The End Game

Once you have met someone who you are attracted to, and want to have a long term relationship with, it is good to consider what your End Game is. What I mean by this is what are your hopes and goals for the future. Not everyone wants to end up married, or monogamous for that matter. Look at the relationship of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, they have chosen as their End Game to be who they are as individuals and not get married, but to enjoy each other as long as they want.

For me, the End Game I wanted was marriage. I wanted the security, monogamy, and commitment of matrimony. When I started getting to this point in my relationship, I wanted to be clear of what I wanted. My past history had shown me that if I wasn't clear, I might not get anything near what I wanted. (I also want to say that I had been married in the past, but to people who were definitely did not have what I wanted in a relationship, so once I found someone with the right qualities, I knew I would do whatever I could to make it work.)

I had been in a couple of long term (if you consider four or five years long) relationships prior to meeting my husband. In both of these relationships, I had gone into them without considering the End Game. I dated for a period of time, then we moved in together, and then after around four years we split up. One of the things I found was that it was easy for us to split up when we weren't married, and that marriage was hard to commit to when you had every thing but the marriage certificate already.

When I started looking at the End Game this time, I knew that I did not want to live with my partner without the commitment of marriage. I did not want to break up with him, if he wasn't ready for that commitment yet, but we would need to keep our home lives separate, and keep dating, until we either decided to make that commitment, or decided to move on. When we had been dating for a couple of years, and skirted the issue of where the relationship was going a few times, I decided it was time to let my partner know what my hopes for the future were. Now, I know that many women feel that this is up to the man to do, but many men and especially nice guys often need the subject broached for them.

So I asked him is we could talk about our future, and he brought up the need for us to live in the same place. At that point, as difficult as it was I let him know where I stood. I let him know I loved him and wanted to be with him, but did not want to live with him without the commitment of marriage. Thankfully, my partner was happy that I wanted that kind of commitment, and we got engaged about four months later.

So your assignment this week is to consider your End Game. Is marriage what you want, or would you prefer something more free flowing? Do you see yourselves living in the same house or staying in separate residences? Are there children in your future, or are you happier with your Labrador retriever? What does your relationship look like in five years, ten years, twenty years? Begin taking a few minutes a day to visualize the possibilities until you have an idea of where you want to go, and next time we will talk about making it happen.

Marquita