There are many single people around, and although some single people are longing for a steady relationship, many of them, in spite of contrary messages in the media, are quite contented to be single. You may be a naturally independent person, who has no need of an ongoing relationship to be happy. On the other hand, you may prefer to have many casual partners rather than committing yourself to one, and this is quite a common situation for those in their teens and twenties. The bottom line here is what you as a person are wanting, rather than what the media or your friends think you should be wanting.
On the other hand, you may really want to get into a long-term relationship, with the possibility of having a family, and just find it very difficult to make the early moves necessary to attract someone. Or it may be that, having got into a casual relationship, you are unable to convert it into a permanent one. For some, too, there is a real fear of intimacy, which may also go together with low self-esteem, and this can inhibit your efforts to get into a relationship. This chapter will hopefully help you if these are the problems you have.
Probably the most reliable way to start a relationship is by getting to know someone in the context of work, leisure activities, studying together, religious meetings or involvement in voluntary service. The advantage of these situations is that you are under no great compulsion to form a relationship, and it can proceed at a comfortable pace, or maybe not develop if it doesn’t seem right for you as a couple. Some of the ideas that I mentioned in Chapter 1 are relevant: sexual attraction, mutual interests, toleration, shared ideals, ability to compromise and feeling comfortable with intimacy. All of these help the couple to know that they will have the possibility of a successful long-term relationship. It also helps if there is some similarity between you, in the sense of being able to share the same jokes and the same sad feelings. But beware of the concept of ‘falling in love’; it is marvellous if it happens, but it is the exception rather than the rule, and if it does happen it brings with it a number of expectations which can lead to great disappointment if they are not met (see Chapter 1).
If, however, you don’t have the opportunities to meet new partners as mentioned above, you may find that you have a problem in finding someone with whom you can get into a relationship. A lot of single people find it hard, for reasons including lack of money, lack of time or living a solitary life, to meet the kinds of people that they could relate to intimately. As I said, it is usually better to meet people in a context in which there is no expectation of forming a relationship there and then, for example a social event such as a party or a gathering. Failing this, you may think of using more formal ways of getting in touch with possible partners.
Dating agencies have been doing this kind of work for decades, following on from the work of marriage brokers and matchmakers. Indeed, in some immigrant groups these marriage brokers continue to work, arranging marriages for clients, sometimes in different countries. Most Western dating agencies take on clients by getting them to fill in a questionnaire with biographical details and preferences. These are then matched to other clients, and the agency gives them the opportunity to meet each other. Unfortunately, whether the agencies work by computer or by ordinary manual matching techniques, the chances of meeting a perfect match by this means are quite small. It is probably better if you can find an agency with a large number of clients, since then there is a wider choice. You would still have to keep an open mind as to the chances of success, and it might be better to treat it as a kind of trial and error process to be entered into for the sake of experience.
The latest fashion of ‘speed dating’ puts a number of self-selected people in a kind of blind date situation, and they have three minutes to chat with each prospective partner to see if they would like to date them. The chances of getting together sexually are apparently quite high, but whether these relationships last is not known.
These are very variable, and the better ones do provide a friendly and cheerful atmosphere where you can meet new people. There is, however, especially among the male clients in these clubs, an expectation that the women they meet will be ready for sex on the first date, and this may not be the best way to meet someone who is looking for a longer-term relationship. Misunderstandings can arise in this situation, when perhaps one partner is interested in a one-night stand while the other is more interested in forming a steady partnership.
These are like the dating agencies but without any kind of checking procedure. The danger is that you may meet someone who has sexual needs that may not match yours, and may even turn out to be risky to you. There are some couples who have met in this way and get along very well, but in many other cases the outcome has been either embarrassing or even traumatic for one of the partners. The Internet has a great variety of dating and sexual chat rooms, and most of the time they are harmless. However, even here you may find people posing as something they are not, so you should be careful who you get in touch with, especially if it then leads to a face-to-face meeting. You should be careful also as to where you agree to meet someone you only know through the Internet or a magazine contact, and always meet for the first time in a public, reasonably busy place, preferably during the day.
