5 steps to improving your chances of finding the right mate...

It’s seven o’clock in the evening and you are all excited because you met someone earlier in the day that you are about to go out on a date with. The suspense builds until you finally meet at a local restaurant. Once you get separated you start talking about each your day and the significant events that each of you had and so on. The evening proceeds great and you look forward to going out with this person again.

After a few more dinner dates you decide that you would like to go to the annual home and patio show coming to town this weekend. You ask your new friend if about going and you notice a hesitant response but he agrees to go with you so you can be together. After that response you kind of feel strange about going to the home and patio show if your friend is not going to enjoy himself. You do not want to be selfish just because you are interested in different things you can do to spruce up a home that does not mean that everyone else is. So you change your mind and ask your mate what he would rather to do this weekend and he says that he would just like to hang around the house and relax after the hectic week he has just had. He just needs a rest. You, on the other hand, feel that you would relax and enjoy the home and patio show to help you unwind from your week at work, but to keep him happy you decide to stay home. You start to think about the relationship and how you like having someone in your life, but you realize that something is missing.
There is just an emptiness that you just can not put your finger on. You especially felt it when he started talking about marriage and having a family with you. Thoughts began to rush through your mind that sort of conflicted with each other like the fact that it is great to be with someone and you would not have to worry about being alone and risking not finding someone to love and love you back. But, you know that there is just something missing in this relationship that is hard to pin point. After all, he has a great job and makes a lot of money and he wants to have a family what more could I want you ask. So what if he does not really like doing many of the things that you like to do. Perhaps those are immature things anyway you think as you try to justify dismissing what you like to do in favor of what he likes to do. You try to justify the fact that all he likes to do on weekends is sleep late and watch TV, something that bores you to death, is really not such a bad thing and you can get used to it, etc ..After speaking with many happily married people I noticed five common exercises that they all have in common:

1) They never got physically involved with each other until after they were married which allowed them to date each other and really get to know what each other on a level level than they otherwise would have been able to.

2) They met initially doing something that they liked to do. They never used a dating service or any other means of an artificial meeting. By meeting each other doing something that they both enjoyed helped to bond their relationship from the start.

3) Realizing that every day is not a good day for everyone they keep each other their space if one was a little grouchy. Hey, sometimes you just wake up on the wrong side of the bad for no real reason. They were secure enough in their relationship not to think that the grouchiness was about them.

4) They worked together and supported each other so that they could each realize their dreams. The wife of one of the couples really wanted to go back to school to become a physician but because of the expense it was a challenge. They both sat down and came up with a plan to make it work so she could realize her dreams. They had to sacrifice for a few years but in the long run it was worth it to them to work together and help each other be happy.