How Do You Tell Your Partner You Want a Commitment?
Looking for that special someone is hard, but when you finally meet that person how do you take it to the next level. What do you say? How do you tell your partner you are ready to solidify a relationship without ruining the special connection you have?
Opening up to your partner about future steps can leave you very vulnerable and that is a scary feeling, but in order for the relationship to progress, we must all learn how to tell our partner what we what. Here are some tips if you are struggling with how to do this:
1.) Be sure to have this conversation before the relationship becomes sexual: If you are truly dating with the purpose of finding a significant other, you should know what their intentions are before the relationship becomes sexual. Sex complicates things and it also causes feelings to get involved, which can create attachments to your partner. You run the risk of becoming attached to someone without knowing if their feelings are the same.
2.) Make sure you have chemistry with this person first: The beginning stages of dating is just to simply go out and get to know this person. Find out about their personality to see if you guys actually have enough in common to be more in the future. Do not immediately start asking them questions about marriage as soon as you sit down at the table. There is no point of bringing up future plans if you do not even know if you guys vibe like that.
3.) Don't wait for the other person to bring it up: Don't place your heart in the hands of others. If you feel like the relationship is progressing and the other person has not mentioned their intentions, then you need to bring it up. Especially to my ladies, waiting around for a man to bring up matters of the heart is a bit unrealistic. Men will go along with the relationship for as long as you allow them.
4.) Don't base it on a timeframe: You are the only person who knows how you are feeling. If you meet someone and after a few dates you feel there is chemistry and this could be the one.... then go for it. Don't be afraid to bring it up in fear it's too early for this conversation. Sometimes your feelings for someone can grow very quickly and there is nothing wrong with that.
5.) Stop worrying about what he or she will think if you bring it up: Sometimes we are so afraid to voice our opinion out of fear of looking a certain way. A lot of times women especially don’t want to look thirsty by putting it all out on the table. If you are looking for marriage it's nothing wrong with being clear about that. No one wants their time wasted and more importantly, you don’t want to waste anyone else's time.
We have to learn to be open and honest with people we are dating because we aren't getting any younger and time is truly of the essence. You know the saying "closed mouths don’t get fed"? Well, this pertains to relationships too. Your partner is not a mind reader and can't possibly know what you want out of the relationship unless you tell them.
We also have to be okay with the idea that this person may not want the same level of commitment and accept it and move on. It's better to find out now than to invest months and sometimes years in someone and their intentions are not the same as yours. Trust me I have been there before and I know the feeling of investing my time in a relationship for years that I thought was headed towards marriage only to find out that person's intentions were not the same. We had plenty of conversations about our future so I could only imagine what would have happened had we never talked about it.
Talk to your partners' ladies and gents!!!!!! A short conversation goes a long way.
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