Is It Short-term or The Real Thing?

I had a conversation with a woman friend of the family today who was asking advice on what she should do with a relationship she was in. The bottom line was that they had been dating for a while but that, though she really liked him, they were experiencing some rough spots. She was asking if she should break it off and if so how.  She said she had heard an adage that you can’t ever make a long term committed relationship out of a short term recreational one, so she felt she had to call it quits. It’s a question I hear a lot, and one I would like to respond to more publicly.

First of all, it is not that can’t take a short term relationship and make a long term committed marriage out of it, many great marriages have started with no intention of ending up that way (married).  It’s just that the two types of relationships are based on different values and have different intentions.  A short term relationship – one that may include fun and lots of recreational type of sex – is mostly about you. So ultimately what has to survive in short term relationship is you not the relationship.  By contrast a long term committed relationship is focused on the relationship and therefore what must be preserved is the relationship. You actually take second seat to the relationship. So what happens when two people get into relationship is that they ultimately discover their differences.  It is inevitable that you will have differences simply because you are different people.  What committed people do is that they commit to resolving those differences. The differences and their associated difficulties become the reason for breaking up in a short term relationship, but they are the essence of what makes a committed relationship strong.

So the answer to my woman friend was not what she had called to find out. I told her that this sounded like one of those pivotal points where she had to decide if they wanted to make a go at a long term committed relationship. If that becomes the case – and it can only become the case if both parties agree to it – then this impasse becomes the first of many hurdles that they will encounter and must overcome. Just because the impasse had seemed problematic did not mean they had to break up. Unless, of course, this was only a short term adventure. In that case, she had better take care of herself, which most likely meant she needed to break the tie. “And how do I do that,” she asked.

Swiftly and bluntly – in no uncertain terms. In relationship, I told her, men do not understand subtleties. In fact it often requires a stick of dynamite or a two by four across the temple. We often don’t get it when you like us and want us to come after you , and we certainly don’t get it when you want us to go away.  So be clear and to the point.  Clean cuts heal faster and after you want out of there as quickly and cleanly as you can. Short term relationships are about you not him.