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All Rights Reserved (c) 2020 MeetYourSweet.com 1

 Contents

Question #1: “Why are men afraid of commitment?”................................. 4

Question #2: “Why are the guys you don’t like interested in
exclusivity while those you do like aren’t interested at all?”....................... 7

Question #3: “What should a guy do if he wants to be

with just one girl and doesn’t want to date anyone else?”.......................... 9

Question #4: “Help me get my ex back!”.....................................................11

Question #5: “What makes one person commit to another?”.................14

Question #6: “What if I want commitment and he

treats me like a piece of the furniture?”........................................................16

Question #7: “What do I do when he refuses to

even consider marrying?”................................................................................21

Question #8: “Why do some men take so long to propose?”..................24

Question #9: “How do you tell a woman you’re

into her without losing her?”...........................................................................28

Question #10: “Shouldn’t commitment be

incompatible with infidelity?”..........................................................................34

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Your Commitment Questions Answered

Amy: Welcome to MeetYourSweet.com! I’m Amy Waterman, and today

you are in for a special treat. We are going to be answering your
commitment questions, exactly as you wrote them in to us!

Have you ever wondered why some people are afraid of commitment?
Have you ever wanted to know that your relationship was going
somewhere? Have you ever wondered how some people can claim that
they are committed to you but end up breaking up with you or cheating
on you just days later?

If so, then this is the book for you. We are going to be discussing all of
these situations and more, to help you achieve the kind of commitment
that you dream of.

To help us answer your questions, we’ve invited a clinical psychologist

who specializes in counseling couples through relationship problems.
His name is Richard Wheeler, and he has been in private practice for
thirty years. Welcome, Richard!

Richard: Thanks, Amy.

Amy: We have got a lot of questions today from men and women. So let’s
dive in.

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 Question #1

“Why are men afraid of commitment?”

For our first question, this person asks:

“Why are men afraid of commitment? All the guys I date have been
commitment-phobes, who run at the first sign that the relationship might be
getting serious. It’s not just me because most of my friends who managed to
get married had to push there boyfriends into committing. I’ve read that guys
aren’t supposed to be monogamous anyway, and that’s why they can have sex
with so many women and not feel guilty. I want the straight truth. Are the odds
stacked against us women?

Richard: Yes! But there is another issue here. We talked about it previously, and
that is the issue of belongingness.

If neither of you is aware of the importance of the sense of

connectedness and commitment – if you have wanted to be on the
fast track so that you are enjoying multiple relationships – then don’t
expect to have commitment as well.

When we are talking about commitment, we are talking about a

different lifestyle. We are talking about people who value just being
with each other. This might mean that you are not drinking so many
lattes with your girlfriends; it may mean that you are spending special
time with a partner in the weekends.

If the two of you haven’t discovered that yet, then I would be arguing
that you are not actually ready for an engagement, a marriage, or a
committed relationship. At this stage, the two of you aren’t ready for it.

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 The other issue is neediness. [Ask yourself:]

Why do I want to be in this relationship?

Why do I need this man to confirm what I am?

If that’s what is going on, if I have a “neediness” to have somebody

else there for me, then I may need to address this neediness. This
neediness will drive men away. It may not be that the odds are stacked
against me, but rather that I need someone to be in my life, because
then they give my life meaning. I need to be comfortable with who I
am.

And, if I am comfortable with who I am, I wonder why then I am

having to pursue my bloke and talk him into being in a relationship.
If neediness or the failure to understand belongingness is a problem,
[it may be] because we are in the “Throwaway Society” today. The
“Throwaway Society” says [that you should] paint your kitchen after
twelve months, get a new couch, get a new car, and get a new partner. I
don’t think that is an environment for a strong sense of belonging.

As I have said before, fifty years ago we were mostly members of a

church community. We belonged to that community.

I think what is happening now is that we are in the Age of

Individualism. In the Age of Individualism, it may not be so possible
to have committed relationships. Do I enjoy being an individualist? Do
I want to be the most successful [person] in my class? Do I want to be
an Obama? If I want to be an Obama, I’ve got to find a [partner] who is
prepared to follow me and do whatever I want to do.

Amy: So you are saying that it’s not that the odds are stacked up against
women because men are not meant to be monogamous, but rather
that the odds are stacked up against all of us in general. For whatever

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 reason, our culture right now prizes being an individual and the exciting
single life over the boring relationship or marriage where you have to
give up and you have to be supportive and you have to sacrifice. Would
you agree?

Richard: Yes, “men alone” kind of stuff, where, say, you fly across the
Atlantic in a biplane. So we’re a Charles Lindbergh or an Edmund Hilary
climbing Mount Everest – although he did it with the Sherpa Tenzing,
so there was somebody else there – but if we are in the Adventuring
Age, when we’re discovering and exploring, we’re at a time when that’s
the thing that we exalt.

