A BIG, BIG CRITERION FOR RELATIONSHIPS...

(In an email, click on the title of this post to read the entire post.)

If you heed this, your chances for a successful love partner relationship will dramatically increase!!!

Speaking in overall terms, we learn two different styles of coping in life as a child, in order to get what we want in life and/or to try to make ourselves feel safe and not threatened.

One child learns that "cooperativeness" works to get more of what the child wants.  Another child learns that "aggressiveness" works to get more of what the child wants.

Assuming a potential partner (and/or yourself) are NOT enlightened and that one therefore has tended to carry this style with oneself into one's "adult" life, the cooperative style is by far a better choice in a partner.  The partner will tend to seek to solve things, to work things out.

The "aggression" style is more likely to attack, defend, and/or seek to criticize and control instead of being open to resolution.  If one marries a person of this type, one is in for a rocky, not very pleasing relationship.  One will be subject to criticism and to never, ever pleasing the other (at the extreme or with a strong tendency toward that).

I would suggest that you read this book by a prominent researcher and excellent predictor of what will work in relationships, John Gottman's book The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work.

Your likelihood for implementing this book successfully, or even intending to do so, will drop proportionally to yours or your partner's style being on the aggression style side.  Sorry...

And, unfortunately, a person on the cooperative side can go too far into such things as people pleasing and being afraid of anything that might seem to threaten relationships.  For that reason, as certainly with any style, it is essential that that person learns to manage his/her understanding of his/her beliefs and emotions and confidence and power.  (My no-cost site is intended to fill in many of the missings in that process while also encouraging that the person read or access certain other screened resources.  One might start with Anxious To Please - Letting The Life Be Sucked Out Of You and then go to The Program For Upgrading Your Beliefs (and follow the path).  This takes some focus time, but things will begin to improve rapidly very soon in the process and will be magnificent when you complete the basics.)

The highest level of relationship can only be achieved by both a cooperative, open-minded, solution orientation AND sufficient training for both to be aligned in learning and putting into effect those things that improve one's life (and remove discordance), AND which, along the way, also help to better other people's lives and the world.

Do both of these (cooperative, win-win attitude and learning and aligning with life wisdom/truths) and your relationship will be exponentially multiplied in its value and your life experience!