When Do You Know If He's Right?

by Amy Waterman, Relationship Expert

How many dates does it take to make a decision about whether or not you want to pursue a relationship?

I've always been curious about this aspect of dating, because very few women have comparable experiences. With some dates, the knowledge is immediate and instinctual. With other dates, months may pass before the endearing nature of his laugh, his smile, his character becomes apparent.

I know that I am a slow warmer. I am wary when I meet a man for the first time. I am dubious of his intentions. I read innuendo where none was intended. It takes me time to let down my guard.

It's not because I'm naturally a suspicious person. It's because, in the realm of relationships, I've been burned enough by bad apples.

I'm representative of most women my age. By one's thirties, one has experienced enough bad relationships to associate the dualities of pain and pleasure with a man. One is never sure how much to trust.

But this isn't natural.

Twenty years ago, I loved all boys. I played with them innocently and full-heartedly. Boys were my playmates, my cohorts in crime, and my teammates for games. I could think no evil of boys. Their strange preferences for dirt, body odor, cars, and constrictive underpants were simply idiosyncrasies of fascinating playmates.

As I grew older, I realized that boys could no longer be trusted to play innocently with me. My first two male friends in college were cool--a jazz musician and an Apple Mac gamer--until I realized they "liked" me. I quickly dissolved the friendships. I wanted the innocent companionship and friendship of my childhood male schoolmates. I didn't realize that maturing would erase that possibility completely.

When do we women lose our innocence with men? And can we ever regain it?

In my line of work, one great danger is to take relationships and attraction too seriously. Many women feel that the potential of the man they are seeing is a matter of life or death. Instead of having fun playing with him (like a child with a favorite playmate), they evaluate his potential as a father. They situate any future relationship squarely in the realm of adulthood. The rest of their lives is at stake.

My flatmate tells me that the definition of compatibility as a couple is when his or her issues are compatible with your issues.

That's a pretty adult view of the situation.

I have a different view. I believe that you know a man is compatible with you if he likes to play the same "games" you like to play. Maybe you like to tease in a certain way; maybe there's a certain game in bed that you like to play. Maybe you like to go out; maybe you like to mountain bike. If he likes to enjoy himself and have fun and laugh in the same ways as you, you've found a potential soulmate.

We all knew back in childhood that there were some children that we could play with for ages, and there were others who liked games that didn't interest us. It's the same with men and women.

Yet in our attempt to find a suitable man, we often forget to look for one that we have fun with. One that makes the kinds of jokes we find funny (and laughs at our jokes). One that is up for any crazy scheme we propose. One that will make our life happy and light-hearted, not just important and successful.

Life is serious and dry enough. We don't need relationships to replicate those patterns.

Relationships should be a haven from life's dry seriousness. You should be able to feel like a child with your partner, unembarrassed at the silliest of games. Together, you will be responsible for forming a life, raising children, making a home ... but all this will only be enjoyable if you can laugh together.

I have been out on dates with many successful, intense, highly attractive men. I admire them, appreciate them, and learn much from conversations with them. These are the men who will shape the world. No woman can fail to respond to their power.

But as for myself ... in my little, humble world ... I envision my ideal future as one in which there is always laughter, in which I can return to childhood with my spouse and play those games that I didn't get to play enough before I grew "old." I want us to be able to chase one another around the room, have pillow fights, and wrestle. I want us to tease one another, share silly jokes, and dissolve the seriousness of a working day with the magical spell of humor.

So, I suppose, the answer to my question is that it takes exactly the number of dates you need to decide whether you've found a companion you can play with. Some kids find a game they can play with each other right off the bat. Other kids end up trying lopsided games that one but not the other likes until they either find a game they like in common or give up.

Trust your child-heart's instinct. Ask yourself ... if you were a kid, would you play with this guy? Or would he be one of those kids who tries to control the game, or change the rules, or cheat?

A partner who makes life more fun is a treasure indeed,

All the best in life and love,

Amy Waterman - Host of "How to Be Irresistible to Men"

How to Be Happy in Relationships

We desire to be in a happy relationship. However, we know little about how to be happy in our relationships. Seldom do we find a person claiming to know the tricks of how to be happy with his relationship perpetually. Our demands from our relationships are never ending. Our wants are not steady and we seek new goal everyday. Thus, our fluctuating desires prevent us from being completely happy. It is a vicious cycle, which leads to more confusion and sometimes depression.

We choose to be happy or not to be happy. Therefore, we should maintain transparency in our relationships and appreciate every moment that we have with our friends, family and fellow beings. The most crucial criteria of how to be happy is to work towards keeping the relationship healthy. But, this target cannot be achieved alone. Everybody involved in the relationship has to co-operate with each other to make their relationship successful.