Shyness is one of the difficulties that may stand in the way of your forming a relationship. Shy people are often unusually sensitive to what others may think of them. They go around almost expecting that people will have a low opinion of them and not want to know them. This can of course develop into a vicious circle, with the shy person avoiding contact with others and never challenging that belief by finding out that some people actually like them. If you can overcome the habit of keeping to yourself at gatherings, at work or on vacations, you may find that it is not so difficult to get together with like-minded people. It is probable that some of the people you are afraid of are just as shy as you are, and you may be able to help them to be more outgoing themselves. There is no shame anyway in admitting that you are shy or self-conscious, and a potential partner may be attracted by that side of your personality. Try to think positively, in spite of your inner doubts and fears. Have faith in your own likeability. Think back on other situations, perhaps in school, in which you were approached by others wanting to make friends with you, and then try to go into the present situation with happy memories. Make your main focus of attention the other person you are with, what they are saying and how they seem to be feeling in themselves, and try not to think about whether they like you or not. Getting involved in a joint activity, such as a cause or voluntary work, can help you to make friends, and then the problems with finding something to talk about can be made a lot easier. There are many useful ideas and techniques to be found in the companion book in this series, Gillian Butler’s Overcoming Social Anxiety.
This too is quite a common problem affecting single people who want to get into relationships, and it may go together with fear of intimacy (see below). If you feel that you have little to offer a partner, it may be very difficult for you to approach anyone with confidence. A reasonable level of confidence is in itself a good basis for forming relationships, and if you can begin to believe in yourself a little more you will have a better chance of beginning a relationship. There is a whole series of treatment approaches to help those with low self-esteem, and these include challenging your preconceived ideas and predictions, fighting your tendency to criticize yourself and enhancing self-acceptance. The companion book in this series, Melanie Fennell’s, Overcoming Low Self-Esteem, offers a guide to helping yourself to overcome your own low self-esteem, using the above techniques among many others.
This is another problem which can inhibit those who would like to be in a relationship. There are many types of intimacy, as I explained in Chapter 2, and one of these is emotional intimacy. Some people, particularly young men, have a fear of opening up their emotions to friends or potential partners, and they need to develop ways to overcome this. For example, if you have this problem you might experiment with being more open in small areas of your life, areas which are not very near to your inner feelings, such as your enthusiasm for something such as cars. Experience in this area can help you to open up more at parties or in places where you might be able to meet partners. It will gradually become easier as you practise it, and then you will be able to be more open and confident in talking about a wider range of subjects. Another way to help yourself in this respect is to think more positively, believe in yourself and give yourself positive feedback when things go well for you.
Your problem of not being able to get into relationships may be due to your lack of social skills. This is not always associated with shyness, or with low self-esteem, but it can be a bar to making meaningful relationships with people, whether for sex or friendship. The first thing to remember in a social situation is that it helps to smile. This encourages the other person, and if you make eye contact at the same time they will feel more positive about you. Don’t sit too far away or too near, as both can have the effect of putting the other person off. Try to keep your tone of voice quite relaxed, and don’t come across as too intense. Try to keep up a flow of conversation, which contains a mixture of general topics, talk about you and talk about the other person. The most common thing that people who have social skills problems complain about is that they can’t think of what to talk about. It might be a good idea to think up a few useful topics in advance, to use when the conversation dries up, and you can feed them in when the time is right. Recent items of news, especially those that are entertaining, would help: also discussion of television programmes or recent sporting events. If the other person asks a question, try to make your answer more than just a yes or no, but more of a new idea with the possibility of further discussion. It is not, however, a good idea to keep the conversation going too long, especially in the early stages after meeting someone new. If you like them, make an arrangement to meet them again, and keep them interested in the things that you haven’t said as well as those that you have.
Case example
Gemma, a single woman in her late thirties, was seeking help with her difficulty in forming relationships. She didn’t smile very much in the session, and the therapist asked her to try a social experiment on herself. She should try smiling whenever she was with other people, and see what the results were. In the next week she smiled a lot, and she was asked out on two dates, one of which led to a long-term relationship.
Some men and many more women have a sexual drive which is not biologically compelling. They can go for long periods without sex, and may not feel that the lack of it is a major problem for them. If you are like this, there is probably no urgent need for you to get into a sexual relationship, and you should then consider the possibility of a platonic, companionable relationship with someone. If you are comfortable in the person’s company and have some shared interests, you should probably cultivate their friendship, and you then have the option of going for a more intimate relationship with them in due course, or keeping the friendship as it is. In fact, it is generally found that people who move from friendship to sexual interaction on the way to marriage usually have a more stable relationship than those who get attracted sexually and then try to develop their friendship as a couple. This suggests that it is often better to meet potential partners through mutual interests rather than because of sexual attraction (see above), and there is no problem with moving towards a more intimate relationship by this route. It should not be a reason to feel different or left out, but problems may arise either if your chosen partner has a very high sex drive compared to yours, or if you both have a low sex drive and want to have a family (see Chapter 7 for more advice on this situation).
