new spouse’s kids may not be nearly as excited. They’ll likely feel uncertain about the upcoming changes and how they will affect relationships with their natural parents. They’ll also be worried about living with new stepsiblings, whom they may not know well, or worse, ones they may not even like. To give yourself the best chance of success, it’s important to start planning how a blended family will function before the marriage even takes place.Laying the foundations for a blended familyHaving survived a painful divorce or separation and then managed to find a new loving relationship, the temptation can often be to rush into remarriage and a blended family without first laying solid foundations. By taking your time, you give everyone a chance to get used to each other, and used to the idea of marriage.
Given the right support, kids should gradually adjust to the prospect of marriage and being part of a new family. It is your job to communicate openly, meet their needs for security, and give them plenty of time to make a successful transition. Authors: Gina Kemp, M.A., Jeanne Segal, Ph.D., and Lawrence Robinson. Top 12 Signs It’s Time To Move On From A Relationship
#1. When you live in past memories more than the present. Do you replay the happy moments of the relationship to make you feel good about it? Do you use them as reasons to continue on with him/her? If so, it’s a sign your current relationship isn’t how you want it to be. The more we live in the past memories and/or a self-created future, the more we are living in a self-created reality. This is dangerous since it’s not reflective of the actual state of the relationship. You have to remember your relationship with the person exists in the current moment. Not in the past. Past memories should remain as memories and not as a reason to stay together. Your decision on whether to stay with the person should be based on your current feelings for him/her, the actual state of the relationship and the future you see with him/her. #2. When the relationship brings you more pain than joy. Sometimes, we tend to be blinded by the past happy moments of the relationship. To the extent we forget about all the unhappiness it brings us. If your relationship leaves you frustrated/upset/unhappy more often than not; If your relationship is leaving you in tears every so often, perhaps this might not be the right person for you. The relationship you are in now should be one which brings you happiness now. Just like #1, if the main source of happiness of your relationship is from past memories, something is amiss. #3. When he/she expects you to change. The truest form of love is one that’s unconditional. Your partner shouldn’t expect you to change, unless it’s for your well-being (such as to quit smoking or to adopt a healthier diet). Some of my friends had ex-boyfriends who wanted them to change, such as to dress up more often to look prettier or to lose weight when said friend was of healthy weight. There was even one who actually suggested my friend to shave her arm and leg hair because he felt it was a given for girls! The issue here isn’t about you. The issue isn’t about the change itself either. The issue is about the expectation of you to change. While some requests may start off seemingly normal/benign, they will quickly build on over time. Even as you concede to the requests, more will come. It marks the first step of him/her trying to mold you into his/her expectations of you, rather than you growing into your own. #4. When you stay on, expecting he/she will change. The above applies for the other person as much as it applies for you. If you are staying on / getting into the relationship expecting the person to change, you are in this for the wrong reason. You are trying to change the person to fit your expectations, rather than accept him/her as the individual he/she is. Even if the person does changes, soon you will have something else you want him/her to change. You will never be fully satisfied with how he/she is. The worst thing is, if the other person isn’t conscious, he/she will keep changing just to fit your expectations. In the end, he/she will just end up being your shadow. This happened between my ex-best friend, K, and me. While we were not in a romantic relationship, some issues we faced in our friendship are probably similar to what others face in their romantic relationships. Through our friendship, I began to see him as an extension of me, rather than as a separate individual. K did not have a very strong self-identity at the time, so unfortunately he kept changing to fit what I wanted. In the end, he was became my shadow. After 10 years of friendship, we had to part ways, because it was the better path for us to grow as individuals – for him to grow into his own, and for me to grow into my own as well. #5. When you keep justifying his/her actions to yourself. Whenever we experience a situation we’re uncomfortable about, we experience cognitive dissonance. It refers to the discomfort from being faced with something that conflicts against our beliefs. When this happens, we try to come up with explanations, justifications so we can feel good about the situation. This if we feel the need to justify an action, that means we are uncomfortable with the action itself and we want to explain away the discomfort. The danger behind this is that the explanations are self-created and may or may not be true. If you are repeatedly justifying his/her actions, the relationship becomes built on your rationalizations, rather than the reality. Likelihood is that you are living in your world of false assurances rather than the truth. Back in 2005 when the relationship between G and I was in the state of ambiguity, I would think of different reasons to justify why nothing was happening. Maybe he didn’t know what to do. Maybe he was shy. Maybe he wasn’t sure of what to do with the relationship. Maybe studies was his priority. Maybe I