 Today we're gonna talk about the four stages men and women must go through before they commit in a significant relationship. Now, did you hear me say significant relationship? Because I certainly wanna differentiate between casual relationships, out there, situationships, friends with benefits. I'm here to talk about significant relationship and what is a significant relationship? Well, my mind is significant relationship demonstrates an all-in component. I'm all-in. It's kind of the reason why the wedding vows were created. I mean, at the end of the day, what is the wedding vows all about? It's all-in. Now, nobody's gonna reach all-in on the first, second, or third date and certainly no one's gonna reach all-in at the 90-day mark. Although some do, certainly that has happened throughout history. Men and women have known each other for a few days or weeks and they got married. So there was certainly an all-in component there. And yet most of that was driven by the desire to be physically intimate with one another because in the past, physical intimacy was reserved for people who were in a marriage. So there's an all-in component to it. But today we're gonna talk about it from a different perspective and I recognize why it's so frustrating for women today in the dating marketplace because to some degree, you have to assess whether a man's heart is open to going all-in or is it close to going all-in. I repeat that. Is his heart open to go all-in or is it close to go all-in? See, the reality is these days, particularly for those of us that are in midlife, which I call after baby making years and before retirement, a significant percentage of men and women are divorced, probably 75% of singles over 45 years old are divorced. Now, why is this so critically important? Because divorce comes with it an emotional trauma and depending on the severity, severity, the circumstances of this exiting of the relationship, it could leave lasting wounds within a human being. I'm gonna repeat that. It can create lasting wounds. And this is true for women as well as men. I think a significant percentage of the population who is single in midlife are trying to fill the void through physical connection with someone else. I mean, a relationship. And remember, I started this conversation with are you in a casual relationship? Are you in a situation ship? Are you within a friends with benefits? Are you a booty call? So recognize that a significant relationship requires a healing from our wounds and traumas and not just the ones that happen in midlife, but certainly going all the way back to those initial wounds and traumas that happen in childhood. This is why I'm such a big proponent of human beings doing personal development, self-help and spiritual work. I've wrapped it up in the concept of what I call self-love. And by the way, this is my book, What the Heck Is Self-Love Anyway? A Journey of Personal Development, Self-Help and Spiritual Work. And by the way, this isn't a dating book. It's a book designed to really examine what could be getting in the way of what I want in life. And particularly when it comes to romantic love, you see what happens is most humans confuse attachment to another human being as romantic love, attachment to another human being. See, we can get rather attached through chemical bonding with another. If you're not familiar with oxytocin, women tend to bond with men after physical intimacy. Although men bond with women as well. We release oxytocin as well, but it seems to be stronger for women. And I'm not an expert in this field. You may wanna Google the effects of oxytocin in the early stage of the mating. But there's also some psychological attachment that can occur, bonding can occur. Centered around what's known as the Amago, I-M-A-G-O, I-M-A-G-O, or attachment. And if you're not familiar with the book, two books I recommend. Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller and the book Getting the Love You Want by Harvelle Hendricks and Helen Hunt. Many of us confuse love because we're attached to another human being because there's a deep wound in our childhood that hasn't been fulfilled. So what happens is you might be committed to a man in relationship who may not be as equally committed to you because most humans don't understand the dynamics of creating an all in relationship. And what is all in? I wanna really emphasize this for a moment. All in says we are a team. We are a team and we are going to work together as a team to build this relationship. Now what I've observed, and I'll get to the four stages and just literally give me another minute to get this other point across. What I've observed is the first 90 days is kind of the make or break period of time within the human mating process. And what I mean to say is the first 90 days where you're having regular contact with each other. See these days for people who live relatively in the same proximity, if they've gone on one or two or three dates within three weeks, it usually starts a liftoff point to whether or not they get to this 90 day mark. Now I know some of you were going, but Jonathan, I'm in a long distance dynamic. We've been communicating for months, if not years via text messaging. We've never faced time with one another. We've never spoken on the phone. Folks, I'm not speaking to you. You guys are in La La Land, okay? You guys are in La La Land. And being in La La Land is not conducive to a significant relationship where you're spending regular time together, doing shared activities and hobbies and mutual interests and spending time together and teamwork building skills that leads to fully commitment, full commitment, okay? So let's get into the four stages. Now I'm gonna read