We don’t see too much about celebrating relationships. Paul Newman

and his wife are in a long committed relationship, but you hardly ever
read about it, and they are not icons.

Amy: It seems that once they are in a long-term marriage, they disappear
from the public eye.

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Question #2.

“Why are the guys you don’t like interested in exclusivity while those you do
like aren’t interested at all?”

Now, on to our next question. Reader #2 says:

“I find it hard to find a guy that I actually like who also wants to commit to me.
It seems that every guy is just interested in sex and having a good time and
being seen with the hot girl. Then all the guys who are actually into me and
want a relationship with me are total losers who have no social skills and never
had a relationship before. Why is it only the guys you don’t want are into having
a long term relationship, while the guys you do want are too busy with a dozen
other girls to see you exclusively?”

Richard: Again, we are back into the business of belongingness.

For instance, the successful guys and the successful women are
celebrating the Age of Individualism. My news would be, “Don’t talk
about commitment.”

If, instead, they are saying, “I’m happy to be cruising along the back
roads in an old Jalopy, in a relationship where I’m holding hands with
you and we are going for a picnic together,” then that’s a different
image.

But if instead I’m enjoying lattes in the city, I’m enjoying being busy, I’m
enjoying the new wardrobe, I’m enjoying the new car … I’m not really
into the business of belonging.

I think commitment and relationships are about belonging: feeling that

I want to have that connection with you, and wanting to be with you
above all else.

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 I was talking earlier about a belongingness audit. [Ask yourself:] who
have you got in your life that you want to be with especially? Do you
have friends that you want to spend time with? If the answer is no, then
you are not ready for a committed relationship.

You can only have a committed relationship when you understand

about belonging and enjoy that sense of belonging.

Amy: The guys who are into her and want to settle down, then, are into
belonging. It sounds like our reader is more on the fast track stage of
life still, where she wants the exciting guys who actually don’t want
commitment at all.

Richard: I would say to her, “Be special, and be unique. Find ways of
expressing your own individuality. Celebrate that.”

If you are an alpha – alphas are the successful ones – go with alphas,
because if you marry a beta what you are actually saying is that you
want to be in an even slower track than most slow tracks. I know
that sounds terrible, but if, in the Age of Individualism, I want to be
with people who strive and are successful, the cost of that may be
relationships.

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Question #3.

“What should a guy do if he wants to be with just one girl and doesn’t want to
date anyone else?”

Amy: We have a question from a male reader. He writes:

“I know guys aren’t supposed to want things like commitment, like you are less
of a man if you want to be with one girl. I really want to get better with girls,
but all the advice I read says that if you want to be with just one girl you’ve got
oneitis and you should go out and date as many girls as possible.

“The thing is there is one girl I am totally into, and I really don’t want anyone
else but her. Should I play it cool and hook up with all sorts of chicks so she
sees I’ve got the stuff? I’ve called her 5 times over the last 2 weeks and she
called me back just once, so I’m not sure if she likes me back or if she is just
playing hard to get.”

Richard: This is about belongingness again. If I’m comfortable as the male

belonging, if I actually enjoy being with people, if I have an intimate
group of friends, then I am in a situation where I am ready to also
commit into a relationship.

If you can’t go through that belongingness audit and [check off] each
area, then you are not really ready to commit.

If you do check all those boxes and say “Yes, I love belongingness. Yes,
I want to be with her,” then remember belongingness. Check out if she
has special friends.

If she is on the fast track, then she is “just not that into you.”

If you want to try it, keep contacting her occasionally. Make good eye

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 contact. Find ways of branding yourself as unique and special, and
stick in there as long as you feel comfortable with belongingness.
If you do your belongingness audit and find you are short on
belongingness, improve that, but keep your contact with her as much
as possible.

Amy: So you wouldn’t advise him like the other advice he has been getting,
e.g., you should go out and get other girls because that will prove to
her that you are a hot commodity.

Richard: That is saying, “I’m an individualist.” That’s saying, “I am on the fast

track.” That’s not talking about belongingness.

Amy: Great advice, because that shows that if you are looking to hook
up with a girl, sure, you can play these games, but if you want
commitment, you’ve got to start playing a different game.

Richard: You have got to start playing a commitment game, a belongingness

game.

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Question #4.

“Help me get my ex back!”

Amy: We have got another question from a male reader, and he writes:

“My girlfriend broke up with me a week ago and I want you to help me get her
back. I don’t know what else I could have done to get her to see that I am the
one for her. I was totally good to her and I even offered to marry her if that was
what she wanted. But she said she was too young and she didn’t know what
she wanted out of life yet. I know we are totally right for one another and we
are meant to be together. How do I make her see that?”