should take the first step. However reality was he wasn’t taking action. Everything else was just made up in my mind to fill up the gap between this reality and my expectations. By creating all these justifications, I had unknowingly created a mental jigsaw which I had to slowly peel away in the later years. To see reality as it is, see the actions as they are and let them speak for themselves. Actions ultimately speak louder than words. #6. When he/she is causing you emotional/physical/verbal hurt. Physical and verbal abuse are definite no-no’s. There is clearly something wrong if the other party abuses/hits/curses/swears at you, no matter how he/she tries to make up for it later. Even if it may be the spur of the moment, the fact that he/she lets slip in that moment shows there is something deep inside him/her that needs addressing. Emotional hurt is trickier. A lot of people negate emotional hurt because it’s not visible. Ignore it, and it’s not there. But emotional hurt is hurt all the same, if not worse. The wounds that are hardest to heal are the emotional ones, not the physical ones. I was emotionally hurt by G when he flippantly led me on with his words and behavior, even after I told him not to do it. This had a lingering effect on me for years even after I broke away, which took a long while to heal. Even though he may not have realized what his words/actions did to me, the fact was that he wasn’t conscious enough about my feelings to realize the hurt he was causing me. The point of this example isn’t to persecute anyone, but to illustrate that the other party should be someone who respects you and is conscious enough of your feelings/well-being not to let you be hurt. If he/she has caused you hurt, you need to bring it to his/her awareness and address it together. Keeping mum about it is like handing a free pass to let the hurting behavior continue. If the same thing happens even after you have made efforts to address it, you need to reevaluate the relationship. If he/she can’t care for you properly, he/she might not be the right person for you. #7. When the same situation/issue recurs even though you tried addressing it. Once might be a coincidence. Twice, you might want to give another chance. But 3 times is a clear sign something is wrong. I finally realized nothing was coming out from the relationship between G and I after our loop played out the third time. Each time, I did what I could to make it work out, but it always stopped at the same end. It was more than enough evidence that this was the end. Do you find yourself in replay mode in your relationship? Do you keep landing in the same situation, the same scenario, the same outcome, time and again, no matter what you do? If so, perhaps you need to accept this is the furthest the relationship can get to. You can keep pressing on, but it’s a matter of time before it sinks in that there’s nothing further to go. This is the end of the road. There is a future for you and him/her, and this relationship isn’t the route to that future. #8. When he/she puts little to no effort in the relationship. Every relationship requires effort by the duo. The same applies for familial bonds, friendships, mentorships and most definitely love. Both of you have to commit to the relationship together. If you are constantly the one putting in more effort, sooner than later it’ll drain you. You have to give more and more just to keep the relationship afloat. Unless this imbalance is addressed, it will only become bigger and bigger over time. Soon you sink your whole self into it, losing your self identity in the process. When you see relationships where one is investing way more effort than the other, they are usually headed to doomsville. Some of my friends were in such situations. They invested themselves into their relationships and poured in their hearts and souls. Their partners, on the other hand, only put in a fraction of that. They barely cared – it seemed as if the relationship was just a nice add-on to their lives, rather than something they really valued. Soon, said partners began drifting away. My friends kept giving more and more, hoping they could salvage the situation. This only slowed down breaking off process but didn’t prevent it. Don’t get me wrong – it is possible for a relationship to last even when one party is putting in more effort than the other. However, are you prepared to do that for the rest of your life? Is your ideal relationship partner someone who doesn’t care to invest as much effort into the relationship as you? I personally think all of us deserves someone who treasures us fully, who wants to be with us as much as we want to be with us. To have it any other way is like having a car with a tyre busted – it’ll keep moving in a slant until it eventually drives off the cliff. #9. When your fundamental values and beliefs are different. For any friendship or relationship to work out, there has to be certain similarity in fundamental values. Similarity in these values are the big rocks which will hold the friendship in place. Even if other things are dissimilar, the big rocks will enable the friendship to weather through even the toughest storms ahead. On the other hand, if your core values are fundamentally different, it doesn’t matter even if everything else is same. The journey to keep the relationship together will only become an uphill battle. It’s just like trying to hold the soil of the ground together in a heavy rain. Without the roots of the tree to hold this soil together, everything will just slip away against your best efforts. I believe the most important thing in life is to first be true to ourselves. While conformance has its merits, it should never be done at the expense of our own growth or our values. Compromising on your personal values just to keep a friendship afloat will ultimately only make you miserable. What’s worse, because your true self is repressed, you start to wrap your