from my notes. So just bear with me for a second. But today I will apply the Tuckman model to illustrate a point. Every one of you, I want you to Google Tuckman's stages of development, Tuckman, T-U-C-K-M-A-N-S, Tuckman's stages of development describe the four stages of psychological development a team goes through as they work on a project. So I'm gonna use a professional capacity to illustrate a point for those in romantic relationship. Teams move through each stage as they overcome challenges, learn to work together and eventually focus on accomplishing a goal. So we're gonna apply a business model here to this conversation because I believe, and again, this is not a fact, this is merely an opinion, I believe this perfectly illustrates the challenges we're faced with in the human mating process. Now stage number one is called forming, forming, okay? Now mostly focus on attraction in the early stages, everything seems to be focused on the attraction two people have for one another. I was speaking to a group of people the other night, I was at a singles event and one of the women was telling me about a man she went on a date with and he walked by, they were walking out to their car after the date and she, I guess he saw some vomit on the street and he goes, ooh, like this. And that immediately turned her off. That simple just ooh by him turned her off and it wasn't attractive to her, okay? So we all have in the early stages what we find attractive, certainly it could be physical attractiveness, it could be emotional attractiveness, it could be the intellectual attractiveness for within a person. But in the forming stage, we're kind of in this dance, are we attracted to each other? Are we not attracted to each other? And most humans hyper focus on the physical attraction, the physical attraction of being physically intimate with one another and they quickly enter into a dynamic where they oftentimes have sex with one another, okay? This is the early stages of forming and this is very common, okay? Now what we have to recognize that in many cases, men can have physical intimacy with you and as I said earlier, women might bond to a man and a man might not commensurately bond to a woman. So you might want to really do some vetting before you're physically intimate with a man. Do you see this link right here? JonathanAslee.com forward slash coaching. By the way, there's a link below to do this as well. My whole coaching practice is centered around how to vet for compatibility and emotional maturity and vetting is simply the getting to know you process to see if two people are fit with one another. So I encourage you to do a little bit more pre-work before you're physically intimate with someone during this forming stage of the relationship. So forming and well, I've said it's the first 90 days, this can go longer than 90 days. That's just a rough guide, but certainly I've noticed that many women that get past the 90 days seem to have a greater chance of relationship success given that a lot of first, second, third, fourth dates rarely actually ever manifest into a relationship. And there's a whole another conversation with that as well. I think it's just important to recognize that stage one is the forming stage. Okay, stage two is the storming stage, the storming stage. This is where different differences begin to emerge. Differences begin to emerge. This could be on your communication style differences. This could mean your commitment desires might be different. Usually during this period of time, there is a level of storm. In other words, there's some friction. Now we can mitigate quite a bit of this friction by asking better questions in the early stages. This is why I talk about vetting to get a sense, are you on the same page of what you desire? Now ladies, I've said this before, I've said it again, there's basically three types of people actively dating out here. And I want you to look at my chart. Please forgive the glare. This is, by the way, listed here. This is not a fact, it's merely an opinion. But roughly there's three types of people active dating. The users, which I say is about 20% of the population. The grower and builders, those are about 20% of the population. And I might be kind of generous there. And then there's what I call as spenders. Now the users are in it for the short run. They're in it for to get what they want. These are the entitled people, these are the players, the gold diggers, that sort of thing. Those are the users. And the grower builders are those that truly want a significant relationship. But the vast majority are what I call spenders. They wanna spend time with you. They want companionship, they want connection, they want sex, but they're missing this key ingredient. So recognizing your commitment desires, see the key ingredient that's missing is a desire to go all in, to be partners with one another, excuse me, to be partners with someone, okay? And it requires a capacity to want to go all in. And let's think about what all in is. At the end of the day, it says, I wanna take care of you. Now I know many of you women have said to me, well, Jonathan, I don't wanna take care of anyone. I don't wanna become a nurse or a purse. Well, believe it or not, that is a subconscious sabotage for getting what you do want because if you already have a predisposition to a no based on some criteria, you might be sabotaging a significant relationship because at the end of the day, this is what it's all about. For those of us in midlife, this is about, let's face it, growing old with someone. Or better yet, growing with someone, growing with someone. And I recognize that those of us in midlife, certainly those that are over 50 like myself, people