Define Your Dating Deal Breakers Like It's Your Job ('Cause It Is)

Do you know your dating deal breakers? If you don't, you are dating blindly, and going into each date with eyes wide open could be a lot better for your love life.

Knowing those black or white non-negotiable criteria could help you to:
-Discover what you really want in a relationship
-Avoid wasting time, money, and emotional energy on people who you’d be incompatible with
-Prevent yourself from getting into a toxic relationship or marriage with an unsuitable partner

Being trained as a Marriage & Family Therapist-with more than a couple years of clinicial experience under my belt-I look at relational problems holistically. I see the issues as a result of the systems or institutions--like marriage and family. I have my matchmaking and dating coaching clients try to figure out their own dealbreakers by analyzing their family and relationship history.

Today, I will share a few tips with you, because, well, the world would be a better place if we all avoided our dating deal breakers.

Let's start with where it all began: Your family of orgin. You could really clarify your dating deal breakers by analyzing your family, so, go ahead, have a field day there!
To begin with, you should understand how your parents’ relationship and other models of relationships (in your extended family) impact your ideal relationship vision--i.e. what you want out of your love life.

You can do this by recognizing the positive and/or negative qualities of your parents’ relationship and/or those of other family members. For instance, if you grew up with a controlling mom, you might not want a controlling husband or wife. (And if you do, you might just be a masochist!)

Identifying the dating deal breakers is all about looking for your triggers. Take inventory of the qualities in your parents that would really bother you in partner. Make a list of your parents' "flaws", and, then, avoid, avoid, avoid! Focus on finding someone with the qualities you liked in your family members and ditch those bad ones to avoid the pain. Trust me, if they have bothered you in your family since your childhood, teen years, or early adulthood, they are going to look even worse on a partner.

Healthy relationships don't hurt---at least not all or most of the time. To attract one, your must understand your core values. To do this, you should-you guessed it-look to your family and thevalues that they passed down to you. Choose the ones you want in a romantic relationship, and make sure you are living out those values in your solo life first. Then, it'll be that much easier to find your person and live your best life with him or her.

As you can see, your family provides a lot of clues to discovering what does and doesn't work for your love life. Your own relationship history does too. If you are interested in learning how to discover more of your dating deal breakers by analyzing your relationship history, stay tuned for next week's blog, because I will cover just that. Meantime, be well!

PS: If you’d like help analyzing your dating deal breakers and coming up with a plan for finding or creating a healthier relationship, remember my St. Patrick's Day sale is still going on. I invite you to a half-priced Strategy Session -with an investment of $125-if you book before April 1rst. To learn more, send me an email at [email protected], subject “Lucky” for details.