Richard: You can’t.

It may be true that the two of you could work together, but there are
plenty of fish in the sea. There are other special women that you could
be just as committed to.

Of course, if you are really into being tortured, I would say keep on
promising yourself that she is the only one. That’s a good way to
live the rest of your life, feeling tortured and somehow that you have
missed out.

If you are really an alpha, a person that is committed to being

successful, you will just move on.

If you really believe that she is important, then the first thing that you do is a
belongingness audit on yourself. Do you enjoy belonging to groups of people?
Do you have special friends to hang out with? If you can check off all of those
areas, then you are pretty good at belongingness.

When you do an audit on her – you can do it with or without her – does

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 she come out with a similar score? If she doesn’t, one of the things I
would suggest to you is that at the moment she is committed to the
fast track.

If she’s committed to the fast track and you are already feeling the
need to become a homemaker, she may be the right person but you
have met at the wrong time. Perhaps she needs five more years.

My advice is to back off a little, but see if you can occasionally

have the contact with her – not necessarily to show you are a hot
item, but still with that sense of belongingness. Understand about
belongingness.

Amy: One of the things I’ve always looked at when people say, “I want my ex
back,” is that usually all relationships break up for a reason. Unless you
address those underlying reasons, if you get back together, it will break
up again, because the same problems will still be there.

Richard: If she is not committed to belongingness, if she doesn’t understand

about belongingness, I’m not sure what I could do at this stage, even
though I do see her as hot.

Seeing her as hot is different. If we talk about the fast track and the
slow track, that’s what we are talking about again. On the fast track,
she may be a hot commodity; on the fast track, I might want to be with
her.

But the nature of the fast track, as far as I can see, is that people
move on to multiple relationships. There is nothing wrong with that,
but I don’t think being on the fast track is the same as belonging. I’m
suggesting that belonging is about a slower pace.

If she is still committed to this fast pace, I don’t think there is much
that can be done about that. We are talking about two different

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 things, and what we need is to identify somebody who also values
belongingness.

Amy: One of the things that we often counsel people on is, when their
relationship broke up and they say, “But I know that she was the One,”
we tell them that you only have a limited knowledge. You know your
experience up until that moment in your life. But you have no idea what
is ahead in your life.

What I always tell people is, “If you are committed to growth, if you
are committed to learning to know what it means to belong, you will
always attract better people. You will look back at this girl ten years
later and think, ‘Thank goodness our relationship didn’t last. If it had, I
wouldn’t have met my current partner, who knows how to belong and
knows how to love me better.’”

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 Question #5.

“What makes one person commit to another?”

Some of these questions bring up a general issue. Could you tell our readers
what makes a woman commit to a man?

Richard: Firstly, if we push belongingness, I would like to hope that anybody I

saw as special as a woman would value the fact that this is a man that
I know can belong. When I do an audit on him and I look around, I see
him with special friends.

If someone is a loner and highly successful, we are talking about an

individualist. But if we did a belongingness audit on that person, we
could ask if they have special friends and groups. If you can check all
the boxes, then this is a special person I would want to spend time
with.

Then we can talk about commitment, honesty, openness and

the capacity to love. I think they all come under this notion of
belongingness.

Amy: You seem to believe there is no difference between men and women
in this area, that men and women are exactly identical in what makes
them commit. If they are the sort of person that could value belonging,
then that’s what makes them ready to commit, and there are no real
gender differences.

Richard: I think there are gender differences, but I think the gender differences
are played up a lot. After all, I’ve read the book Men Are From Mars,
Women Are From Venus. The very notion of gender differences is going
to sell his book, so he teaches people that genders are different.

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 That works all right, but from a psychological point of view, what we
are talking about is the bell curve. We are talking about the normal
distribution of how people ordinarily behave.

What I want in a relationship is someone that is special, and that

specialness may not fit in with the bell curve. Do I want to be
“averagely in love”? Do I want to be with an “average” girlfriend who
looks like an “averagely beautiful” woman?

I don’t want to be with an average person! I want to be with someone

who I see as special. I may be deluded, of course, but as long as I
remain deluded, it doesn’t matter.

Amy: What you are touching on there is what makes a person commit to
one person over another. For whatever reason, they see that person as
special and unlike everyone else they have dated up to that point.

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 Question #6.

“What if I want commitment and he treats me like a piece of the furniture?”

That is a perfect lead in to our next question, then, because for this reader, not
being special to a partner is her big concern. She tells us,

“I’ve been living with my boyfriend for over two years now, but instead of
getting closer he just seems to treat me like a piece of the furniture. He wants
to hang out with his friends and do his own thing. When he talks about the
future, it is always about what HE wants to do. The problem is, though, that I
love him and I don’t want to just throw in the towel. Is there any way to make
him commit to our relationship?”

