 Does it seem like people don't have time for a fully committed relationship? Well, if you answered yes to this question, let's examine it a little bit deeper. So one of the biggest issues I feel we are facing today in the dating, mating and relating realm is the vast majority of people don't really have a clue as to what do they want in a relationship? What do they want to experience in this relationship? What do they want the relationship to look like? Really think about that for a moment. What do you want to experience? Well, most everybody wants to experience all the good things of a relationship. They want to experience all the joy of happiness and companionship and doing things together and physical connectivity as well as emotional connectivity. And we can all kind of say that that's what most people want out of a relationship at a 40,000 foot level. What I mean to say up in the sky kind of thing. Most everybody thinks along those lines. But do they actually make the time, do they actually make the time to want to create this? Think about that the word to create this. What does it take to create a healthy, happy relationship? Or as I oftentimes say, a juicy, delicious, healthy, happy relationship. What does it take to make this work? Now, a lot of times people will say, well, I don't want a relationship where I have to work at it. Well, of course we would all like kind of relationship. You wouldn't want to have to work at it. And yet if you feel, if you have a lifestyle that's busy, okay, if a person has a lifestyle that's so ultra busy, can they actually invest not just the time, well, that's most of the critical thing, the time, but also the awareness of how to make this work. You know, it's interesting in a recent live stream, I shared that what I call the relationship hierarchy, the hierarchy of relationships, and at the top of the pinnacle, I put down marriage. For some people in midlife, they don't want to get remarried, but that certainly is the fullest commitment in a relationship when two people join together and say we want to join assets together, we want to live together, we're going to create a partnership with one another. That's certainly an intentional way of approaching it, right, when you choose to get married. Or let's say in the case of my beloved night, we chose to live together, we chose to choose a separate place and we didn't move into either one of our homes, we chose a separate place to build a life together. Think about that, build a life together, that included picking out furniture, that included making plans for holidays with our family, we are creating a life together. It looks like you wouldn't maybe in a marriage, they say maybe because some people get married for all the wrong reasons at midlife. And certainly the same with living together, but we're choosing to create something. Now right below that would be a relationship where you spent maybe three or four days and nights a week together doing shared activities and hobbies, having mutual interests, spending time with family and friends, traveling together, teamwork building skills, both in your personal and your professional life, intimacy, both physical and emotional intimacy. That would be kind of the next step right below living together is where you spend a significant time together. And there's some intentionality, it's making plans to see each other and after a couple gets kind of rooted in that relationship to get rooted into it, they have kind of a routine. Now ultimately the question becomes do they want to eventually live together, get married, that's for another conversation today. But I also want to look at those layers below. So if that's the top of the pinnacle, those three I just mentioned, what's at the bottom of this hierarchy I should say are the cyber relationships. Those are the relationships where people are communicating on their devices. And I can't tell you, in other words, maybe it's long distance that includes them to physically seeing each other. Maybe they have traumas, maybe they have fears where they're afraid to go outside of their realm, actually physically meet someone and they find comfort and safety behind the screen to connect with someone. I usually think of these folks, oftentimes they are, they're very hurt and wounded, not all but some are very hurt and wounded, and they're afraid to actually lean into a relationship. Now right above that would be the friends with benefits relationships. These are people that want the connection, they want that brief companionship, but they're not even capable of leaning into a relationship. And I will tell you, a lot of women find themselves in these kind of relationships and they don't even know about it. What I mean they don't even know about, they're not really aware that that's what they're experiencing. Because right above that, and this is at the bottom of the hierarchy, are the situationships. These are the relationships where people are spending some time together, but there's no label, there's no direction, there's no real, there's no understanding of if this is monogamous or exclusive with one another. And what's interesting in this hierarchy, there's the top I just shared in the bottom, and in between, which is the largest number of people experiencing relationships today, are casual relationships. And this is where we find most everybody today. And that's when I'm going to lean into this conversation a little bit more on what to do when you find yourself in this casual type relationship. And more so if someone is too busy to actually