Is Your Partner Still on the Prowl?
You’re in a committed relationship. Or so you thought. But do you get the feeling that one of you is hedging your bets? Does your mate still act as if he or she is interested in meeting new people? You can sometimes suspect that your partner is still open to this possibility by the way others respond to him or her.
It’s pretty painful if your partner is still shopping, because it means that you’re being compared to others. It’s as if — despite everything you have worked for in your relationship — you’re really a commodity and can be easily traded in for a better or newer model.
This is often what is behind the commitment-phobic personality: These individuals aren’t ready to throw their lots in with yours because they’re remaining open in case there is someone better out there.
If you suspect your partner is hedging or pulling away because of this, it might be helpful to use your best finesse to call him or her on it.
You don’t have to come on like gang-busters. Ask something like, “I feel like you’re not fully celebrating our relationship. Is it possible that you are still ‘shopping’ for a partner?”
Even if your mate denies this, you’ve had a chance to plant a seed.
Remember: Mature people don’t shop — they care about who they’re with, and that’s more important than finding someone better.
I wonder if bonds contain the seeds of their own betrayal? If a person whom we are bonded
with — let’s say a friend — has and then expresses an opinion of something touchiing upon a
deeply felt incident in our past, the knowledge that they hold such a view of us can be experienced as a betrayal, whereas if we hadn’t bonded with them and they held the same view — may be nearly meaningless in how it affects us.
I’m off topic. Trust, loyalty, committtment in a relationship honors us. Alot militates and launches assaults against it: state of sexual evolution, culture, things that present themselves
as higher powers or principles. All of which we might surmount if we are mature, but then when we are young in life experience, we can be not mature enough to understand it all.
Always an afterthought: When did homo sapiens begin to calculate? Calculation is good, no?
Figure things out, get an edge, profit from our secret power of calculation! The Greeks spoke
of Fate, that undoer of calculation. More recently, people have spoken of chaos theory and
Boltzman’s Law: everything you do has an unpredictable effect and it will find you. Dostoevsky
touched upon it in Crime and Punishment: the killer calculates the act and since he’s not found out, thinks he’s home free. A more mature person knows it’s not the act alone, but what
the calculation, the advantage, the acting upon what we immaturely think is smart, does to us
and is our undoing. When we betray or abandon that or who we have deeply loved, we may do so calculatingly, counting on a better reward, a truer or nobler cause; it seems very right at
that moment. But there are consequences: the reward we counted on and traded what we loved for, is revealed as false, an illusion. And a very great deal is lost, the regrets, the loss of
the beloved who was true but we were blinded by an ideal which wasn’t real. It’s only after life
experience schools us in the hard but important lessons of bonds and betrayals, and the loss
and regret some of us have to live with, that we are not so easily swayed by logical calculations and appearances of what would seem to give us greater advantage and happiness.