If you have difficulty in forming heterosexual relationships, it may be because you are looking for someone who, for you, is the wrong kind of partner. You may have to consider your sexual orientation. These days it is relatively easy to have a good life as a gay man or a lesbian, and many homosexual relationships are stable and life-long. There is also more of a variety of setups within these communities, with steady and exclusive relationships, open relationships, an active social life within the gay, lesbian and bisexual clubs, and support groups for those with problems. The most revealing question to ask yourself is ‘Are my sexual fantasies centred on partners of my own sex or the opposite sex?’ This also applies to watching passionate or explicit scenes on television or in films: are you more interested in the person of the same sex or the opposite sex? If your attraction is largely or exclusively towards your own sex, it would be sensible to think about talking to someone you know who is gay and deliberating about the possibility of ‘coming out’. The answer to these questions might, however, depend on your age at the time: if you are very young, you might leave it for a few years before you make the decision, because sexual orientation is not necessarily fixed in teenagers, and your preferences may alter. In any case, many people are bisexual, and attracted more or less equally to both sexes. If you are still young, or if you are clearly bisexual, you might leave the decision as to whether to ‘come out’ until you meet someone of either sex with whom you feel really comfortable. Whatever your orientation, the general advice in this chapter should be helpful, as the process of dating, entering a relationship and making it permanent is quite similar whatever your orientation.
Generally this is something you should be careful about. On the first date it is probably better to get to know each other, perhaps doing a little flirting and exploratory touching, but not getting into a deep sexual relationship there and then. Again, you have to remember that romantic and sexual encounters are shown in films and on television because of their dramatic impact rather than showing life as it is. Don’t expect to fall into each other’s arms on the first meeting, but take it more slowly, and get to know each other first. It’s also usually unrewarding to have a sexual encounter just because you want the experience, or just to please the person you are with, if you don’t feel attracted. This doesn’t mean, however, that you have to be ‘in love’ with each other in order to get together sexually. The sexual interaction may happen for all sorts of good reasons, only some of which are to do with love. But a good deal of unhappiness can come from entering a sexual relationship for the wrong reasons.
If you are attracted, it is better to allow sex to grow out of your general relationship. It is also sensible to think through some of the complications that may follow, for example if you are going to go on meeting and if you are going to ‘become an item’ as the relationship deepens and you get closer. Have you considered what might happen if one of you stops desiring the other, or you decide not to go ahead with becoming a couple? There are many ‘one-night stands’ in which one of the two partners is disappointed that it never went further, and they did not go on to have a longer-term relationship.
Some people find it difficult to touch and be touched. This can be a handicap when it comes to entering a new relationship, because so much of the exchange in this phase is to do with physical touch. A casual touch on the hand or shoulder can be a good start, and this can then lead on to more intimate contact if it seems right, for instance if you are dancing together. One possible approach if you are very fearful of touch is to go to a situation such as dancing instruction, in which you are expected to touch your partner as part of the process of dancing. Another way to tackle this fear is to go for a massage, at a fitness centre or similar place (I mean just for a body massage, not for the more intimate services which are sometimes offered), and allow the masseur or masseuse to help you to get used to being touched. The main therapeutic change is likely to happen when you feel so used to being touched that it isn’t an issue for you any more.
The fear may be of sexual intimacy, which may be overcome by some of the exercises suggested in Chapter 7, as long as the partner is prepared to cooperate. If, however, you are without a partner, and can’t even get close to having one because of your fears, you may need to use a cognitive approach on yourself to get ‘psyched up’ for the sexual encounter. You could give yourself cognitive self-statements about being a success if you have achieved a little more than the last time you attempted it. The key is to take it little by little, without scaring yourself or your potential partner by your attempts.
