Hey all,
I’ve recently joined the Experts team at GoDates.co and have submitted my first answer to a reader’s question.
The reader is concerned about his relationship moving forward, since he wants to settle down and start a family, and his girlfriend is uninterested in either of those, and wants to travel the world.
I imagine a lot of people relate to this issue, I see it come up a lot with my clients as well as people in my own personal life.
As I explain the article, love isn’t enough in my opinion. Relationships need to not be based entirely on emotion, but also practicalities. After all, you’re after someone to support your life, and visa-versa.
Yes, many people would argue otherwise – that love can overcome anything and everything – but others would argue that the practicalities are more important than love. For example, the Indian culture favours arranged marriage based on family ties, social standing (i.e. practicalities), over love, and has an incredibly lower divorce rate than here in Australia or the USA. The Western World has had a questionable concept of love drilled into us from the media and movies.
If you’re in different stages of your life, regardless of how much you love each other, the practicalities of the relationship are not going to work. And there is only so long that the love will make up for it.
I am in no way downplaying love – love is awesome – it’s when love overshadows the realities of the relationship that problems arise.
When two people fall in love, as well as having shared values and the same (or similar) visions for their future, that amazing things happen. Yes, we learn from different people’s paths, lives and interests, but they should be mildly differing in my opinion …
… not person A wants to start a family, and person B wants to pack a backpack and jet-set.
In the article, I cover my thoughts on how he can decide if this girl is for him, as well as trying to open his eyes to some questions that he might not have been wanting to ask himself.
Head over to Go Dates to check out my full response.