Top Questions You Should Ask You!
So you feel you’ve fallen in love again! Yet, there’s this imaginary bee buzzing around your ear that’s making you wonder: “Is it love—or rebound? How do I know? “
Then you feel that punch of doubt in your stomach. The thought goes through your mind: “Oh no—am I making another mistake?”
Making a healthy love choice involves luck, timing, emotional bravery, and lots of self-knowledge. In my many years of doing research and counseling with thousands of women and couples for my books, I learned that one of their top fears is that they don’t trust their love judgment.
They’ve just been burned and blindsided, so how can you rely on those intense feelings of love with a new person—especially if these feelings blossomed so soon after your previous love disappointment.
I wish I could absolutely assure you that your new relationship is good for you, but I have created this list of questions and thoughts to help you assess your feelings—and learn to be your own love detector!
Top Questions You Should Ask You so You Can Answer:
Is it Real or Rebound?
1. How lonely or soured and scared about life and love am I?
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the highest, how would you rate your loneliness and negative view of life? Are you “filling to kill” that love hole in your heart?
2. How much do I want to “prove to my ex” that I can get someone?
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the highest, how would you rate your need to prove to you and your ex that you are lovable? Are you grabbing the next decent-enough person so you can feel better about you?
3. What is making me feel such urgency about finding a new love?
What incidents could be making you feel that you have to find someone now? Are you getting older? Is your biological clock ticking? Are you the only cousin who is single?
You can test your urgency factor by asking yourself: “Am I rushing to reveal too much about myself with my new partner—so I can ‘be sure’ that I will be loved and accepted?”
“Do I want—or did I already have—sex right away to “seal the connection?”
4. Do I “just feel relieved” to have someone—anyone—in my life?
Don’t be “conveniences” for each other. You risk taking yourself off the market and not being available for a wiser match.
More importantly, your haste reinforces your negative view of you as someone who had better grab the next sort of good enough person because that’s about all you should reasonably expect.
Ouch! Isn’t that a painful sentence to read? These love conveniences also prevent you from being able to tolerate your feelings of anxiety and loneliness. Happy people who are successful in love learn to manage, tolerate, and “float” with these negative feelings in order to prevent hasty choices.
5. How much do I really understand about me and my dating and love patterns?
Ask yourself these questions: “Why did I choose this previous partner?” “What issues and patterns do I carry over from my parents?” “Why did we break up?” “What have I learned about me?”
6. Do I or my new partner talk and think a lot about our exes?
If you said yes, then you and your partner are most likely not over your past hurts. You might be struggling ineffectively to figure out what went wrong. You might even be afraid to face the truth.
Don’t volunteer to keep yourself in the dark about you. Get counseling—and stay with it beyond that premature feeling of “Oh, I get it now.” Often, you really don’t!
7. Do you and your partner actually like and respect each other?
Solid relationships are built on mutual respect. You treat each other well. You like the values that you share. You don’t say cruel things to each other—privately or publically.
8. Do you like who’ve you become in this new relationship?
Take your eyes off your partner, and look at you. Do you like and respect who you are now in this new relationship? Are you tolerating abuse and disrespectful behavior? Are you neglecting your children for the sake of this new person? Are you the martyr who is running the show because your partner is just a warm body who really can’t do anything effectively?
9. Have you known each other long enough to see how you each react during good times and bad?
Every week there are stories in the news about once-famous stars who are now addicted or who attempted suicide. You are shocked. You really liked that actor. People’s strengths are only as good as the person is in bad times. Know your partner’s coping styles—and yours.
10. Are you a good “problem-solving” team?
Happy, smart couples don’t waste time on bickering—or slamming doors and walking away. They get solution-oriented. How do you handle your disagreements?
11. Do you each feel laughter and joy in being with each other?
Happy couples laugh together. They often say that a shared sense of humor makes them feel closer. Why? Humor is based on a world view that includes degrees of anger and competence.
Negative world views incite envy and rage.
A shared sense of competency allows you to laugh at yourselves without putting you or your partner down. Over time, happy couples develop their own “humor shortcut code” that communicates that you think alike and are happy that you found each other. Do you have that?
12. What are my “inner voice” and intuition telling me about this new relationship? Why am I not listening?
Pretend that your doubts and that inner voice are suddenly the headlines in your local newspaper or on social media home pages. Imagine headings such as: Chicago Woman (your name) Stays with New Man out of Loneliness. Or: Atlanta Couple (your names) Regrets They Rushed Love and Sex.
Your best strategy is to take your time, tough out the bad feelings, and focus on learning about and listening to you!
Thank you for stopping by. I hope these tips help. My mission is to help you stay smart, brave, sweet and intuitive about love, life, and work. Want to be part of my next book about empowering your intuition about love, happiness, success, and other things? I would love to hear your story.
Please go to my website, www.lovevictory.com. Click on the Contact tab in the upper right. Sign up for my free gift to you! Provide your contact information, and in the Message box, write the word ANGEL or the word INTUITION. I will send you the information! Thank you in advance! Your participation will help others!
The National Association of Social Workers has included her on their list of the Fifty who has Contributed to the Profession. She is the subject of biographical entry in many Marquis’Who’s Who publications. Her latest self-help, research-based books are Smart Relationships and The Love Adventures of Almost Smart Cookie, the cartoon companion book where you can follow a year of Cookie’s love missteps and learn about yours!
