Dating

Secrets Can Destroy Relationships
Black Couple in Bed

(Photo Credit: Essence)

Honesty is always the best policy to employ in all relationships.  If you desire for your relationship to have staying power, then you need to be completely truthful with your partner.  It’s vital for you to inform your partner about past and present phenomena that are important for him or her to know.  You have to place enough trust in the power of your relationship to handle frank discourses.  Your partner should be happy that you’re willing to disclose with him or her things that you could have kept secret.

One couple I know has some secrets that would certainly shatter the relationship if they surfaced.  The woman has slept with her partner’s “good friend.” The “good friend,” who is a secretive person himself, refuses to inform the guy that he has had sex with his girlfriend.  A relationship like this one is doomed to fail.

Unfortunately, some people are so desperate to be in and/or stay in relationships that they’re willing to live with lies.

It’s always best to inform your partner as early as possible about things you believe may potentially cause problems or challenges in your relationship. By addressing phenomena that can be problematic for the relationship early on, this can build strength in the relationship.  It can also determine if those are things that will permit the relationship to continue, which is essential to resolve before the relationship gets too serious.

While I’m not advocating for you to become a private investigator, I do contend that it’s crucial for you to do your own research on those you wish to involve yourself with and those you’re involved with. Yes, people can change.  You may not, however, be able to stand being in a relationship with a person if you know some of the things he or she has done in the past.  While we should not hold everything in a person’s past against him or her, one does need to make the most informed decision about entering into a relationship with an individual.  The most informed decision can only emerge when the proper research has been done on your potential or current partner.  For example, I know someone who is in a relationship with a woman who has slept with at least one guy who is highly sexually active and who engages frequently in risky sexual behavior, but she has not told her current partner about this.  She’s unfairly exposing her current partner to the risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

If you know the secrets that a family member’s partner or friend’s partner aren’t divulging, then I do want to prepare you for the possibility that he or she will not believe you.  He or she may attack you by saying, “You just want me,” “You’re just envious,” “You’re just a liar,” “You just want him,” “You just want her,” or etc.  If you feel the need to tell your family member or friend, just know that you’re doing the right thing.

Just remember, secrets always have a way of coming out.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

 Related Articles

Give People Their Deserved Closure

Black Couple Breaking Up

When you have shared a special intimate relationship with someone, don’t just stop communicating with him or her.  An abrupt termination of communication with someone you have been intimate with for a significant period of time can leave him or her feeling more than heartbroken but also confused.  The person will be confused because he or she does not have any idea why things were so good when between you and then you just all of sudden stopped communicating with the person.  If you no longer want to be intimate with the person and/or don’t see the relationship as special any longer, then let the person know—don’t just have him or her wondering what’s going on with the relationship.

Open and frank communication is key to addressing most (if not all) relationship problems.  Have the courage to communicate with the person you have shared an intimate and special relationship with to inform him or her about your feelings.  Don’t simply say that “you’ve been so busy” as the reason why you’ve not communicated with him or her.  If you have the person’s telephone number and/or connected with the person via various social media platforms, it would not take you but a few minutes to communicate with him or her.  Without any communication, you run the risk of making the person think what you shared with him or her was not real.  The person can be justified in this line of thinking when all communication from you has ceased.

If the person contacts you through any vehicle, don’t simply ignore his or her effort to reach out to you—respond back to him or her.  Why would you simply ignore a call, email, text message, and etc. from someone you have shared an intimate and special relationship with?  You owe the person an explanation for not communicating with him or her.  The reason you have discontinued communicating with the person may be legitimate.  You, however, have a responsibility to inform the person about your reason(s) for no longer communicating with him or her is legitimate.

While you may not be making a conscious choice not to communicate with this person, you never know what he or she is thinking.  The person can mistake the absence of communication as sign of betrayal and/or that you simply used him or her.  This can be far from the truth but you have to bear the responsibility.  You didn’t communicate and this opened up an opportunity for the person to develop inaccurate thoughts.

Whenever sex has been involved in a relationship, it is wise for you to have the decency to at least end the relationship with some form of communication.  Hopefully, you’re going to give the person enough details to understand why you’re deciding to end a relationship he or she thought was just fine.  Let the person know the significant factors that led to your decision.  You might be surprised how well he or she takes your comments and might understand your comments better than you think.

Don’t simply resolve not to say anything to a person you’ve shared a special and intimate relationship with—communicate with him or her.  If the intimate relationship you had with the person was truly special and you communicated in the past that it was indeed special, then you have a duty to communicate with the person today.  Give people the closure they need today!

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Got a Crush on Someone?
Crush

I’ve been wanting you for a long time.