These are not at all uncommon, as mentioned in Chapter 3. Sometimes one of the partners is older, and in this case the sexual response may not be as rapid and enthusiastic as the other one expects. Be prepared for this, especially if you are an older man and your new partner is younger than yourself. Similar problems may arise if you have had sexual problems in the past, and this can apply to either men or women in the new relationship. Whatever the problem, it should be hinted at quite early on that there may be some difficulty the first time that sex happens (see Chapter 7 for further help with this situation).
If you are entering the new relationship having broken up with a previous partner, you may be looking after your children, either as the main carer or at weekends and holidays. It is important to make this clear to the new partner fairly early in the relationship, and not to spring it on them as a surprise during a visit. There are other complications that can arise, for example if you are still seeing the previous partner and feel that you do not want to be disloyal by rejecting them too quickly. It is better to slow down the progress of your new relationship until the previous one is clearly over.
This is sometimes more difficult than you expect, not only because you have to tell your relatives (including any children) about the new situation (see Chapter 11), but it may be that previous partners are still ‘on the scene’ and may feel sufficiently rejected by your entering into a new relationship to make difficulties for you as a couple. Again, it helps to discuss this well ahead of the possible crisis, and work out a strategy as a couple for dealing with it. You have to be fairly confident in the stability of the new relationship to declare to others that it is a reality.
In new relationships the question usually arises as to whether and when to introduce your partner to your parents and other family members. It may be a crisis, and you have to remember that your relationship with your parents goes back as long as you can remember, while the new relationship with your partner is very young. This means that the new relationship is more fragile than you probably thought, and crises can occur if you don’t plan the meeting carefully. For example, it might be better on the first visit to have an exit strategy from the meeting if things get too difficult, and you should also share with your partner what your parents are like and how you relate to them. Discussing the visit afterwards can illuminate your own insight into your family, but you should be careful not to become too defensive if you feel that your partner is critical of them. You are then faced with a ‘triangle’ as described in Chapters 2 and 6, and you will have to employ your skills as a negotiator in helping your partner to fit in with your family and vice versa.
Similar problems may occur in letting others know that you are now an ‘item’, and there may be some conflicts of loyalty, especially with those friends with whom you have had an emotionally intimate confiding relationship. As advised in Chapter 6, the new couple should act as far as possible as a team in this situation, as long as they are both committed to their future together, and this may mean becoming more distant from old friends and indeed old partners.
Sometimes the crises brought on by these introductions and readjustments are sufficiently serious to lead to the partners doubting whether the new relationship is viable. If you feel this way, it may be better to reconsider your future together before making the decision to move in together. It is harder to break up after this has happened, and it becomes more of a trauma at that stage. However, if you are both clear that living together is the right thing to do, you should then go ahead with the planning.
If you still feel confident enough to move in together, then you should do so. It will often be that one of you will move in with the other, rather than getting a new place as a couple. There can be territorial difficulties here, in that the person whose place it is may have feelings of ownership of the space, and be less than fully tolerant of the new partner and their ways (see the case example below). This is something that should be negotiated (see Chapter 5) and you should be sensitive to the other person’s needs over these issues. The main difficulty is with putting both of your belongings in the space that one of you previously occupied alone. Then there are problems such as whether you have separate places for your things or not. These questions may seem trivial to the couple who move in together to share their lives in a glow of mutual passion, but in reality they usually come up at some time or other, and it is better to be prepared for the difficulties than to stumble over them when you have been living together for some months. The process of moving in is a good test of your mutual abilities to negotiate and communicate (see Chapter 5), because it is all a question of being positive towards each other and giving as well as taking. It needs to be taken as seriously as any major life decision.
Case example
Maurice (57) and Vivienne (56) had been married for two years; both had been widowed. She had three daughters and he had two, all the girls being in their twenties. They had moved into the house where Vivienne had lived with her husband, and there were a number of territorial tensions. For example, her daughters had the run of the house, while Maurice’s girls had to ask Vivienne’s permission before visiting. Maurice always felt that he was in her house rather than theirs. Vivienne was emotionally volatile and outspoken; he was quiet and diplomatic. The problem was that, although his sex drive was fairly high, he was diffident about approaching her, partly because she might be critical if things did not go well. Eventually their territorial dispute was solved when they agreed that the daughters should all be treated more or less equally, and he asserted himself over some other domestic arrangements. Their sex life, too, improved as his confidence grew.
If you have great difficulties in solving the problems of sharing space (and this can be worse for those who have lived alone for a long time before moving in together) then it might be sensible in the early stages to keep your separate places, and to stay together only some nights of the week. This way you will gradually acclimatize to being together full-time, and you can then decide at leisure if and when the time is ripe to move in full-time.
