Should You Leave or Stay ¦ Dating Advice for Women by Mat Boggs

When you're dating, how do you know if you should stay and give it a chance, or if you should leave because it's really not developing into what you want? I want to show you something really quick. Check out this plant right here. What kind of tree is this? Is this a mango tree? Is this a California pepper tree? Is this an avocado tree? If you said avocado tree, ding, ding, ding, this is an avocado tree, and yet it doesn't look like an avocado tree right now because it's just a seedling. That's often what we do in relationships when we're dating. It's like we want what feels like the full-blown connection, the full-blown chemistry, the full-blown relationship, the avocado tree version, and then when it's developing, when it's really new, we're getting the seedling. Well, today, I'm going to share with you three things that you can look at that will help be guideposts for you to help you know, should you give the relationship a chance and let it develop and let it grow, or should you cut yourself loose and go find a different relationship that's actually what you want? Check it out. These three guideposts that I've put together for you, I call the three H's. They all start with H, and the first one is healthy. When you look at this relationship, does it feel healthy to you? In Gottman's research out of the University of Washington, they found that the number one predictor of a relationship's longevity is whether or not the couple could repair with one another. Did they have good communication skills? Did they know how to communicate their feelings, their wants, their desires? Did they know how to navigate conflict and actually bring it back to a place of peace? These skill sets are so important. And so, when you look at the relationship that you have, every relationship is going to have those moments when we're in conflict, we're in disagreement, we get offended, we get defensive, we feel criticized. It's not whether or not you have those kinds of moments, it's what you do with them. So, when you look at the relationship with you and your partner, do you have the ability to recover from these arguments, or are you guys sweeping it under the rug and just not talking about it and saying, well, we're just not going to do that anymore? But you never actually have that conversation where you own your part, he owns his part, you say you're sorry, you repair with one another, and then you set a new agreement. So, healthy is the first thing that you want to look at, just like a tree. That little seedling, if it gets diseased, if it gets like stuff growing on it, you're like, hmm, I don't think this thing is going to make it all the way to the tree. And that's exactly what unhealthy communication patterns like criticism, defensiveness, contempt, or sarcasm, stonewalling, things like that are like infections in the communication roots of the relationship. So, is it healthy? Do you stand on top of those good practices? That's the first thing that you want to look at for, hmm, do I want to give this relationship a chance to grow? Quick example of this is New Year's Eve, many years ago when my wife and I were just dating, I was absolutely not at my best and she was not at her best, and we got into the biggest fight, New Year's Eve, where I didn't have a plan, I didn't know what we were going to do, and she was kind of criticizing me for not having a plan, and we were both in crappy moods. And so, we drive home from this attempt to go out that didn't work out, so now we're sitting in the parking lot of this apartment complex, I am so mad, and I feel like I'm mad at her. The truth of the matter is I was mad at myself for not having a better plan and not being better at communicating. She was mad at me, and I knew in that moment, if she left and went home, that we were probably going to break up because we had planned to spend the night together. And if she went home, I was like, this is probably the end, and it was that tense silence. And one of us was waiting for the other person to repair, and I'm so grateful for her because she said at that moment, she was like, I thought she was going to just say, well, I'm just going to go home, and she was going to wait for me to say, no, no, stay, but she didn't do that. She goes, want me to come inside? And I said, yeah. She leaned in a little bit, I leaned in a little bit, and it's ultimately what allowed us to fully repair and come back together, and those moments are so critical. So the first sign is, is this healthy? Do we have good, healthy communication? The second guidepost is happy. In other words, are you generally more happy than not? It's amazing how you have probably certain friends or maybe you've been in relationships like this, I certainly have, where the chemistry is so off the charts and the highs are so high that we are willing to put up with a lot of lows. And if you actually look back over the course of months, we got more days fighting, more days stressed, more days in anxiousness, not knowing what's going to happen. Are they going to call? Are they really in and all of that? More days below the happy line than above the happy line. And if you actually assess your relationship, if you were to score it on a scale of one to 10, like every day, 10-level happiness around the relationship, one is like totally fighting, conflict, or anxious, not knowing, uncertain, that kind of energy, where would you be on the scale? You want to be tending more towards the eight, nines, and tens of this relationship than lower than five. And when I looked at some of the relationships that I was really into because the highs were so high, way more of those days were unhappy than happy. So if you just analyze the last 30 days in this relationship or however long you've been with them, what's the dominant feeling tone that you've had? Is it sad? Is it angry? Is it happy? Is it calm? Is it kind of lukewarm? If you're lukewarm, if you're above a five, then give it a chance to grow and you're going to see one of two trajectories happening. You'll either see it becoming more and more fulfilling or it will become less and less fulfilling. I often say this, if you're wondering, give it another chance. The question isn't, is this the one? When you're dating, take that pressure off of yourself. Let this be the question, do I want to see this person one more time? In other words, is it more enjoyable than not to hang out with this person? And then let yourself lean in. So we've got healthy, we've got happy, what's the last H? We needed an H word that meant chemistry. So we picked horny. There we go. Do you have sexual chemistry? Is there that passion? Is there that spark? Because at the end of the day, it's the sexual chemistry that separates this from just a regular friendship. You can have friendships that are healthy, friendships that are happy, friendships where you love to hang out, but it's that attraction in this relationship that creates this beautiful romantic chemistry where you say, I want this person as a partner in my life. So here's the catch. A seedling, sometimes when you're dating somebody and it feels healthy and it feels happy, but it kind of feels like the chemistry is so-so, there's not a lot of attraction, then what you want to do is you want to give that relationship three to five dates. Because often what'll happen is there's this light switch that'll turn on. It'll be like this friendship that catches fire. You'll notice I've had so many clients say, I didn't have that much chemistry for this person, but then like on date four, on date five, they really started to open up. Or the person themself, ultimately what happens is there's enough trust and connection that's created where they finally open their hearts more and that ignites the chemistry. And then they kiss and it feels amazing. On the other hand, I've had clients take it too far where they've dated a guy like three months hoping that it would be a friendship that catches fire and it just doesn't. There's a sweet spot where you don't want to cut it off too early, but you also want to trust yourself and the chemistry that you're feeling. If when you kiss, it feels like you're kissing your cousin, like this is like awkward, doesn't feel good, trust that, trust that feeling and say, you know what, maybe we're just better off friends. On the other hand, if you go on one or two or three dates and you're like, I'm not really feeling the chemistry, at least give it four or five dates because there's something magical that occurs and it can be a friendship that catches fire. So these are great guideposts, healthy, happy, horny, do you feel turned on by this person to say, yeah, this has directional correctness, that this little seedling of a relationship could potentially grow into the full-blown beautiful relationship tree that I have been envisioning in my life. I would love to hear from you. What are the signs that you look for that help you know the person you're dating really does have potential? What are you seeing? What are you feeling? I would love to see that. Go ahead and post that in the comment section below. Here is to you attracting and creating the most amazing relationship of your life. I appreciate you. Thanks for watching. I'll see you soon.