Creating A Relationship.

There are different types of create involved in a relationship.

There is a type of create one must use in establishing a new relationship.

There is another type of create one must employ in moving a relationship up through its various stages – dating, boyfriend/girlfriend, living together, engaged, married, married with children.

There is another type of create (or pro-active lack of create) one must employ to keep a relationship at a certain stage and not have it progress.

There is another type of create one must use in order to keep the attraction between two individuals increasing and not diminishing at any level of relationship.

There is yet another form of create one must utilize when reestablishing a damaged relationship.

Then there are different kinds of relationships that people try to establish. Not everyone is looking to get married with respect to any given relationship.

Different kinds of sexual relationships:

Prostitution (pay for sex relationship)

One night stands

Friends with privileges

Dating with casual sex

Lovers only

Arrangements (you take care of me, I’ll take care of you relationship)

Multiple Lovers ( I can have more than one relationship)

Swinging

Affairs (cheating on someone)

Girlfriend/boyfriend

Living together

Engagement

Marriage (The ultimate relationship)

Divorce (Yes some people even have sex after marriage, sort of friends with privileges phase again.)

There are also two distinct conditions we have to look at when discussing male/female relationships. The first is a condition of “opposition” or “opponents”, where the love interest is an opponent. No matter where it is at, there is no agreement on the relationship and where it is going, and one person wants to take it to a different level or place than the other, who is usually just fine the way things are.

This automatically applies to most new relationships, and old relationships that are damaged or in trouble.

Now, why do I call it a condition of opposition or “opponents”. Well, because someone is usually trying to get someone, or opposed to someone. You are trying to get the guy for a boyfriend, or he is trying to get you in bed for sex, and there is some opposition. There is not complete agreement even if it is just about timing or “when.” Or you are trying to get him to marry you and he doesn’t  want to yet. He is happy being your boyfriend.

The second condition is when the love interests are “team mates.” They are in agreement on their relationship and where they want it to go, etc. There is no opposition here.

This applies to most good relationships where people are co-operating and in agreement on the form of their relationship be it “friends with privileges,” “girlfriend/boyfriend” or “husband/wife.”

Now the truth of it is, most relationships are a combination of these conditions, perhaps mostly one or the other, but it is typical that we are in opposition about some things and in complete agreement and teammates about others.

In this essay I am going to discuss the first condition of “opponents” and the use of “gradients” – a major principle we use to successfully change the form of our relationship with someone and to move from one level of relationship to a higher level of relationship and to overcome opposition.

I will discuss how “teammates” create in another essay.

Now what do I mean by “Gradient”?

Webster says a gradient is “the rate of regular or graded ascent or descent”

Well again I feel Webster is falling a little short of a workable definition for our purposes.

For our purposes, let’s just look at a “gradient” as a step on a ladder. And functionally a gradient allows us to safely go up the ladder or down the ladder one step at a time.

Now you have all been on a ladder and you know that ladders are quite workable and safe as long as you take it one step at a time. If you tried jumping up onto the fifth step of a ladder, you might have some problems getting there, and if you tried climbing or descending five steps at a time, well, you might just get hurt.

Now occasionally you could start on the second or third step of a ladder with out any problem, and other times if you had some other means of ascending or descending (like your buddy lifts you up with a fork lift) you could get on or off a ladder at a higher step without any problem.

Get the picture? A gradient allows us to safely ascend or descend from one place to another.

Now when we are talking about developing or repairing or creating a relationship, “gradients” are the steps that allow us to safely ascend to a higher level of relationship or safely descend (yes, there are times you have to do this too) to a lower level of relationship despite any opposition to our plan.

Now the first thing you have to learn about gradients in relationships is how to see them. Gradients in relationships are usually “mental” steps and as such are not as obvious as are the steps of a physical ladder.

This may be hardest thing about using gradients for people to learn. Learning how to see them. Most people just don’t observe much. They are too used to being told by others what is right and wrong, good and bad, and simply what is and isn’t.

If you want to be successful at relationships, YOU have to start observing things and become your own advisor. If you remember from my last article “How to Manage Creating a Relationship” what you have to observe are your statistics, and the main statistic to observe in a relationship is motion – “is he/she moving toward me or away from me?” in response to my actions.

If you continually monitor (watch) all the actions and efforts that have a bearing on a relationship with respect to the other person you will notice that these actions/efforts either create the person moving closer (emotionally, physically, mentally, communicatively) toward you are moving further away from you in these aspects.

OBSERVATION is the key to success in relationships and particularly when you want to overcome opposition and establish a relationship or move it from one level of relationship to the next. OBSERVE your partner, observe how he relates to other people, his guy friends, her woman friends, his family. What makes him move closer towards them? What makes him move further away from them? When does he oppose them? When does he cooperate and become a teammate?

