Relationships: making them last
You've done all the assignments. You've met a ton of great women. Things are going great. Your friends all consider you a master pickup artist and have started asking you for advice on how to meet women. Life is good. And then, out of the corner of your eye, you see her. Everything slows down. The music sounds different. There are sparkles in the air. She notices you and your eyes lock. A little baby with wings floats by and shoots an arrow in your heart. And you think two things. First, why doesn't that baby have a diaper, and second, I think I'm in love.
Ok, it doesn't really happen like that, but don't tell anyone in Hollywood. What really happens is you start seeing more of someone, and find out you really feel great when you're with her. She's got that something special that no one else had. So after a while you're seeing more of each other. And more and more.
After a few months you're calling her your girlfriend.
After a few more months you're moving your cats into her apartment. Now all the friends that were looking up to you are giving you concerned looks.
Try as we might, sooner or later most of us realize that we cannot lead the life of a bachelor forever.
Notable exceptions include Hugh Hefner, but I think it's safe to say that Hugh is not reading this book. He's got his hands full with women already, if you know what I mean. For most of the rest of us, a long-term relationship is inevitable, so the question then becomes, how do you make them last.
Everything we've discussed up to this point, everything we've practiced, is all part of what will make the relationship successful. Being a good listener, relating to her on an emotional level, showing appreciation for who she is as a person, and staying alive and aware, awake to every moment, these are the things that will help you grow with her. Being your own person within the context of the relationship is always a challenge, but that challenge is like any other you have faced to this point. Meeting the challenge allows you to grow in new ways, so that you can fulfill potentials you never realized you had. Ideally, you will bring out positive qualities in her, and she in you, that would otherwise have lain dormant.
Bad relationships are often bad because each person is trying to impose their own values and sense of self on the other. Good relationships involve nurturing the things you appreciate in the other person, rather than chastising and nagging about the things you don't like.