Smile, It’s Monday: Your Weekly Wake-up Call to Create the Intimate Relationship You Desire

What got you here

won’t get you there.

--- Marshall Goldsmith

In no area of our lives does our daily process—how we go about this thing called life—hit a more significant inflection point than in relationships. In most areas of your life, what you did yesterday provides at least decent preparation for what you have to do tomorrow. For example, you use many of the same skills you refine during the job search—task completion, writing concise letters, conversing with various people about your field of interest, keeping steady working hours—once you land a job. Yet the skills you hone while dating—quickly sizing people up and comparing them to your idealized image of a partner; learning how to weather rejection; gracefully exiting when you lose interest or the other person starts acting too this or too that; pretending you understand the names of esoteric vegetables that appear on menus at restaurants you would never choose to endure or spend your money on alone—yield virtually no benefit in a committed relationship. There are new skills to learn once you take the leap into partnership: how to keep your mouth shut; how to handle not getting what you want all the time; how to develop a common vision for a shared future with another human being. While the skills that permit a thriving dating life center around individual gain, the skills that enable an intimate relationship focus on collective benefit. Once you cross the line from dating into a relationship, the first set of skills—which you have spent a lifetime developing—no sirven (“don’t serve you,” in Spanish). These skills become like extra limbs that obstruct your movement and must atrophy if you are to evolve. You become the revolutionary who must put their arms down and learn how to govern. Take some time to reflect this week on where you are in the intimate area of your life, and where you want to be. Then come up with a list of skills you will need to develop to get there. Make a few changes to your weekly schedule—such as taking a communications course, volunteering, or doing anything that helps you focus on others rather than yourself—to help you refine these skills.