Richard: It’s interesting in terms of what she is describing, because she is

saying that he wants to hang out with his friends. If he has a good
sense of belongingness – and if she did an audit on him in terms of
belongingness, if he goes through a whole series of areas and finds
that in each one of them there is that strong sense that he belongs in
those areas – and then she does an audit on herself and finds a strong
sense of belongingness, what may be happening is that there are some
problems for this relationship.

What I would be saying is, “If you grew emotionally and you understood
and loved yourself, would that, then, change how the relationship is
going?”

Where are they at in terms of belongingness? Where is she at in

terms of what she believes in herself? I don’t know those things. I am
answering this in general terms.

I’ve heard the question before, but my first thing is does he have

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 a sense of commitment to belonging? Does she have a sense of
commitment

to belongingness? If that is going well, what then is happening in the

relationship?

The only other thing, then, I would be saying is, I would refer to Susan
Jeffers in her book Lasting Love and ask, “Do you have a sense in
which you can still see in this other person something special and
unique? Can you see ways in which you can find ways of loving him?”
Because I would argue that is very infectious.

Amy: What concerns me about it is that she admits that he treats her like a
piece of furniture, which seems to indicate that his behavior is really
hurting her. If his behavior is hurting her and she can’t talk to him about
it, and there is no open communication about respect for each other or
treating one another well, then there are some nuts-and-bolts issues in
that relationship. There’s probably something that can’t get worked out.
If they can’t have a conversation about how she feels, then maybe she
should move on.

Richard: I’m mindful of what happened yesterday. I had someone sitting in a

chair opposite me weeping as she talked about her total failure in
relationship. What she also admitted in a moment of truth is that, when
she feels defeated enough, she yells and screams and slams doors
and [calls him names]. What does that do in a relationship? It pushes
him further away.

But if she can see him as special … if she can see him as unique again

… if she can rediscover what she loved in him, I believe that would be
communicated in the eyesight, the way she made a special meal, all
variety of ways.

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 But I would want to know what’s happening on a day-to-day basis.
And if, in actual fact, the truth is that she’s treating him as a piece
of furniture, too – she may not have realized it, but if I went into that
home and I watched what she was doing…. You see, she needs to be
able to come clean. [Does she yell at him?] I’m sorry, but yelling doesn’t
work.

Amy: Often, what happens is that resentfulness builds up, and she tries to
treat things fairly and give him his male time, but at a certain point it
will all come out and explode, and that isn’t going to help things.

Richard: If I grew up in a relationship where my parents yelled at each other,

where my father was bullying my mother, the likelihood is that I will find
a partner who bullies me.

I have to very consciously start to say, “I don’t want that anymore.

I’m going to commit to loving my partner.” It actually requires a huge
commitment to say, “I want to belong in a unique, loving way.” That’s
different, and I haven’t had a model of that.

When everything falls apart, the behavior I will resort to every time
will be the behavior I learned. I tell my clients a lot about the time my
mother brought a pressure cooker. The first time that pressure cooker
went off, all the men ran outside and left my mother to deal with the
pressure cooker!

That is a good model for how we dealt with arguments. When my

mother got really upset, my father walked out. When my partner got
angry with me, I went to walk out and she broke down and cried.
Instead of getting angry with me, she cried. She said, “You can’t do
that. I love you.”

As soon as she said that, I stopped walking and I turned around. Those
steps to walk back to the couch to be with her were the hardest steps

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 in my relationship. What I was doing was a new piece of behavior
that I didn’t know. I was actually going back into where the pressure
cooker was about to blow up, and I didn’t know how to behave. I was
on automatic. I knew about running away; I didn’t know about turning
around and walking back and saying, “I didn’t know what to do here.
Will you help me?”

If I am a smart male, I’m supposed to know all the answers. I had to

say, “I don’t know how to do this any more.” I found those words very
hard to say. Here I was in a crisis in our relationship, and I didn’t know
what to do. My father and mother had never modeled communication,
so I had to learn about good communication. So I turned to her and
said, “I don’t know how to deal with this. Will you help me?” Of course
she said yes. So we got over this hurdle.

The next time we got into an argument, instead of doing the traditional
thing to walk out, again, I was able to say, “I’m not sure what to do here.
I’m not sure what the rules are, because this is a very uncomfortable
place for me to be in.” But as soon as I started talking like this, that
already starting to shift the dynamics. I was starting to talk about
belonging again, and belonging is what we both wanted to do.

Amy: What that shows me, Richard, is that we need to have compassion for
our men as well.

When this woman decides, “Right, I’m going to talk to my partner and
tell him I don’t like the fact that he’s not spending enough time with
me,” he may not know how to deal with her requests and her needs. He
may not know how to spend a lot of quality time in a relationship with
a woman.

