 So one of our members recently posted a question the group and asked for my perspective on it, which I'd like to share right now So let me give you some back story. She's in a relationship with a man for about six to seven weeks It appears that he's a great guy in every sense He's monogamous with her. They're exclusively Seeing each other He helped he was very romantic during Valentine's Day, not very romantic, but it was somewhat romantic on Valentine's Day He's an access service kind of guy and she says that He's really perfect except he's not very verbally Expressive or emotionally expressive in the relationship and her question was centered around are they dating or are they in a relationship and how to go about Asking where they were at this relationship stands like in other words, where is this relationship going and She wants some feedback on that. So I thought that would be a great topic to talk about today So most of you know some of my content centered around what I call the users The spenders and the growers the users the spenders and the growers Now users are people who are in it for the short one or for their own benefit In other words the relationship is all on their terms. These are players Love bombers. These are entitled people gold diggers that sort of thing. They're the users. They're using people now the growers and builders are the ones who Actually genuinely want partnership with someone they're Evaluating this person to determine if it makes sense to be in partnership with this person Those are the growers and the builders and yet the vast majority of people are what I call spenders What they are is they they see companionship connection and sex They won't they want to spend time with you for those three things without any real Forethought on commitment and partnership Okay, so why does this happen in midlife? She's a woman in her 60s. He's 55 years old Okay, when you think back in your 20s and 30s the Predominant reason to mate with another person was to get married make babies and raise a family Okay, that was the reason why you you partnered with someone the real challenge for most men and Women is they don't know what partnership looks like When it's maybe their second or third significant relationship given that roughly 75% of singles over 45 years old are divorced We've had one significant relationship and in many cases there's been a divorce and another Significant relationship or some short-term relationships that happen in their lives and what's challenging for most human beings is especially as they are in their second or third chapter of their lives a Really third or fourth chapter in their lives and I'm looking at chapters in 20-year segments Is that they don't know what partnership looks like? Okay, so that being said What can she do in this particular case? What should she say? Well, I think first and foremost I think it'd be important to ask this person in other words pull yourself back from this relationship and ask yourself If he isn't the one do you want to know about it today? Or do you want to know about it when you're even more and more invested in this person? Okay, ask yourself that do you want to know about it today? Because the fear of what I'm about to suggest causes women to hope that something will change okay, so Six seven weeks in I would clearly want to know what does Commitment mean to you and what does commitment look like for you and what type of committed Relationship are you looking for what type of committed relationship? Are you looking for? What does commitment mean to you? What does it look like for you? What type of commitment now? But I mean to say type of commitment. Well monogamy and Exclusivity meaning monogamy is not having sex with other people Exclusivity means not actively seeking to date new people is one form of commitment Okay, another form of commitment is Merging finances together another form of commitment is living together another form of commitment is getting married together Another form of commitment is true teamwork with one another and just because he put up Some gift that you gave him on his wall Isn't necessarily teamwork. What is real teamwork as we get into that for those of us that are in our late 40s 50s or even 60s. What does teamwork look like in? In my particular case with my beloved it was teamwork meant we we moved in together. We share expenses together That's a level of teamwork. She helps out in my professional capacity. She helps me shoot videos We I help her with her family. I help her with the health issues. These are levels of teamwork beyond the surface Now Did we know this in six or seven weeks? You know actually in our case. Yeah, we knew very quickly that we wanted to explore a relationship That was partnership oriented that we were going to grow together We actually didn't really begin the relationship without that agreement going in So now you're six or seven weeks in And you want to ask these tough questions. Well, he might simply say I don't know what I want see Folks, I didn't choose my relationship with Marie Under the guys that I didn't know what I wanted. I was crystal clear on what I wanted See when someone's crystal clear, then they make the choice of who they want to invest in And I made the choice to invest in her and thankfully she made the choice to invest in me See in this particular case what you might be experiencing is what's known as a casual relationship And what it means is a casual relationship again is monogamy. It's exclusivity. It's