invest in this type of relationship. Because the casual relationships are the ones where people have companionship, connection, and sex, companionship connection and sex, without any real commitment, not any real commitment. Now, you might have monogamy, agreed monogamy, you might have agreed exclusivity. You might in some of these cases, they're, they think they're in a casual relationship when they're actually in a situation ship, okay. I'm sorry I laughed at that. It's not fair for me to laugh at those people that think they're in a casual relationship that are in a situation ship that wasn't fair of me because I was judging that person. I laugh because what is so distressing today. So distressing today in our dating realm is the fact that most folks are in these casual relationships and it's very sad because many of you ladies you beautiful ladies out there want something more serious. So I want to share something with you I wrote my notes today. The biggest problem with dating and relationships today is most humans have little or no clue on how to make a relationship work, or worse they did they lack the desire of commitment. This is why my girlfriend turned me on to a book she read right after her divorce. It was called making your second marriage a first class success. I thought to myself, what a great idea like looking at your past relationship and say your past marriage and say, what does it take to make it work to really have an understanding of the mechanics of a healthy happy relationship. What does it take to make a relationship work. And I also wrote most humans have no clue how to choose a partner based on compatibility is one of the reasons why created my private coaching program. My job is to teach you how to choose people based on your personality and if you need help with that check out the link below to a free discovery call with me to see if working a coach is right for you. That's my area of expertise I teach you how to that and I got to tell you something the minute women invest in my program I get calls all the time from Jonathan I met a great guy I met a great guy. I met a great guy and they know the difference. Because if you don't know how to choose a person in a seat where we're swimming in a sea of strangers would sing it swimming in a sea of strangers. What I mean to say is, at the worst case scenario of a stranger you can find yourself with a tender swindler or worse a sociopath. That's kind of scary, or a scam artist trying to scan you money. Because the reality is is when we are investing time with people we don't know and how they operate in a relationship and we don't know who their family and their friends are. This is actually rather scary and we're going to talk about this in particular in just a moment because this is critically important. So knowing how to choose people from a sea of strangers is so important. And number three most humans struggle with emotional maturity and have weak relationship skills. It's interesting I pulled out an old book the other day that I was just reading called how to be an adult in relationships the five keys to mindful loving by David Rico. And I thought to myself, you know, just checking out some of the chapters, you know, what's so fascinating is the reality is is most people struggle with their emotional maturity because they struggle within themselves. They don't genuinely love themselves. Do you know the number one emotional health issue for most everybody is I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable and I'm not likable. It's one of the reasons why I wrote my book. What the heck is self love anyway a journey of personal development self open spiritual work by the way there's a link below to all the good to get all the books I recommend. Why is important to do this because if you're if you're lacking from within think about you've gone through a contentious divorce. Maybe you have an ex spouse that's precluding you from seeing your children. Or making it contentious. Maybe you've got issues at work. Maybe you have health issues for those of us are getting, you know, in our, the senior realm. All of this weighs on our emotional maturity, not to mention the childhood wounds and traumas, the childhood wounds and traumas that affect our belief system as we get older. You know, it's interesting. You know, at age roughly 40 for men in particular, they go through what's called the tunnel Allison Armstrong calls it the tunnel. Call it when you're blueprint of where you thought your life was be like allies with your reality. We call this midlife crisis. But for men, we thought our life would be one way and then it wasn't and there's a there's a real emotional has them that can be opened up and fell into. And for many men they choose drugs and alcohol to soothe the pain or other men choose being incredibly busy having busy lives and this is true for women as well. They create such busy lives, creating nonsensical busyness to avoid their emotions. So we're dealing with these types of people and I will tell you roughly probably 80% of the population is either got clinical issues or they're they're dysfunctional in their capacity to lean into a healthy happy relationship. By the way, I hope you enjoy the sunrise that is happening behind me right now I was just looking at that. Let me know if you do. By the way, if this is resonating with you please post a comment below right now if this is resonating with you please hit that like button please share this video please subscribe to my channel as well. And lastly, most humans these days. Initially