a new study was published recently saying that one in five adults are in love with someone other than their partner.   Are so…many people are not fulfilled in their current relationship that they must find satisfaction with another partner?  Are they not committed enough to their current partner?  Or were they not selective enough when they initially got together?  Or have they changed so much whilst they have been in the relationship that their partner no longer fits as they did at the start?  This is amazing to me as I have preferred my own company to a relationship with anyone who is not a good match and whom I did not love.  Obviously I have been living in the dark, like a mushroom???

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romantic movies tend to spill over into our relationships and can create unrealistic expectations of others.  The word romance comes from 1300 meaning “story of a hero’s adventures,” “vernacular language of France” (as opposed to Latin), and originates from Old French romanz “verse narrative, the connecting notion is that medieval vernacular tales were usually about chivalric adventure.  We may have lost a sense of adventure when it comes to our relationships and are left now to live this out through Hollywood movies?

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Web 2.0 & social media have created a culture where we almost have to market ourselves to be social with others. In this changed culture it is helpful to ask whether we are buying into our own brand or being our authentic selves? Fulfilling relationships with others are not possible unless we are real, brands and marketing don’t count when we are down to the wire. We need to be comfortable with our full range of possibilities: positive/negative, courageous/afraid, sad/happy, vulnerable/strong, loving/distant, kind/cruel and all the other gamut of humanness.

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success means different things for different people and it is great if both partners in a relationship have similar definitions. The word success meaning “result, outcome,” comes from the Latin successus ‘an advance, succession, happy outcome’. The combined effort of more than one person, can certainly contribute to easier, more sustained success than one person solo. Success can be very tangible & solid or it can be much more subtle depending on the type of success that is desired. There are four main categories of success are:

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the biggest challenge in matching a couple is to match each individual’s requirement for commitment. The word commit comes from Latin committere “to bring together” from com- “together” & mittere “to put, send”. It seems to be an integral & important ingredient in making any relationship long term and to give it staying power. The big ‘C’ word is what scares a lot of people, particularly men, but if we have nothing binding us together, a relationship will slowly fade away. However the reality is that we all have different ideals and images about what commitment means for us and this is not often addressed.

‘A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting.’ Helen Rowland

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