How do you know if someone is a good fit for you or not? Is it the circumstances you’re in right now or are they just not a good fit? The main thing is when you’re thinking about is this the tough time – has the relationship always been a tough time or are you just noticing that it’s tougher than usual?
Join relationship expert Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com and Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com as they talk about ways to find out, if your partner is a good fit for you.
Cathy: How do you know if someone is a good fit for you or not? Is it the circumstances you’re in right now or are they just not a good fit? This is Reid Mihalko from ReidAboutSex.com.
Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com. What’s your answer?
Cathy: What I would encourage you to do is look at the situation you’re in. Are you in a rough time? If you look over the course of your life as kind of normalizing things, are you going through unusually tough times right now? Did someone close to you just pass away? Layoffs, some emotional health issues that could be coming up, kind of look at what’s going on in your life. Even the best relationship is going to be taxing in somewhat in a tough situation. Kind of normalizing and saying, “Well, this is an unusually tough time right now. We’re both super exhausted. The baby hasn’t slept in three weeks.” Maybe …
Reid: That’s a screwed up baby right now. If he haven’t slept in three weeks, get that kid to a doctor. Oh my Lord. I just had to say that.
Cathy: Yes. Looking at your life in general, and also look at, I like to look at other relationships I’m having. When I’m super tired and stressed, I don’t always know it but I would usually notice that I’m feeling like many of my friendships too are feeling a little more rocky because my life is stressed. Usually, when we’re in the midst of stuff, we don’t always realize we’re in it, like a fish in water kind of thing. How are my other relationships going right now? If a friend had the life that I have right now, would I say, “Sweetheart. You just need a weekend away,” or “Wait till this passes before you make any big decisions.”
Reid: Yeah, I mean I can roll on that. Those are good stuff. Good job. I’m impressed. The main thing is when you’re thinking about is this the tough time or is the relationship, has the relationship always been a tough time and you’re just noticing that it’s tougher than usual. Start there as well as look at is it the relationship or my partner going through something tough, either there’s a sickness, illness in the family, something on their end that’s making them harder to be with when for the most part they weren’t hard to be with the whole time. Of course you could start dating somebody right when a family member gets ill but that’s a lot different than this relationship is just tough no matter what’s going on.
Then there’s looking at your life, your ecosystem, is there stresses in your life that are making it harder for you to be with the person that you’re in a relationship with? Like what you said, look at your friends and community like, is it tough all across the board for you? If it’s tough all across the board, chances are not everybody in your life is a horrible fit then your answer is you’re going through a tough patch of something. It may be something you can’t even identify, something else that’s going on in your life that’s kind of in your blind spot but if it’s just one person who’s a tough fit and it happens to be your partner and they’re going through something, then it’s probably less about them and more of the situation. I mean, you want to look at it from a couple of different elevations and just see how it’s going.
Last but not the least it maybe that you grew up and had some transformation and now everybody in your life who was driving you crazy before but you didn’t know it, now you know it and you may want to look at how you’re going to upgrade your friends, your community, your partnerships, whether taking them all to the workshop you just went to, taking them to Relationship 10X Live or whatever other workshop or buying them a self help book but it is possible that you just went through your own growth spurt and then a lot of your current relationships are maxed out. Look there, usually, if it’s that, that’s amazing and I send you condolences if you have to cut loose some of your close friends because you outgrew them but you outgrowing them means that you get to be the role model that they get to grow up to.
The only reason I’m throwing this into the mix is this happened to me in one point in my life and I didn’t know what had happened. I thought it was me and what it happened was I actually was no longer appropriate for some of my relationships that I was having. They were still awesome, we just were no longer a good fit. Sometimes it’s your own growth too.
Cathy: People can grow with you. Tune them into these Youtube videos for example, you’re doing great things by being here and exploring new ideas and they might just need the same thing.
Reid: Don’t send them this video first though. Leave your comments below and let us know what you think.
Cathy: Bye.