When you have a crush on someone, it can be a beautiful thing.  Having a crush on someone can make you appreciate nearly every aspect of him or her.  You may find yourself lusting over pictures you can find of him or her, especially pictures you discover on Facebook.  Finding the courage to speak to the person can be a difficult thing: your nerves can often get the best of you.  If you want to move your crush on someone beyond it being just a crush, then you’re going to have to defeat your nerves and pursue him or her.  You’ll never know what can develop between you and the person until you pursue him or her.

You may find that the person you have a crush on feels the same way you do.  He or she may have been battling the same nerves you have been combating.

If you let a person you have a crush on remain single too long, you may lose your opportunity to be with him or her.  It’s not guaranteed that he or she will always be single.  Don’t let someone capture your happiness by snatching up the person you want to be with simply because you didn’t have the courage to let him or her know your true feelings.

Yes, having a crush on someone is a fun, beautiful, exciting, and interesting phenomenon.  As adults, we cannot maintain the same attitudes and behaviors about our crushes as we did when we were children.  I’m not saying that some attitudes and behaviors we had as children will not work, however.  For example, it may be useful to give the person a short note that simply says, “I like you.”  If you do this, the person will know how you feel about him or her and this will begin the serious and thorough discourse that needs to take place about how you truly feel.

When you’re having a conversation with your crush, don’t feel childish because you cannot keep yourself from smiling and laughing.  The difficulty you’re experiencing holding back your smiling and laughing indicates that you truly like this person.  If you’ve ever been in love with someone, think about how smiling and laughing were common phenomena you experienced.

In order to overcome how nervous you may be about pursuing your crush, you might need to embrace the idea of taking risks.  You’re going to have to take some risks if you want to receive some high rewards.  You will be surprised at how relieved you will be once you simply disclose your feelings about the person you have a crush on to him or her, even if you don’t get the results you desire.  You will not have to wonder what would have happened if you would have let the person know how you feel.

Go ahead and let the person who you have a crush on know how you feel about him or her before it’s too late.  You’ll thank me later.

Have you ever had a crush on someone you had a challenging time expressing to him or her how you feel?  Did you overcome what thing or things were preventing you from expressing your feelings?  If so, how did you overcome what was keeping you from expressing your feelings?  If you did not, why do you feel you weren’t able to overcome the thing or things that held you back from expressing yourself?

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Research Who You’re Dating Before You Commit

Although you don’t want to have a complete fear of commitment, many people need to have a little more caution about who they choose to date.  Many people are just too happy to be intimately involved with someone or to have the appearance being intimately involved with someone that they neglect to do some of the basic research that can be quite helpful in discovering that their “special” woman or man is really not just “special” to them but to others as well.  If you do some asking around about the person you’re involved with, you just may find some valid things about him or her that he or she has not shared with you.  You may even be surprised with what those who hang around you all of the time can reveal to you about who you’re dating.

You have to have a willingness to listen to what people around you may have to say about the person you’re dating.  Of course, there will be many people out there that will simply hate on the person you’re dating, but you can eliminate those folks by asking them to give you proof to verify what they’re saying.  People who really have some knowledge about the person you’re dating can provide you with some proof of what they’re claiming.

In no way does this piece assert that you should become a private investigator or hire one to investigate the person you’re involved with.  This piece does, however, contend that you should ask that person serious questions and ask questions about the person to people who knew him or her before you did.  You just may be amazed at what you find out!

You can make yourself look like a fool when you go around acting and talking like you have the most special person in the world when that’s the same person who has slept with nearly everyone in town, or has slept with whorish people you know you don’t want to come behind.  You don’t have to turn into an interrogator, but it certainly is a wise decision to asking some probing questions before you truly commit yourself to a person.  A person who is truly committed to you will not mind you asking questions about their past and what he or she is doing right now.

If you discover that the person you’re dating has slept with one of your friends, do you really want to continue to be with that person?

Of course, everyone has a past and if you find out aspects about someone’s past that you don’t like, then that’s up to you how you judge that person for what he or she has done in the past.  For example, if you discover that the person you are dating has been really whorish in the past, you may resolve that this is not the person you want to stay committed to or desire to build anything further.  However, if you learn that someone has slept with your friend or associate since you’ve been together, then you need to reassess whether or not you should be with that person, especially if you’ve asked the person you’re dating if he or she has slept with that person before and the response was no.

Again, don’t go to extremes in your attempts to learn more about the person you’re dating, but do some basic research about your mate.  Start with basic questioning.  If you don’t have open and frank communication with your mate, then the relationship is going to end inevitably anyway.

Before you present the person you’re dating to the public as being so “special,” make sure he or she is not also someone else’s intimately “special” person too.

Antonio Maurice Daniels

University of Wisconsin-Madison