6 Questions to Answer Before You Commit

We all know love is blind. But we can most definitely train ourselves to be better at seeing. These are my 6 tips to gain better sight through your rose-coloured glasses, before someone else crushes them.

How much do they respect you?

Attraction and respect are not the same. Attraction means someone is strongly attracted to you sexually, feels comfort, warmth and affection for you. Attraction is somewhat involuntary and inexplicable, it either appears or it doesn’t.

Do never confuse attraction with respect.

While feeling strong attraction to you, someone can still hold no respect for who you are as a person. They do not approve of your values and beliefs. They do not support your worldview. They do not see value in what you contribute to the world through your profession. They do not think the way you choose to live your life is right.

People who are attracted to you but do not respect you, might be amazing lovers, be very affectionate and loving when you are at home alone- but then not want to see you in any other occassion. They will not be interested in knowing anything about your day, presenting you to their friends or including you in their life in any other way.

In worst cases, these are the people who physically abuse their partners. They feel attraction, so they enter the relationship, but because they do not feel respect, they mistreat their partner.

Mistreating can happen on many other levels too, ranging from verbal humiliation to psychological acts of devaluation. But the basis stays the same: they never respected you.

How do you like the way they treat their family, friends, colleagues, strangers?

When they react to an argument with a colleague, imagine they were reacting to you. When they talk to their mother, imagine they were talking to you. When they talk about their friends, imagine they were talking about you. Watch them behave with children and imagine it was yours.

Dave Berry said it best when he said: „A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.“

Nobody can keep up the “perfect version of self” forever. In order to avoid a nasty wakeup to “who they really are” after the initial lovebird period has passed, pay really close attention to the way they treat others. Because in no time, you will also be “others”.

How is their awareness of giving/receiving?

Although it feels like a buzzkill in the rose-coloured lovebird period, when all we wanna do is give our heart and soul away- we should really keep our accounting of incomes and outcomes. Meaning: How much (attention, affection, time, money, compromise…) do you give, how much do you receive? It sounds all but romantic, however it can spare us a lot of frustation and disappointment in later stages.

One of the most common dysfunctional relationship dynamics is that of the “unconditional giver” and the “entitlement holder ”. This is most commonly seen in rich old men and their trophy wives, but it also works in much more subtle ways.

The unconditional giver usually had a childhood experience of conditioned love, i.e. they always needed to achieve something in order to gain the love of their parents. They are deeply conditioned that they cannot be loved for who they are, but only for what they give. They tend to overgive, never expecting anything but little breadcrumbs of affection in return.

The “entitlement holder” has usually been a younger sibling or otherwise really pampered child, who had it all taken care of by others, and believe that they just need to exist and everything else will be provided for them.

Do you see how this mix plays so well hand in hand?

The giver will exhaust themselves giving and giving, and the entitlement holder will just take it all, without ever feeling that they should give something back.

Hence, for the giver, the following rule goes: Give once. And then stop. This can be inviting them to a dinner. Giving them a massage. Making them breakfast in the morning. Writing them a love letter. Listening to them monologuing about their problems and ideas for hours. But once! If they do not come with a return offer for you, do not continue. They will never appreciate it.

Once they offered you something in return, you can make the next offer.

This is a hard thing to do for the unconditional givers, because they have an innate desire to give and start panicking about losing the other person if they do not. But they need to break this conditioning. If your significant other does not love you for simply being, and they do not feel the need to give anything to you, this is never going to be a satisfying relationship to you. So keep your accounting from the beginning, no matter how unnatural it might feel.

If you notice someone just taking in and not willing to give, do not get bitter about it. It is just their conditioning, they are unaware of it, they do not even question it, that is how natural it feels to them to unconditionally receive. Blame their parents and siblings. Maybe try mentioning it in a careful way, like “Would you feel like giving me a massage/paying for dinner/listening to me today?” and see how they respond. If after frequent mentioning, they still do not pick up and start offering by themselves, just move on. You deserve a balanced relationship.

What kind of person do I become next to them?

What kind of characteristics does this person bring out in you? Your best or your worst? We do play a specific role for each person that we have a relationship with. And that role is unique for each person. It is created through the interplay of the two different characters and how they influence each other.

Some people will trigger the jealous bitch in you, some the joyous little girl and others will bring out the curious intellectual.

The way we behave with another also has to do with the expectations and projections we hold for each other. We are all looking for a specific kind of person, so be very aware of what your partner is looking for. Into what role they are trying to typecast you? And is that who you want to be?

We are fluid beings and we can be many different things to many different people, but we need to take care to not stray away too far from our core self- to not bend over backwards to fit into the form someone else has set for us. If someone requires us to take a nurtuting mothering role, while we are rather a free-spirited indepedent butterfly, that might start to feel confining. If someone wants us to be the fiery drama-queen, while we are rather a calm-humored rationalist, it might feel very discomforting to be constantly pushed to burst out emotionally.

Therefore be wary what this person is trying to tease out in you and if you really want this part of your personality to become dominant.

How do you feel after having spent time with them?

After you physically separate and you have a bit of distance from the romantization created by the hormones, take a moment to really perceive what feeling that person has left you with.

If you feel depleted and anxious, insecure, lonely or unmotivated- you have not been enjoying this encounter on some level. Most often the stress comes from not having been able to be ourselves with them and acting out a role that tires us. However if afterwards you feel inspired, energized and joyful, probably they are stimulating the best in you.

How much do they desire you?

Although attraction is a random factor, and it says nothing about our value as lovers or partners, noticing that our lover is less attracted to us than we are to them still leaves us with a sense of unworthiness. Being in the position of „having to win someone over“, puts us into an inferior state. And even once we have conquered the prince/ess, this feeling might linger on.

Even though you might be blinded by how much you desire someone, try to be honest to yourself about how much the other person desires you back. And do not take it personally if they don’t, because attraction in the end is only a chemical reaction we do not choose. But you should definitely choose a partner that makes you feel like you are that lush cream on the cake that they cannot wait to devour. You deserve the full epic sparkling passion fireworks and not a lukewarm flame!

For starters, these six street signs should be enough to keep you safe and crash-free on your road to the relationship you deserve. And clearly let you know when it is time to take a sharp turn in another direction.