Relationship & Dating Blog
Exclusive relationship and dating tips, secrets & advice from our team of psychologists.
Understand: Each partner in the relationship should play an equal role. There should be a balance in what the two parties contribute to the relationship in order to create a workable status quo. You do not have to contribute the same things; the key is to show that you are putting in as much as you would like to receive in terms of love, support and communication.
We are given an insight into ourselves on a monthly basis when our banks provide us with a statement detailing our incomings and outgoings, deposits and expenditures. While the data contained therein is largely numerical and functional, catalogued and listed column by column and row upon row, the information that can be gleaned is invaluable in that it offers a truly sanitised reflection of our habits, whims and priorities. In addition, it provides us with a true statement of our outlooks and approaches through the prism of our financial transactions, our cash withdrawals, card payments and online purchases, forming a composition of our mental make-up.
So what kind of statement is yours? What does it say about you and your attitude to the fundamental areas of your life? Are you a spender or a saver? Is your financial forecast long-term or short-term? Do you like your gratification instant or delayed? Our relationship with money can be very telling of our relationships with the people in our lives, nowhere less so than in our romantic ones. Could it be that those predisposed towards saving and investing are more likely to favour monogamy and equally to invest more in the relationship itself? Are the serial spenders and compulsive clickers more fickle and fleeting in their pursuit of love and consideration of a partner?
When it comes to accruing personal wealth, how we play the markets can be a strong indication of our approach to relationships. Do we stick to the tried and trusted, diversify our assets, do we embrace risk or play it safe, do we take a chance on the unknown entity or wait for someone to prove their worth? Are we looking for an immediate return on investment or to reap significant dividends further down the line? Our natural inclinations to perceived value and worth encompass numerous aspects of our lives. While no-one wants to be emotionally overdrawn or paying excessive rates of interest on their relationships, it is important to take into account the extent to which your attitude regarding your love-life invariably defines its inherent worth, as well as the quality and depth of its resultant experiences.
To budget for relationships is as much about creating time and making effort to attract people into our lives who will enrich it. In financial terms, it is perhaps much less of a priority as in the earlier stages of a relationship there is never any guarantee of success, while once stability is established it becomes ever easier to take things for granted. Those who are truly wealthy seek continually to maintain, consolidate on, expand and pass on their fortune. Equally those seeking to build wealth might believe and behave as though the worth was already realised, acknowledging the inherent value in a particular venture and seeking less to extract value from it but to contribute value to it.
Should a first date be dinner or coffee? For some, the idea of being stuck with someone they don’t turn out to like makes coffee a safer option. If this should be the case, why default to a couple of flat-whites in a high-street chain? By affirming someone’s existing value and worth, could coffee not be an espresso martini in a sumptuous hotel-lounge or a couple of cups of a quality roast from a market stall and a stroll round the park? Likewise an exquisite bouquet of roses or a weekend at the spa is not reserved solely for birthdays, Valentines or anniversaries. Economy has only ever been a means of exchanging value and so the ultimate aim should always be to enrich the lives of the ones we love and care about.
So whether you spend or save, try to think about the manner in which you are doing it and your essential reasons for doing so. Treat your relationships as your most valuable asset and never miss an opportunity to show someone how much they mean to you. Consider to what extent your financial habits serve you, define you and add real value to your life. Make sure your future clicks and taps reflect your future goals and appreciation for others, as well as your heart’s desire.
The allure of the city, the promise of wishes fulfilled, expectations met, dreams realised, adventures lived. Lights twinkling and shimmering, the cacophony of noise and the perpetual buzz of movement and energy. Numerous lives in simultaneous transit and convergence, one mass melting pot of simmering potential, just waiting to bubble over. Underneath the shimmering façade of the cityscape, in the dense and oppressive urban jungle roves the young single male, a twenty-first century Tarzan of sorts, noble in spirit, compelling in character and ruthless in ambition. But what of his Jane? What heights are to be reached and what pitfalls to be avoided in search of a partner? Despite its bedazzling palette of possibilities, manoeuvring the modern metropolis is no mean feat.
The city can be unforgiving, punishing at times. The constant call of our many commitments, numerous products, sites and services vying for our attention. There is considerable pressure to keep our appointments, pay our bills, keep up with the city and progress as people. The city is extensive too, sprawling masses of networks and connections that seldom flow smoothly. Sometimes just getting from A to B can seem like a journey of epic proportions. The dating game has evolved such that it times if feels like we’re swiping the entire population in search of a match. For this reason it is crucial to prioritise and utilise our most precious asset – time. Make the time for finding someone special, and don’t compromise on it. Make use of moments and minutes, whenever you have them so that you are able to allocate more time to those matters that lie closer to your heart.