OBSERVE sequences of action. In order to see gradients you must be able to see sequences of action.

What is a sequence of action? Well in a sequence of action one thing precedes (comes before another) – like “date/engaged/marry” or “touch/kiss/make-out/petting/sex.”

OBSERVE your partner. Does he just get MAD at you? Or is there a gradient sequence there? Like, you promise to do something, you screw up and forget, you won’t talk about it, he gets MAD!

Or how about this one? Does he just CHEAT on you, or is there a sequence of events? Like, he tells you he is unhappy with something but you ignore it, and don’t follow up on the communication, he keeps telling you he is unhappy and wants to do something about it but you tell him you just don’t like that and he needs to understand. He  tells you he needs time to himself and wants to see more of his buddies and you say OK because you don’t want to do what he wants anyway. HE CHEATS, and you are devastated because you didn’t see it coming!

EVERYTHING happens in gradients, there are no mysteries in life when you just open up your eyes and start looking for the right things. He doesn’t just up and leave you. Gradiently, you grow apart. He gives you plenty of signals of the exact gradient of “apart” you are on. You just have to learn to look.

If you start seeing sequence of events and gradients you can do something about all this.

Look at MOTION (away and towards). Look and see, “Do I have a teammate, here, or an opponent?” Look at sequences of action. Then when you have a problem and you don’t know what to do, when you have an opposition you don’t know how to overcome, when you feel uncomfortable about something, look for a different gradient (lower or higher, but usually its lower).

Here are some examples:

I used to feel uncomfortable approaching women. If I saw a hot babe, I felt like walking up to her and saying, “Wow, are you hot or what?” or “Will you marry me?” or, “I’m in love” or, “Hey, I just saw you over there and I’m really attracted to you.”

Now before I really looked at it I thought the sequence of approach was something like this

1) First step -You have to approach the girl or she is gone forever and you lose

2) Second step -You have to tell her you are attracted to her or you won’t be able to create the chance of seeing her again.

Problem is I couldn’t bring myself to do it, too shy, too insecure about myself. So I would just let the opportunity pass. One day I finally sat down and applied gradients to the situation. I figured out that the real problem was I was uncomfortable with telling a hot girl exactly how much I liked her because I didn’t want to face the rejection (especially in front of other people) if she responded negatively.

Now prior to this I watched guys approaching girls and observed some gradients. I observed that it didn’t really matter what you said to a girl, if a girl liked you she would say something back. If she is interested in you she will keep the conversation going, if she is NOT she will end the conversation quickly and try to get away.

So let’s look at the sequence of events in this situation which added some gradient steps between 1 and 2 above.

1) First step -You have to approach the girl or she is gone forever and you lose

2) Second step – You have to say something to her or someway attempt to engage her in a conversation or she probably won’t do it herself.

3) Third step – Say something neutral that will not embarrass you or be obvious to people around that you are hitting on her.

4) Watch her response – does she try to keep the conversation going?

5) If she doesn’t, let her go – no harm no foul – nothing to be embarrassed about after all you just asked her for the time. But if she keeps the conversation going and appears to be interested in doing so, go to the next step.

6) Keep the conversation going myself. At some point add a slight “flirt” and see how she responds – something like “Wow, you have really pretty eyes.”

7) If the slight flirt doesn’t push her away, take it to the next level. Tell her she is an interesting person and you would like to talk to her some more but you have to go. Get her phone number and/or email.

8) You have achieved step 2 (letting her know you are attracted to her)in the first example above because women are used to subtle communications, and she now knows you are interested in her and thinks you are really cool because you did it in normal way (not the usual guy way – “Wow, you are so beautiful!”)

With this one observation I worked out a gradient strategy that forever handled my uncomfortable feelings and shyness. My shyness was really about me not wanting to look stupid by getting shot down by some girl in front of other people. When I observed the motion between men and women and that it really didn’t matter what you said to a girl (if she is interested she will manage to keep the conversation going). I realized I didn’t need to tell a girl that I liked her and was attracted to her on the approach.

So my best pick up line became and still is today, “Hi!”

Works like a charm. And this LOWER gradient of approach eliminates what I was really afraid of – looking stupid by putting my heart on my sleeve and having some girl stomp all over it.

Now forgive me if I have digressed into my “how to pick up women” mode but the example applies to anyone. Any situation any uncomfortableness in meeting, dating, and relating to men can be handled by gradients just as I did above.

Situationally, every relationship, every problem, and every person is different so there is no cookie cuter model here of how to apply “gradients.” But it starts with OBSERVATION and that means internal observation as well as external.