Perhaps they have just finished school together; perhaps he is used to

spending all his free time with his mates. Now he has moved in with
a girl and he doesn’t know what to do. He thinks, “I’ll just keep doing

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 whatever, and I’ll treat her like my mother, because isn’t that how girls
function?”

So perhaps a little compassion would be in order!

Richard: I’d be saying, “Read Susan Jeffers’ book [on Lasting Love],” because if
she does an audit on her behavior, on her comfort with belongingness,
is this what she wants? Or is she still really aspiring to being on the
fast track? She needs to be very aware of if she wants to be on the fast
track.

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Question #7:

“What do I do when he refuses to even consider marrying?”

Amy: Our next reader has a problem with a guy who wants to be single
forever.

This reader writes:

“I’m seeing a guy right now who is almost 100% perfect, except he never wants
to marry. His parents had an abusive relationship and divorced when he was
a teenager. He says that he made up his mind then and there that he was
never going to make the same mistake. He is completely stuck in that way of
thinking and refuses to even talk about it. I love him and I want to marry him.
What can I do?”

Richard: I don’t get any profit from the Susan Jeffers’ book, but read Lasting
Love and see if it makes sense.

What Susan is saying is [you need to] make a total commitment to

being in the relationship and then working on you. As you transform
yourself, it will also transform the relationship.

That might work, but then somewhere further down the track, I’d put in
an escape clause: if that doesn’t work, get out! If he is non-responsive
and if everything she does over a period of time bounces off the
ground and isn’t picked up by him, then at some stage I would be
saying,

“He is just not that into you. This is a man that has real problems with
belonging, and I think it is a very difficult one. Move away. If, on the
other hand, you want to remain tortured for the rest of your days, I
would say go for it! Stay with him and be tortured.”

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 Amy: I have a follow-up question on this one, because we have a lot of
women saying that they were with a man like this guy and they stuck
it out with him and five years later they said, “This isn’t working. I’m
leaving.” He says, “Fine.” Then the next woman he meets, he marries.

This has happened so many times to so many women! They say, “Why
wasn’t he ready to marry me? Why was he convinced when he was with
me that he was never going to get married? Then the very next woman
to come along, he marries her and seems happy in the relationship.”

Richard: It may be that he has been prepared now to take a risk, and I’m hoping
that he has grown emotionally. If he hasn’t grown emotionally, what I’ve
got is his wife sitting in my room telling me how much of a jerk he is,
telling me about the fact that he can’t communicate. She is admitting
also that she is getting angry with him.

I will try and help her to stop being angry and define ways of loving him
again; it might work but it may not. It may be that they will go towards
divorce and separation.

What I do is I look back over my thirty years of being in this practice

and I’m often aware that, yes, this man did marry and, yes, it looked
as if everything was going well. Then five years down the track, he
is having just as much trouble as those who are not married but are
finding their partners are having commitment troubles.

So he is a man who has really got a major problem with commitment,

even though he went through the act of commitment. He has gone
through the actions, but they don’t really matter to him.

Amy: We get a lot of women who talk about men who are “commitment-
phobes.” They just avoid commitment and, when they do give in, they
just give in to save face. In their hearts, they are still adverse to that
idea of commitment.

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Richard: I’m arguing, as a general rule of thumb, that such men are
best avoided. In actual fact, what is happening is that they are
having problems with belongingness. If they have problems with
belongingness, they will be charming on the fast track but they will be
a disaster in a relationship.

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 Question #8.

“Why do some men take so long to propose?”

Amy: This next question is one that we have been talking about around the
edges for quite some time. This reader asks”

“Why do men take so much time to decide to propose? I’ve been with my
boyfriend for 8 years and we have been living together for 5 years. We have
a daughter together, we are really happy, and I know that he wants to be with
me. But he still hasn’t proposed yet. He knows that it is really important to me
because I am a Christian and I want our relationship to have God’s blessing. He
still refuses to say anything about getting married, only that things are great the way
they are now and that if we do get married we will stop having sex. He is the
father of my child and I don’t want to leave him, but my friends tell me that the
only way he will make a decision is if I give him an ultimatum. What should I
do?”

Richard: Somewhere, possibly, there may be a need to challenge him. Before

I did that, I would still be saying, “Do a belongingness audit. Have
a look and see if, in his life, he enjoys belonging and has a close
group of friends.” When you look at closeness and intimacy, see if
he is demonstrating on a week-by-week basis that relationships are
important.

If he is doing that, do an audit on yourself to check that you also are

good at belonging. Possibly read Susan Jeffers’ book.

That’s really all you can do. If you know he loves belonging, perhaps
what he is really saying is, “This is an aspect of life today in 2008. This
is where I want to be.”