This is often a safer option than moving in to one partner’s place, because the territorial issues are not as acute if neither of you has put their mark down before the other moved in. On the other hand, moving is a traumatic event in itself, and if both of you are moving the trauma is potentially doubled. However, you will avoid the territorial issues that I mentioned in the last paragraph. In the long run this is the best option, because one partner’s previous residence will always be seen as being preferentially theirs. Quite often it is also the place that they shared with their previous partner, which may increase the insecurity of the new partner.
This remains an issue for many couples long into their relationship. They may have got together mainly through sexual attraction, and may not have many shared interests. Some couples accept this, and work on the basis that they don’t do many things together except at home. Others prefer to try to share their lives more, and this can be easier if they got together out of mutual interests and friendship rather than purely through sexual attraction. The most important aspect of the problem is for the couple to work out a reasonably comfortable way of living together while both carrying on a satisfying life, either together or separately, outside the home.
This is more a matter of choice than it was 40 years ago, when most couples who lived together were in fact married. Now there are many different arrangements, of which marriage is only one. It is still quite an undertaking, not only because of the legal aspects but because of the social statement that you are making and the fact that it implies more of a lifelong commitment than simply living together does. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, the number of couples marrying is decreasing year on year, while the divorce rate is increasing. At the same time, gay and lesbian couples are seeking to legalize same-sex marriage. There is also a tendency for couples who live together to have the same rights and duties as married couples, including a sharing of resources in the case of divorce, and inheritance of property if one partner dies. None of these have yet become law, but it may be that time will reduce the differences between the married and the not married.
In some couples the relationship has continued quite comfortably while they are living together and enjoying social and leisure activities, until they decide to get married. Then an increased level of conflict may lead to intractable difficulties between them. In some cases it is to do with the state of marriage increasing the expectations on both sides that they will do more together, that each will be more compliant towards the other and that life will be easier. This usually doesn’t happen, and the process may set up a tension between expectations and reality which both find disappointing. The fact of having more security as a couple, and feeling that the commitment on both sides is greater, may compensate to some extent for these tensions, and make the couple more stable, but all couples who marry after living together for a time should be wary of the stresses that go with settling down as a married couple. In reality they both have to work harder than before, and need to use negotiating and communicating skills more than they have had to when previously living together.
Some couples of course have their children before they get married, but for many of them the fact of marrying is a catalyst for wanting children, and the two contribute fairly equally to their sense of stability and togetherness. Either way, the decision to have children is a big one, and while for some couples having children is easy, for others it is a major problem, with infertility and in vitro fertilization needed, especially if they start the process later in life. Some prefer to leave having children until they have their own house, but for others it is a decision that is made for them by unprotected intercourse and the passions of the moment. In this day of having what one wants very easily in other areas of life, it can be quite frustrating to some couples that it is difficult to conceive children, and for many couples the restriction of their lifestyle following the birth of children is a major stress. Prospective parents should consider these issues before committing themselves to parenthood.
Observant readers will have noticed that, in developing the topic of how to get into relationships, I have come full circle, and have entered the area that I explored in Chapter 1. The family life-cycle, as presented there in its rather simple and well-ordered form, begins with the couple meeting, then forming a relationship, getting engaged, getting married and having their first child. In a way, the whole book has been somewhat circular in this way, and of course we are dealing with a series of repeating circles in talking about relationships which spiral down from one generation to the next. I hope that the book has given you some insight into the problems inherent in relationships and the solutions that can be found through goodwill and ingenuity. The long-term stability of families may be enhanced if couples can find better ways to communicate and to negotiate so as to remain together and provide the much needed support that helps children to grow up and form satisfactory relationships of their own.
• You may be quite content to be single, so don’t let social or media pressures force you to enter relationships.
• The best way to get to know potential partners is through everyday contacts at work, classes, sports activities, etc.
• Ideas are presented as to how to use dating agencies, singles’ clubs, magazine advertisements and the Internet.
• Suggestions are given on how to overcome shyness and low self-esteem.
• Ideas on improving comfort in social situations and improving social skills are offered.
• You should be clear whether you really want a sexual relationship, and also what you own orientation is.
• The stages of moving from friendship through sex to living together, then having children and marrying, are outlined.