After all, the super city offers a bewildering array of events and exhibitions, cultural and creative pursuits, activities and excursions, and culinary and social settings to satisfy the tastes of even the most whimsical or esoteric pleasure seeker. Add to this the plethora of publications and social media streams keeping us constantly informed and updated and it would seem more difficult not to find something that appeals. City centres are places of amazing diversity and magnetically draw in people from highly disparate backgrounds, giving practically unlimited variety in terms of a potential partner. We are also completely at liberty to choose what to do, where to go and who to see and align our day-to-day lives in accordance with our wants and wishes, beliefs and values. Suffice to say that this almost unlimited choice is there to be taken advantage of and the freedom we enjoy should be honoured and celebrated.
So as we traverse the cosmopolitan mise en scène in our quest for the love of our lives, we would do well to bear in mind the primacy of location. Review sites and location-based apps can help us find the perfect setting for a first meet, while social media keeps us informed as to upcoming events that could be the point of our sweetest and most cherished memories. Spend time online, either reviewing the blogs and vlogs of those who know and have been there before or fostering new relationships and connections on instant messaging or video chat apps. Root out those places that are genuinely interesting and that you hear people talking about, find out for yourself what they are like and make a point of visiting new places and expanding your knowledge of different areas of the city and what they have to offer. Make a second home of those places that are in line with your interests and hobbies and discover the like-minded individuals who do the same. If pushed for time, arrange meetings near transport hubs which offer a mélange of differing social options a stone’s throw away and a quick journey home to boot. Whatever you do, remember that the city is continually reshaping, transforming and evolving and will always be capable of fulfilling our deepest desires and most treasured dreams.
“You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.” Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
There are perhaps, few other dates in the calendar that arouse such contrasting emotions as that of February the fourteenth. For some a time of celebration or opportunity: for others a time of dread and despondency. Though its eponymous saint sacrificed his life for Christianity, its comparatively recent podgy poster boy very much represents the romantic and carnal facet of this thing called love. Cupid’s counterpart Eros has been around since the Greeks were mythologizing, perhaps a thousand years before the priest Valentinus was arrested for clandestinely marrying Christian couples and then beaten and beheaded for attempting to convert the Emperor Claudius. However, it was only once Chaucer’s poem Parlement of Foules made the association between St. Valentine’s day and courtship in the fourteenth century, that the cherubic Cupid began to emerge as the endearing icon of the international day of romantic love.
In Roman times, the plump pin-up was known as Cupido which translates from Latin as ‘desire’, making him the embodiment of erotic sentiment and physical attraction, unsurprising given that his mother Venus was the goddess of love and his father Mars, the god of war. We tend to think of desire as a strong and intense want or wish that is at least corporeal, quite often sexual and at times apparently uncontrollable and this is, for better or worse, quite fitting for February fourteenth as it is often a time when we set our sights on the object of our affections or a reaffirmation of the initial intensity and passion of newfound love. In today’s highly sexualised society, image and appearance are often overvalued at the expense of integrity and substance, nonetheless St. Valentine’s is a timely reminder of what is a crucial aspect of romantic relationships and lasting love.
The idea of a chubby boy, bewinged and brandishing a bow and arrow, though blindfolded is perhaps not the most convincing portrait of desire, but he is upon closer inspection, reassuringly symbolic. His youth represents the innocent, uninhibited and occasionally irrational nature of attraction. His wings to the flighty and fickle aspect of love, ungrounded and capricious. The bow and arrow he holds point to the deep and piercing wounds that love can leave, his torch to the fiery and inflammatory essence of passion and his blindfold to the somewhat random and incidental choice of targets. Though the most striking aspect of Cupid’s persona is his ability to instil this desire in the recipient of his golden-tipped arrows, be they humans or gods; they are powerless to overcome the intensity of the desire and the potency of the passion awoken within them, the spark of love’s flame.
So this Valentine’s day, whether you’re looking for love, looking to rekindle it, to keep it burning or to make it burn brighter; keep in mind that we are dealing with something precious yet volatile, something we do not understand and cannot control. It is often the case that we are too grounded and practical in our approach to romance, too specific about what we want yet not passionate and committed enough to truly seize it. We may not always know who is best for us or who is not and are perhaps more likely to find and keep our Valentine by letting Cupid, the original and ultimate matchmaker, do what he has always done. As the ancient Roman poet Virgil put it, ‘Love conquers all, and so let us surrender ourselves to Love’.
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