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 I would be thinking about finding another pastor somewhere else, who
is a little more comfortable with the idea that you aren’t married but
are in a committed relationship.

Amy: One of the questions I wanted to ask you about that is: what do you
think about the idea of ultimatums? Do they work?

Richard: The nature of an ultimatum is already suggesting that

belongingness doesn’t occur. I’d be concerned about what my
understanding about belongingness is.

If you really understand what I am talking about, I don’t know if

ultimatums need to exist. Where I’m at, if I’m a Christian and I am
single and I have a Jewish flatmate and my Charismatic friends say to
me, “You can’t be a member of our community if you are living with a
Jewish person,” I would ditch the Charismatic. If, in actual fact, if being
Charismatic is more important that having a Jewish friend, then that is
okay. But I would see that as too extreme and conservative.

Amy: When you listen to your friends, realize that you are only listening,
because sometimes your friends don’t have the best interests of
your relationship at heart. Ultimately, if what matters to you is being
connected to your partner and being one with your partner, then
understand that your friends giving you advice saying, “No, you
shouldn’t be connected. You should actually be divisive and tell your
partner, ‘Either you give me this commitment or leave,’” actually isn’t
advice that supports your values.

Richard: I have a friend at the moment who is struggling with a Christian

girlfriend. That Christian girlfriend belongs to a very exclusive group,
and they are saying, “If you are going to stay in this relationship,
you will have to get him to join the community. If he doesn’t join the
community, you will have to separate from him, and sex outside of
marriage is not acceptable.”

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 My friend is not a part of the community and he loves her very dearly,
but he is not prepared to become a member. What some of his
friends are saying is, “This is a prescription for disaster.” I think that
the Christian community is going to close in on her, and she will have
two choices: either she stays with him and leaves the community, or
the community will banish her. My worry is going to be, if the pastor
comes to her and banishes her, she will actually leave the relationship.
Belonging to the community is going to be more important to her than
belonging to her partner.

Amy: I can see that happening in so many other environments where

you marry someone who isn’t considered an asset to their primary
community. Ultimately, they do have to choose between one or the
other.

That’s not the sort of relationship any of us would hope for. We want
relationships where our belongingness with our partner would come
first.

To me, Richard, it seems that your perspective is that if you want

commitment out of a partner, what you need to do is work on your own
feelings of being special and seeing your partner as special. What you
are doing, then, is generating more love in yourself. That is more likely
to influence the relationship such that one would commit, rather than
saying, “I resent my partner for not committing to me. Why has he not
committed? This is completely unfair and unjust. He is making a fool
out of me. What can I do to trick him into committing?” That is actually
separation behavior.

Richard: Physics is talking about something called the “butterfly effect.” The
butterfly effect says that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, there
is going to be a weather shift in Colorado. They are suggesting on a
molecular level that every action has a reaction.

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 Then, if I love, that love has a reaction that spreads in the same way.
So, when I love you, that spread out.

There are carbon footprints, and there are also heart footprints. When
I’m in my heart state, that flows to the planet. When I am in my hate
state, that flows to the planet. Guess which is winning at the moment
on the planetary level?

Amy: Unfortunately, probably the hate state!

Richard: So the butterfly effect says that what happens somewhere on the
planet affects something else somewhere else on the planet. Every
effect has a reaction.

Relationship-wise, do I love or do I hate? If I hate, what does hate

produce? What does love produce? So I’m going to go for love.

Whether that is going to change or heal the relationship I’m in or not,

I don‘t know. But I’m going to become a declarer: I want to leave heart
prints on the planet.

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 Question #9:

“How do you tell a woman you’re into her without losing her?”

Amy: We’ve got a reader here, and it seems to me that his problem is that
he wants to love but he thinks there are negative consequences. Our
reader says:

“I’m really good at picking up women and going on a few dates and having a
good time. The problem comes when I really feel a connection with a woman
and I want to take things to a deeper level. Everything in me tells me not to
call her all the time or give up the other women I’m seeing. I’m afraid that if I
do, I’ll lose my cool, which is what she was attracted to in the first place. I’ve
told a couple of women in the past how much I was into them and they totally
changed their attitude towards me after that. I don’t want a woman to think she
has got me in the palm of her hand just because I like her and want to see if
there is more. How does this stuff work?”

Richard: What we are talking about again is belongingness.

If you are seeing this glamorous woman and you want to be with her,
but she actually wants to stay on the fast track and she only tolerates
people that are flexible and constantly changing … if she is this kind of
person, belongingness may figure really low on her level of priorities.

If that is true, it doesn’t matter how passionate I can be about her, she
is not going to see that in me. What she wants to do is simply be on
the fast track.

Again, we are talking about the difference of being on the fast track
and slow track. Belongingness possibly is on the slow track.