companionship connection and sex without any real direction That's a casual relationship Now you might be thinking well, it's only six or seven weeks in yeah It's still casual because it wasn't established right from the get-go I want you to think about this back in the day You know used to be not less than a hundred years ago that if two people wanted to have sex They had to get married why mostly because there was a consequence of having sex with someone that wasn't Your husband meaning if you had children together, there was a consequence to that And now we don't have those consequences because of birth control and whatnot And certainly sex is something anybody can you know, we are free to have sex whenever we want At the same time when you become physically intimate with someone you bond with this person So shouldn't it make sense that we have deeper conversations in the early stage of dating right from the get-go Before you actually begin that bonding process So you're six or seven weeks at what do you do about this? You have a real sit real heart to heart you lay your cards on the table say look I genuinely care about you And I find myself You know becoming attached to you And at the same time I don't want to get attached to a person who doesn't want the same things as I do So the type of relationship I'm looking for is a relationship where we spend three or four days and nights a week together Doing shared activities hobbies mutual interests spending time with family and friends Traveling together teamwork building skills both in our personal and our professional life Intimacy both physical and emotional intimacy that leads to either moving in together getting married. That is what I want What is it that you want doesn't mean you have to want what I want? I just want to know what you want And if it's not the same thing, maybe we should walk away from this And a lot of men are winging it. They're winging it. They're winging it. They're like, I don't know what I want Well, those men who don't know what they want make terrible partners Not to mention those men where the ground underneath them doesn't feel solid Meaning that their life doesn't feel solid so they can't fully support a fully committed relationship Folks, it's incumbent upon you to to actually speak up To speak up and I'm going to ask Marie to stop doing what she's doing because I hear that noise and it's affecting me right now You guys can't hear but I could So thank you for saying you're sorry. My point is folks It's incumbent upon you. You can't leave it up to the guy to know what you want You have to tell him what you want in relationship if you're going to have any chance of actually having this relationship have any legs And when I say tell him what you want It's it's more of tell him what you want in the first off have clarity on what you want Have clarity on the type of relationship you want. That's first and foremost have that clarity And second Describe that to the other person and see if you're on the same page with them. That's what I did with my beloved We agreed that we wouldn't explore we weren't going to do this unless we were going to explore a relationship together We were crystal clear now. I led the charge in this particular case. I happen to know what I want You have to know what you want express it And then see if they're on the same page and if you're not then you make a decision Do you want to invest in a person that may not be there in the long run? For Jonathan, we're just dating. We don't know each other too well folks Here's the bottom line It doesn't it well first off it takes about 40 hours to get to know someone To know if you really want to explore a relationship with you It takes about 100 hours to build trust with a person face to face time to build trust And it takes about 200 hours to really experience this person as a good friend Okay, that's about the amount of time it takes. By the way, this isn't the world according to Jonathan I heard that from Jay Shetty Who wrote the book eight rules of love. I believe it's called so If you if you too if he if you've spent 40 hours together He knows whether or not he wants to explore a relationship with you Okay, the next 60 hours is are you going to build enough trust? To know that you want partnership with this person and it's better that you're on the same page Versus investing in someone who doesn't want what you want That's my two cents. Anyway, so coming back to the question Hey, you lay your cards on the table now. Would you rather know now that it's A relationship worth investing in or would you rather know? Would you rather want to know now if this person isn't going to be a long-term partner? Or would you rather figure that out six months later after you Spent time together you've been used and then you're back out there Trying it all over again. Anyways, that's my invitation for y'all All right, I hope you found value in this video if you do, please post a comment below I'd like to hear your thoughts as always if you find value in the group Please tell your friends about midlife love mastery send them to my website Jonathan as a dot com Have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group and I'm going to sign up This video as I always do first off give myself a big gigantic job of self love I'm going to reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay I'm asking you to turn to someone a pet a teddy bear pillow give itter 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. Bye now