Whenever I feel

1) like I don’t want to confront something; or

2) uncomfortable and want to leave; or

3) blocked and frustrated because I can’t get over the opposition

4) like I just can’t figure out something,

I’ve trained myself to immediately stop and start looking for a lower gradient way to tackle the problem, opposition, or whatever. Since I’ve done this I’ve always figured out a lower gradient that works 100% of the time.

If at any time one of the gradients fail, look for more gradients between the last successful gradient and the one that failed.

Be creative in what you consider a gradient. There are mental, communicative, physical, and emotional steps and sometime they intertwine.

For example here are some gradients that I have employed in various situations:

I’ve pretended to be drunk and said something really nice about someone when they could overhear me. Why? Because just telling them something nice was the wrong gradient. They wouldn’t have believed me. They considered that people only spoke what was really on their mind when they were drunk. So this was the lower gradient that solved my problem.

I pretended to be mad in order or have a meaningful conversation. I had a girlfriend who didn’t believe I cared when I communicated in my calm rational way. She believed that people only cared when they were emotional. Yelling and screaming meant I cared. Calmness didn’t. So I faked anger and yelled and screamed at her and she loved it. I remember her exact words (even though it was about 30 years ago) – “Now that’s communicating!”

Creating A Relationship

I once mutually broke up with a girl I had been dating for 3 years, and then after a couple of weeks decided it was a mistake and that I wanted her back to give it a better try. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, she had met and hooked up with a childhood sweetheart and was talking marriage.

Well, to make a long story short, I got her back. (It took me three months of applying gradients and everything else I know – so don’t let the Dating Guru’s tell you to write off the ex if you don’t want to.)

But there was an interesting key gradient I applied in the very beginning when I decided I wanted her back and she told me all about the new guy, etc.

We had a four hour conversation on the phone. It was going bad as she told me all this stuff about the new guy, and how he was her childhood sweetheart and they were talking marriage, etc. but I decided I wasn’t going to let her off of the telephone until I got a positive “gradient” of agreement out of the conversation that I could build on. After four hours of going lower and lower on gradients, I finally got her to admit and agree there was a 1% chance I could win her back.

I remember those words well, too. I said, “Tell me there is not a 1% chance I can win you back and I will hang up the phone right now.” “I can’t say that,” she said. “There’s probably a 1% chance.”

That was all that I needed. I knew where I stood and what I had to overcome. Building on that gradient of agreement, I slowly built myself back into her life (and him out of it.)

The above examples are examples of using gradients to handle your own considerations but there are also plenty of ways you can use gradients to handle other people’s opposition. I’ve gone out with tons of beautiful women, and 99% of them told me they would never have a relationship with some guy that approached them on the street no matter how attracted they were to him.

Knowing this I never hit up on women on the street (unless they work in a store or restaurant that I can come back to, then I will out and out flirt ) in a flirting manner.

I developed a gradient approach that works well

1) approach them about something (see my “Hi” technique above)

2) find or create some future involvement ( a reason to contact her again) on a non-sexual mutual interest ( “Hey, I have a great article I can email you on that” or “I know a place that has jeans that you will love. I forget the name but I have it at home. I’ll call or email it to you when I get home.”

3) establish myself non-sexually and either let them hit up on me, or then make my move when they no longer perceive me as some guy they met on the street.

Establishing future is a key “lower gradient” that you should shoot for when first meeting men you want to have a relationhsip with – particularly if you know he is not interested in you.

In relationships, I’ve had to use gradients when there is an argument or disagreement. You can’t handle anything or repair a relationship if you can not communicate about the problem. The lower gradient, though, is that you can’t communicate to someone if you don’t feel comfortable and safe telling them things relevant to the discussion. Or if you don’t feel safe talking to them in general.

So often I have found that before you can handle something by talking about it, you actually have to handle “talking and communicating” as a subject. Discuss why you don’t feel safe communicating your deepest thoughts and feelings to your partner and perhaps make up some rules to handle that.

If you don’t feel safe talking about your problems with your partner, then talking about “talking” has to be the lower gradient conversation. Clear that up, make it okay to talk to your partner, then tackle the problem.

And when talking about talking doesn’t work, then you have to lower the gradient again and just shut up and spend some time being with that person and try to build up your affection for each other again.

Don’t get into anything heavy, just do things you both enjoy, spend quality time together and try to restore the feelings and attraction you once had for each other. After a while you will start to feel better about yourselves and will be ready to tackle that talk about talking.

And after that talk about talking, keep the quality time going and eventually you will be able to tackle the problem itself.

Creating A Relationship

“Creating A Relationship” – The Different Types of Create and Gradients (c) 2007 Dating To Relating, Inc.