in the dating realm act very self centric. It's more of a take mentality than a give mentality. In other words, I want you to think about this. On a first date. Would you give a guy $10,000. You wouldn't he's a total stranger. You know, would you offer to pay split the bill. It'd be an interesting thing to do, even though men may offer to pay that might be a nice thing to do. Because I will tell you that humans operate from a self centric place in the beginning stage of dating. It's more about what I can get versus what I can give. For men it's oftentimes can I get sex out of this person that's why the three date rule seems to be most prevalent today. In other words, if they've invested time in someone they want to get sex out of it they want to take from you. That's not all men just happens to be a high percentage of men. In other words, it's all about their individual needs. How many people actually date going I want to be a giver from the very first date or they're beyond. And when we're dealing with a self centric population it's very difficult to build what's the most critical point of this conversation. And that's what I want to lean into for the last few minutes of this video. Because when we think of that hierarchy I just shared with you when we think of that hierarchy of of marriage versus the cyber relationships. I think the most critical component to understand is the understanding of trust of trust. This is the most important piece. Trust isn't just about fidelity. I mean fidelity is important in trust. But trust is when you're building a relationship with someone is can I count on you to have my best interest at heart? Can I count on you to have my best interest at heart? Do you care enough about my feelings as much as I care about my own? And that's ultimately the critical piece in a juicy, delicious, healthy, happy relationship. Whether you're married, living together, there's three or four days and nights a week together. And in casual relationships most women in particular are struggling with these two things I'm going to invite you to explore. And that is this is where I want you to ask these questions of yourself. What does it take to feel safe in a relationship? What does it take to feel safe in a relationship? For each one of you it's different. Certainly for my I feel like within my beloved and I is we had a plan to how to take this long distance into short distance. And by agreeing to move in together this boat that agreement to live together helped me at least for myself and I believe for her know that this is someone not just the someone I want to explore a fully committed relationship but they're willing to invest their physicality and their financial resources into this relationship. Ask yourself and in many cases many of you are experiencing what you feel is safety but it's a false sense of safety because if you're feeling fear in your relationship but you think you're safe that's a false sense of safety. And number two. What makes you feel safe what makes you feel safe like for us what I shared with you is that agreement. And thankfully her lifestyle and my stop lifestyles were due to this because if either one of us were overly busy. It was going to be incredibly difficult to build the deep roots of trust. And as I said in many videos. Deep roots of trust usually come from spending two three or four days and nights a week together doing shared activities hobbies mutual interest spending time with family and friends traveling together teamwork building skills both in our personal and our professional lives and intimacy physical and emotional intimacy. These help build the deep roots of trust open honest communication being vulnerable being authentic being transparent with one another. And if you're not experiencing a level of safety in the relationship. Then ask yourself is this the relationship worth investing in ask yourself that. Because frankly today especially for those of us in midlife. The days in front of us are going to be shorter in the days behind us or are shorter in the days behind us. And my invitation for you is don't settle on mediocrity know your standards ask yourself all of these questions before you invest in getting to know someone. Because as I said before most people operate from a self centric place not all most. Okay fine ask ask the deeper questions early in the process to see if you're aligned with one another because as I said also when we're meeting strangers. And we don't understand compatibility when we don't understand how to make a relationship work we can be sitting swimming in a sea of uncertainty and then in that sea of uncertainty. We can find ourselves going down to I was about to say a rabbit hole but what's it called in an ocean where it's a funnel. You can go down one of those and find yourself lost hurt and worse disappointed and bitter and jaded after the fact whether you're a man or a woman. Is this sinking in is this resonating with you please let me know. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this post a comment below as I said earlier share this video with friends. And sign up for my channel and please hit that like button. All right I'm going to wrap up this video as I always do first off give myself a big gigantic job and bear of self love. I'm going to reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay I'm going to ask you to turn to someone a pet teddy bear pillow. If enter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love and let's face it we could all use more love in our lives thanks a bunch. Bye now.