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Relationship Advice You Wished Someone Gave You

12K views 119 replies 51 participants last post by  Real talk 
#1 · (Edited)
If you could go back in time and give your eighteen-year-old self a couple bits of relationship advice, what would they be?

Mine would be:

1) Relationship problems don't get better when you're married (marriage is NOT a solution to a problem - no matter what the problem may be).

and

2) The maxim "no good deed goes unpunished" applies twice as much when you're dealing with someone who's selfish / insecure / damaged / malicious, or otherwise disordered.

of course eighteen-year-old me would just be like "Yeah, yeah, yeah... Hey are you 21? Can you buy us beer? You can keep the change."
 
#94 ·
If you're a Christian man with strong integrity, do not let your guard down and believe that what someone professes to be is who they truly are, regardless of their apparent religious upbringing and views. Do not assume that professed faith relieves the need to properly vet the person you're considering an LTR with.
 
#4 ·
You cannot fix crazy.

You cannot make someone else happy. They must choose happiness for themselves.

If anyone ever puts you in the position of choosing between them or your own self-respect, pick you. Every. Time.



These are all things I've discussed many times with my, now 20 year old, son.
 
#7 ·
Look for a partner, not a project.

You are responsible for your own happiness.

Don't be afraid to take chances in life.
 
#8 ·
You're never going to "earn" love.

Being alone is better than being just a paycheck.

If someone has to pressure you to "take the next step", don't.

If someone uses sex and affection to manipulate you or to try to change your personality, that's not love or a relationship you should maintain.

Women's or a particular woman's opinion does not define your actual worth.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk
 
#9 ·
The same advice I give to people today. Prioritize. Most people these days seem to prioritize for the best looking partner they can get, and then just hope or expect that person to be good in other ways. Then they wonder why the person they married or dated for a long time was just a POS. Well, you weren't looking for someone great, you were just concerned about great looking. So, prioritize for a better person before anything else.
 
#11 ·
Don't make someone a priority if they only make you an option. When interested in someone, don't give if they're not giving back or you'll just end up with a taker. If you want more, you have to require more. The old Dr. Phil quote, You teach people how to treat you.

Don't waste a bunch of time trying to make someone interested in you. A lot of it comes down to attraction, and if it's not there initially, it's unlikely ever to really happen. I do think it pays off if you can get to know someone, but if they're not at least showing some interest, it's a waste of time.

If it's not working, it's not working. Stop struggling to fix it or understand why. They know something you don't, just like you know some reason you aren't into some guy who is really into you. They know themselves.

One thing I had to learn the hard way is if you're focused on someone and for any reason it's not happening, at least keep being social and meeting new people. I was always so focused on certain guys I was blind to others, but I had to learn to keep it moving for my own mental wellbeing.
 
#15 ·
Don't let guilt decide the direction of your life....Sometimes you gotta be the bad guy...Sometimes you need to crush someone's dream so that you don't waste precious years of your life...In the end, you will be doing them a favor, because the reality is that they may not believe it at the time they are getting dropped on their head, you are in fact doing them an enormous favor....
 
#17 ·
We both received very good lived examples of marital boundaries growing up. My dad went so far as to talk to me about how to best hire a secretary when the time comes, that I will be subconsciously drawn to a young, pretty thing and to fight that bias and purposely seek out an older woman, she has more experience and your interactions with her will be all-work focused. Safer for the marriage that way. My wife's mother talked to her about her different styles of dressing in regard to the audience of people she was going to be with.

What we could have used though was a focused talk on the appeal that others can pose and how giving into that appeal can create a slippery slope of a transferal of feelings. We had to learn that by seeing others and figuring it out ourselves. A relationship should come to an end because of what is happening between the two of you, not because someone else came along.

Dad told me that every day when you wake up, you have to carry a burden. You have to learn something new today, you have to meet your teacher's, your boss's, expectations, you have to satisfy your wife and children. There is no crossing the finish line and coasting. Yeah OK, but I could have really benefited from specific relationship activities which work to keep the wife happy and engaged. Do A and B and C, etc. He was kind of red pill for his time, but still culturally programmed to be blue pill. So his learned behavior was to take my mom out to dinner, bring her flowers, but I never knew him to affect a demeanor, he was a natural alpha so he never thought about how his behavior influenced his wife. This meant I had to figure out woman on my own.
 