that are in their 60s and 70s, this becomes even more problematic because at the end of the day, what's it all about? It's about being all in that you're gonna be there for each other during the hard times. So the storming period as I just illustrated is recognizing that you're gonna have differences and are you capable of overcoming these differences? And just like in teamwork, there's the initial stage of connecting with someone, then they're gonna find their differences. And the third stage is norming, is norming. And that's overcoming differences because the whole is greater than the parts. Overcoming the differences because there's something bigger here that goes beyond, that goes beyond the surface. Now this is where a lot of couples get stuck. They get stuck in the normalization of a relationship. They get stuck in the, quite frankly, they get stuck in taking their partner for granted. They get stuck in the complacency. This happens for couples that get married at a young age, this happens, actually happens where a lot of couples reach the stage of norming, for example. They've gone through all these four stages and then you just go back to norming. We'll talk about that in a second. And it lacks the invigoration of keeping the relationship alive because within norming, it's really great to be in a state of norming in the sense that you feel comfortable, you feel safe, you feel a level of trust. That's all great. And that's so important to have a transactional relationship. There I said it, a transactional relationship. And even casual, oh, by the way, my coffee mug says swear a little, you'll feel better. No swearing on my weekend videos. So norming is actually a good place to be because it means you overcame your differences because the whole is greater than the parts. But if we wanna take the relationship to another level, if we wanna take a relationship to the deeper level, to that deep level of all in, you need this fourth stage and that is performing, performing. So let me repeat these stages one more time. There's norming, there's storming, there, excuse me, I screwed up. There's forming, there's storming, there's norming and performing. And performing is a shared vision and growing together consciously. Whatever that looks like for each couple, there's a shared vision. Now for younger couples, this is usually centered around starting a family, building a family together. This is why some of my contemporaries out there that are married with children that are young at this point in their life, they're caught up in that, they're building a family together. You see, for those of us in midlife who are gone through divorce, as I talked about, it's a whole different ball game. And this is where a lot of people get stuck because they don't know what performing looks like at midlife. See, I think back to the TV show, The Brady Bunch, it took two, I think he was a widower, she, we don't know what happened until the movie that came out 30 years later that she was divorced, but they just combined their children together and it was about building a family together in a different format. But for those of us, especially those of us that are empty nesters, those of us that have much older children, the family isn't the shared vision in the relationship. That could be grandchildren, but a lot of men in their 50s and 60s don't wanna necessarily go down that path, yet maybe men that are in their 70s or maybe their 80s might wanna go down that path. So this is the challenge for most of you find is you don't know how to perform in relationship. And what that requires is a shared vision. It requires a conscious effort to grow one another. And most men are clueless to what I'm about, what I just shared. Most men are rather clueless. That's why, you know, this whole thing, you know, I just need to surrender in my feminine, let the man lead. You're giving the job to the wrong person. Most guys are clueless to most of this content. They're winging it. And why is it critically important to understand this? Because let's face it, for those of us in midlife, do you realize that 65 to 75% of relationships? I was gonna use the word fail, but they end. Why did they end? Because they're not consciously aware of the mechanics to a healthy, happy relationship. And this is why I sometimes sound agitated. I sometimes sound righteous. Sometimes I'm screaming at the top of my lungs and it's merely just a wake up call. For you, particularly the women who follow my work because I believe you are the better directors of a relationship than men. Everything I've learned about emotional IQ, I've learned from a woman. And I believe men are trainable. You just have to learn the mechanics. And today we've just illustrated the four stages of what needs to happen for men and women to mutually commit to one another. And I'll just repeat it. It's the forming. It's the storming. It's the norming and performing. And if you don't, performing is a critical component for those of us in midlife to achieve relationship success. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating? Please let me know if it is. Post a comment below. I do my best to read all of the comments. And if you found value in this video, please tell your friends about Midlife Love Mastery, my group where you can have direct access to me on a regular basis. Simply go to my website, JonathanAsley.com and have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group. All right, I'm gonna sign off this video as I always do. First off, give myself a big, gigantic Jonathan Bear hug. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone. A pet, a teddy bear, a pillow, and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Thanks a bunch.