Amy: I’m reminded of earlier in the interview where you were talking about

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 the idea that if you meet a person on the fast track or you start things
off on the fast track, it is very hard to shift to the slow track. What
you had said was that, if you want to start off things in the slow track,
you may have to start prioritizing belonging from the beginning, not
prioritizing being cool and having a good time.

Richard: You may be saying to somebody, “I want to hang out with you,” or, “I
find I’m thinking about you all the time.” She may love that idea, but she
may not like the consequence of this, which is about belongingness.

If that is admitted, I don’t see it is about the fact that you are
totally under control by her, but if she doesn’t understand about
belongingness, in the end, I may have to say to forget her. She is
actually committed to individuality.

I think there is a tension between individuality and belongingness.

I believe what happens in belongingness is that some aspects of

individuality are merged with the other. If I’m frightened of merging
with the other, then there are problems.

I do psychotherapy, which is about somebody being in a room with

me and trusting me enough to be totally open with me. Of every thirty
clients that I see, only one is able to trust me enough to be that open
with me.

I see psychotherapy to be one of the most beautiful things that can

happen with an individual, because they’re learning to be so beautifully
open. Imagine if that person goes into a relationship and they are that
beautifully open. What a gift that is in a relationship! But only one in
thirty wants to do that.

The number of people who want to belong is diminishing. That’s what I

think is going on.

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 So is there a possibility of dialogue here? Is there a possibility of
belonging? If this girl loves the idea of being on the fast track, if you do
a belonging audit, you will find having a great wardrobe, car, and job is
more important [to her] than a relationship.

Amy: If this guy believes that the way to get a woman is to play it cool and to
not see her all the time for fear that she will be able to have power over
him, I think that one of those things playing in there is fear.

Richard: He doesn’t know about belongingness.

Amy: Not yet. So his goal, then, is to learn to express affection towards a
woman without fear of rejection and without fear that she will be able
to control him.

Richard: If he came into my room, I would pick that he would be very defensive
about opening up and sharing with me. See, what I am doing is training
my clients to open up.

In a sense, what you do in psychotherapy is you sit with people, and

you sit with people, and you sit with people. And you say very little,
and they say very little. Then they’re asked, “How was your therapy this
week?” and they say, “He just sat there, and he didn’t say anything! I
didn’t know what to do!”

What we’re trying to do is invite that other person into trust, because
when they trust, they open. It’s like they’re a caterpillar, and they’ve
gone into their cocoon, and now they’re bursting out of their cocoon.

And what happens when I’m watching someone burst out of their
cocoon is they’re doing their stuff. I don’t have to tell a caterpillar that’s
transforming into a butterfly, “Now it’s time to turn into a butterfly.” It’s
doing that! It’s transforming.

I sit there, and I watch this wonderful, beautiful thing happening in the

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 room with me, and I’m just going, “Wow! Gosh, you’re beautiful. This
is fantastic!” All I’m doing is observing this wonderful beauty that’s
coming out of this person.

Now, mostly people don’t know about caterpillars; they don’t know
they’re going to go into transformation, and, of course, transformation
doesn’t occur. Because transformation can only occur when the
person is open to the possibility that they can change.

Amy: How would it be possible for this guy to even find out if this girl is
capable of committing in the way he wants her to?

Richard: I wonder if I’ve ever told you about my Puppy Dog Experiment. It works,
and I would like to invite everybody who’s reading this to think how this
would work in their lives.

When I think of the Puppy Dog Experiment, I’m embarrassed, because

if someone would have tried this with me, I think I would have failed.

But the Puppy Dog Experiment goes something like this. You can do
this with puppy dogs or you can do it with young children.

With young children, you make sure you’re bringing your boyfriend into
a house where there’s a lot of ice cream on cones. There’s also a puppy
dog with wet feet that’s going to jump on top of him.

The scenario goes is that you welcome him into the house, and the
kids will run to him. They’ve got ice cream on cones, and they’ve got
sticky fingers, and they’re going to climb all over him. And the puppy
dog is also going to jump on top of him. Got the picture?

Now, if he just laughs and rolls around with the kids, and there’s ice
cream all over him, and he’s laughing with the children and holding
them, he is worth keeping.

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 But if the puppy dog jumps up on him, and the kids with the ice cream
jump up on him, and he virtually slaps them away, get rid of him (or
her).

What we are learning is that this person doesn’t enjoy belongingness.

Because what the puppy dog is communicating is belongingness. The

puppy dog is delighted to see me. The children with the ice cream are
delighted to see me. And what I see is I see their love … or I see the ice
cream.

Amy: You see the fact that they’re going to get grubbiness all over your nice
Italian suit.

Richard: That’s right. And if they see that, then this girl or guy – doesn’t
matter who she is or what she does – she’s not going to work in a
relationship.