#18 ·
If I could go back to being 18 again and retain the things I know today, my life would certainly be different. I could probably write a book on relationship advice that I wish I had known at 18. When I read, "The Married Man Sex Life Primer" my first thought was how I had wish I had read that book at 18. It would have certainly made things different by avoiding a lot of mistakes that I made.
 
#30 · (Edited)
That's the universal truth, isn't it? For the most part, you have to make your own mistakes. But some well placed advice can stick with you and you may turn to it in times of need. For example, my sister once told me, "You'll stop (obsessing) when you're tired of being miserable." Mulling that over made me realize it really WAS within my power to control what I let my brain dwell on and how much. We have control over ourselves. We're not helpless. We can decide to stop and then use all our skills to work on that.

In the late 1970s I worked with a bunch of people who became friends. One of them I didn't keep up with for a decade or so after though. She married young and had a charming husband I really liked. But I passed on to her one piece of advice my mother gave me, and that was to always chuck some secret money away in case you need it someday in an emergency, even if things are going well. I passed that advice along to my happily married young friend.

20 years later, I reunited with her only to find that her husband had abandoned her and their child. One of the first things she brought up was that I had given her a valuable piece of advice that she was glad she had taken about stashing some money. (Her mother died young so she didn't have the benefit of her mom's advice.)

It took a good while of getting together before I got the story, but her husband had had a couple of head injuries along the way. She didn't believe in doctors at all at the time, so he never saw a doctor. The head injury radically changed his behavior. He started acting out all kinds of ways, ran off to California with some woman and then back and just degenerated until he simply died from incompetence and dereliction.

My friend didn't understand what happened, why he changed and was devastated and basically way off base on what happened. She didn't understand about brain injuries until I began talking to her and she told me about the brain injuries and I pieced it together. I remember it clearly. We were at the Arboretum sitting on a bench and she began to unravel the story. Then it was like an epiphany. Of course, she was dubious at first, but over time, she did her own research and she was able to be more at peace about it once she realized it wasn't just him being mean but that he was really damaged.

So advice doesn't always go out the other ear. You remember it when you need it.
 
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#24 ·
I have to take this in steps as I mostly have regrets about how I treated women.

1) Turn down more women for sex. (I was a bit of a man ho for a while.
2) Give Brenda a second chance.
3) Hold onto the 6'2" amazon. (I dumped her for a belly dancer and she was a truly loving and worthwhile woman)
4) Turn the ex pornstar down. (She was a very hurt young woman and needed a friend more than a lover)
5) After meeting my wife, work harder to establish a future for us, marry her faster and move to Texas instead of Seattle.
6) Devote more time to my family and less to work and ministry.

That about sums it up though I'm sure I would have more to tell my 18 year old self.

I have to say though, that if I made better choices along the way, it would have eliminated other possibilities.

I might have met someone to marry earlier.
It could have worked out with Brenda.
It would have worked with Kayleen (the Amazon).
It might have even worked out with the ex porn star if she had a good friend and time to heal and grow.

After the point where I met Mrs. Conan, I would absolutely go with the advice here and, regardless, I don't regret marrying her for a moment.😉
 
#42 ·
Hold onto the 6'2" amazon. (I dumped her for a belly dancer and she was a truly loving and worthwhile woman)
Dear God, yes. Does this ever "hit home"..... I left a truly loving and worthwhile woman because I had a "prettier" suitor.... "Prettier" was an entitled, screwball disaster.

I tried for decades to contact "Amazon" and tell her how profoundly sorry I am for hurting her.....and, what a big mistake I made. I was 19 at the time, which doesn't excuse me for the wrong I did her, but others are correct that if I was few years older, I might not have done this. She is now home with the Lord, that is my consolation, and that she seems to have had a good life without me.
 
#27 ·
This is why it's said that youth is wasted on the young.

My advice would be to run like hell from anyone who can't have a conversation about things that are difficult or unpleasant. The ability to deal with conflict will drive a lot of your relationship, and if you think there is no conflict at all its probably not a healthy relationship. All healthy pairings will have some conflict....just not regularly.

Also be sure to prioritize compatibility. Love can grow out of compatibility... as long as you're at least mildly attracted to someone you can build a lot of you're highly compatible.
 
#38 ·
I married at 23 and never looked back never regretted it. Been 27 years now. The one thing that I feel I did right and would tell any young person. Keep your eyes open learn from your life, know what you want. Don't compromise. Look for qualities, not looks or money or other superficial things that wear off.
 
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