Be it in any relationship, the most common complaint today about unhappiness is the lack of effective communication. Whether it is a formal relationship between a boss and subordinates or the co-workers or an informal relationship between friends, family and loved ones. The thoughts and demands of person often do not get across clearly. We have lost the knowledge of how to be happy. There lies a huge gap between the actual idea and the message sent across. A lot gets overlooked due to the lack of patient hearing. It not only helps us in understanding each other better but also makes the communicator feel important.

Happiness can be the simplest thing to achieve. Unfortunately, we have forgotten how to be happy. Man has made tremendous progress in the last two hundred years, and our lives have suddenly morphed into a fast paced race to outwit and win over one another. We are constantly competing with each other even in the simplest of relationships that we share like friendship or love. If we have to learn how to be happy, we have to learn to love unconditionally. Trust, respect, appreciation and patience are vital aspects of a relationship. Once both the people in a relationship are happy, they would discover how to be happy in a relationship.

Happiness in relationships does come from the knowledge of how to be happy. We often tend to be neglectful about our personal relationships due to the demands of our profession. We must remember that to be happy with our lives we should be dedicated equally towards our career as well as our personal lives. Happy relationships can only be achieved when we actively search how to be happy together and strive towards it.

Common signs your partner may be cheating on you

An unfaithful husband, cheating wife, any kind of disloyal partner, is an ugly prospect. And that feeling of being betrayed by someone we thought we could trust more than anyone else is one of the worst. People who discover their partners have been unfaithful to them go through a hurricane of different emotions – anger, sadness, shame, dejection, sometimes even relief. It’s a grieving process, not of a person that’s died, but of a relationship and level of trust that’s instantly disintegrated. In short, it sucks.

But before you can begin “grieve” that loss of trust, or simply throw caution to the wind and ditch your partner for good, you need to make absolutely sure your reaction will be 100% warranted. You need to know without doubt whether your lover has, in fact, double-crossed you by looking for, finding, and partaking in, an affair.

The only guaranteed way of knowing this, aside from finding damning physical evidence or seeing the affair with your own eyes (both pretty rare), is by hearing a confession straight from the horse’s mouth, by communicating your suspicions with your partner and listening to what they have to say – however heartbreaking or relieving their response might be. But before you take that big step, there are a few simpler and smaller steps you can take to make the whole process, the whole “investigation” and confrontation of your partner, easier and more factually accurate.

The first thing you should do is look for some of the most common signs/groups of signs people produce when they cheat. I’ve listed 3 of them below. Read over and think about each and carefully consider if they apply to you, your partner and your relationship.

1. Changes in sex drive and sexual behaviour.

Sex is almost always an integral part of a happy and healthy relationship between two people. So when one of the two, regardless of whether it’s the guy or the girl, begins to cheat, it doesn’t come as any surprise that changes in the way they feel about having sex with their partner can be brought about. There are two main ways these changes can manifest themselves. When the cheater initially begins their affair, they may – out of guilt and in an effort to avoid the newly formed affair being rumbled – actually increase the amount of attention they pay their real partners in bed. Conversely, and usually a little while after the affair has begun, the cheater may appear to have a loss of sex drive. They, for some reason, seem to not want to be intimate with you as much as they used to. Once again, this can be attributed to guilt, but more often it’s to do with a fear they’ll reveal their infidelity through they way they behave before, during and after having sex with you.

2. Peculiar changes in habits & schedule.

When people cheat, they invariably change their behaviour and/or habits in some way, small or large. The reason they cannot avoid these alterations is because, no matter how infrequently or secretly they see the person they’re having an affair with, they MUST – at some point or another – go out of their way to do so (and thereby break or change habits and behaviour). So, look for recent and pronounced modifications in the times they come home/leave the house (and whether the changed times ‘repeat’ weekly), increased usage of the phone or computer for no obvious/innocent reason, and other differences in the way your partner acts and behaves. You know your partner’s old habits and ways of living better than anyone, so draw from that knowledge to compare how they might have changed them and to decide if the changes are to be taken as possible indications of betrayal.

3. Miscellaneous indicators of infidelity.

Lastly, there’s the group of infidelity indicators that don’t fit in any other box or under any other title. They’re the things you notice, question and cannot innocently explain away. They’re the things you spot but almost choose to forget because you’re so unsure of what they may or may not mean and whether, ultimately, they are true signs that your partner is cheating on you with someone else. Here are just a couple of miscellaneous indications of infidelity:

A. Your partner no longer seems to get angry with you when in the past they always seemed to be picking a fight or getting worked up over any tiny issue. Cheaters often ‘let their partners off’ because they want as little confrontation (which could lead to a discovery on your part) as possible.

B. She or he frequently shifts the focus onto you. Cheaters often asks their partners more questions about how their day went, how they’re feeling, etc, again, to shift the attention away from them and their guilt.

Remember, when you suspect your partner may be cheating, always take the smaller steps – by looking for the kinds of subtle signs listed above – before taking the biggest step of all: confronting them. Doing so will give you the very best chance of a happy, or at least a more manageable, final outcome.

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