Because if she has children, they’re going to have to be something out

of Vogue. They’re going to have to have the nicest, cleanest diapers,
and I’ve got news for you: if kids are wearing diapers, they’re going to
crap in them! And she’s not going to want to change nappies.

Amy: What I love about this, Richard, is that it explains one of those things
that men say all the time. When they’re asked, “What sort of girl do you
want to be with?” almost all guys say, “I don’t want a woman who is
high maintenance. I want a woman that can hang out with the guys as
easily as she can hang out with the girls. I still want her to be feminine

– she can paint her nails and wear dresses – I want a woman who I
can hang out and feel comfortable with, who doesn’t seem to ask for
very much, who doesn’t want me to always be performing all the time.”
This is basically what you are talking about, isn’t it?

Richard: My embarrassment is that if I’d taken the Puppy Dog Test when I was

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 younger, I think I would have failed it, because I’d gotten used to being
a bachelor. I didn’t have the Italian suits, but I aspired to have the
Italian suits!

I used to have a dog in my counseling room. Out of the hundred

people, only two of them would not want the dog to stay in the room.
Really interesting. Ninety-eight percent of my clients just loved the dog
being there and were totally okay with it. Now, those two people who
didn’t want the dog there were the most difficult people I had to work
with.

Really fascinating… So the Puppy Dog Test is actually a good test!

Amy: One thing that reminds me of is the advice we give men and women.
We say this especially to men, “If you want to meet a girl, get a puppy
and take it for walks in the park. You will meet more women than you
know what to do with!”

Richard: What we are talking about here is being loving and open. If loving and
being open is what is happening when I’m with this person, then go for
them. Enjoy them and celebrate the relationship. When you are in that
state of celebration, you will find that everything will work.

If there is coldness there, all the Puppy Dog Test does is demonstrate
that the coldness is part of that person’s personality, so forget them.

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 Question #10.

“Shouldn’t commitment be incompatible with infidelity?”

Amy: We have one final question for you, Richard, and it is a bit of a tough
one. This reader writes:

“How come guys can believe they are committed to a relationship but still
cheat? My husband had an affair 2 months ago. He says it didn’t mean
anything, he is still just as committed as ever to me and the kids.”

Richard: There is something wrong. What is wrong may be that belongingness

has somehow gone out the window for both of them. They have got to
rediscover what belongingness means.

So I would be saying, “Go out for dates together. How’s the sex life?
Over a weekend, how much time do you spend together? When did you
last go away for a weekend together?” I need then to know what the
feedback is, in terms of the answers to those questions.

Usually what I find is what has happened is they have both lost sight of
what the relationship is about and how important belongingness is.

If I go off and have an affair, what I am saying is that I am yearning for

belongingness. I may have got it wrong; I may have confused what it
was about, because the news for you is that if you go off on the affair,
yes, you would go through a lovely period again when you feel as if you
are both connected, but the end of that will be chaos again.

There are three stages in a relationship: (1) romance, (2) second,

chaos, (3) either commitment or exiting. That is inevitable; every
relationship is going to have those three stages.

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 It may be that chaos comes more often. What we see happening,
particularly with film stars, is they move from chaos to another
romance. They don’t actually model commitment because they don’t
understand it.

In the Age of Individuality, that’s understandable; that makes sense.

We are looking at a celebration of individuality, not a celebration of
belonging. Paul Newman is no longer sexy, because he is committed
in his relationship with his partner. So we forget the Paul Newmans of
this world; we don’t celebrate them. We celebrate the people that are
gorgeous and who are striving to be wonderfully individualistic. That is
a different world to belonging.

Amy: Going back to the question about how a person can cheat when
they say they are committed, that person doesn’t understand what
commitment is. If commitment is belonging, then that sense of
belonging isn’t there.

But on the other hand, I wouldn’t say that her husband was a liar. He
just doesn’t understand committing; they weren’t feeling belonging. It’s
a mutual issue between both of them.

Richard: It is a mutual issue. This relationship now has a choice between

recommitting and rediscovering belonging … or exiting. It is either/or.
It’s not that this is not rescueable. It is rescueable, but it will be about
belonging.

Amy: Thank you so much, Richard, for answering our reader’s questions.

Hopefully, we have answered all our reader questions; if not, you can
write in and ask us a question, and hopefully we’ll get Richard in for
another interview to answer that.

If you want more information about Richard or you want to hear more

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 of his advice for marriages, all you have to do is go to

SaveMyMarriageToday.com/premium

and you will find out more of Richard’s advice on how to solve the
crises in your marriage.

That’s it from all of us here at MeetYourSweet.com. I’m Amy

Waterman. Join us again for more great information on how to change
your life, starting today!

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