identity around the friendship. This was what happened to K, which was why we had to let go of the relationship partly so he could grow into his own. You need to first be true to who you are before any meaningful relationship can be formed. Sometimes, it’s possible both of you start off with the same values system. Over time, there will be changes. Maybe he grew to be a different person. Maybe you did. Maybe both of you changed. The changes may result in change in your fundamental philosophies, to the point where they no longer fit. If you can no longer connect with the person in the same manner as before, it’s time to reevaluate the relationship. #10. When the relationship holds you back, hence preventing both of you from growing as individuals. A relationship is ultimately a third entity formed due to two individuals. Every relationship evolves based on how both parties are growing. Sometimes both parties grow at the same pace. There are times where the relationship is one of stagnancy, where both parties don’t grow. Then there are times when one outgrows the other, by a large margin. When this happens, you have two options (i) change the dynamics of the relationship to fit this new development, or change yourself to maintain the same dynamics. As I shared above, it’s most important to first be true to ourselves. Determine who you are and who you want to be, then decide if this relationship is one that is compatible with you. A relationship that hinders you from growing into your own isn’t the best one for you. On top of that, if you are not able to grow into your own, chances are your partner is facing a similar blockage as well. A real relationship should be one that enables you in your personal life journey, so you can then enable your partner in his/her life journeys as well. #11.When you stay on, expecting things to get better. This is similar to #1, except it pertains to the future. Just like how you don’t live in the past, you don’t live in the future. You can hope that the future will be better, but the fact is you live now. If the only thing that’s making you hold on is the hope of a better future, the relationship isn’t exactly built on solid grounds. The future you wish for is one of the many possibilities that can occur, a possibility that may never come to reality. It’s dangerous to base the fate of the relationship on something that might not occur. A building built on a shaky foundation will crash to an unsightly end when the foundation gives way. #12. When neither of you feel the same way about each other. Things change. People change. If the feelings are no longer there, it’s time to move on. Some of you might linger on in a relationship even though the feelings are gone. Perhaps it has become part of your routine and you don’t know what to do once you break away. Some of you continue on because the relationship still serves certain functional purposes, such as companionship. Yet, a relationship without the mutual feelings is like a body without a heart. There’s no soul or life in it. If you no longer have feelings for the other party, staying on is doing the other person an injustice. More importantly, it’s doing you a huge injustice. It’s best for him/her and you to part ways so you can move to better places. If the other person doesn’t have feelings for you anymore, holding on to him/her only drags out the misery. Realize that "True love doesn’t have a happy ending, because true love never ends. Letting go is one way of saying I love you." Just because you love the person doesn’t mean you have to be with the person. True love exists outside of the physical fabric of a relationship. This is just a form of expression of love, but in no way is the single definition of love. Written by Celes+ on Mar 16, 2010 | Filed in: Dating, Love, Marriage Tags: ending a relationship, letting go, moving on, relationships, singlehood By Y. Smitty I am no expert on love and relationships and there are many times that I get it wrong. We all do. I will say along the way I have learned that you must know your mate. You need to learn and understand your Love Language. You cannot speak the love language of another couple and think it will work for your relationship. Your relationship is unique and special in its own way. For example, for Christmas my mate does not have to spend $300 on a designer handbag. That is a love language for someone, but not for me. He knows my language and knows he can buy me some comfortable pajamas and a bottle of wine. It took time for us to learn our language and it changes over time as we mature. Sometimes things become less important or more important. Ten years ago he would have had to sleep at his mother’s house buying me a pair of pajamas for any occasions! It is okay to tell your mate what you like and what you don’t like. We cannot expect them to be mind readers and then roll our lips out on the floor when they get it wrong. We are all entitled to change but that has to be communicated to the other person. Communication can also be in the form of nonverbal cues. Nonverbal cues such as a touch, eye contact or moving closer is a form of communication. If my mate sits on the sofa and I move closer to him, it speaks to him and I never said a word. Nonverbal cues or body language help you to understand what your mate is trying to say. Rolling your eyes so hard in the back of your head is also nonverbal but it might not be the best form of nonverbal communication if you are trying build a healthy happy relationship. Take some time to talk with your mate or nonverbally communicate and see if there is a change in the relationship. Communication is a key part to building a healthy relationship. The first step is making sure you both want and expect the same things -- being on the same page is very important. The following tips can help you create and maintain a healthy relationship:
By K. Graves
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