How do You Know You're Ready for a Relationship?

Do you have butterflies when they walk through the door? are you constantly thinking about them and dreaming about the next time you see them? Could this be love? It might be but how do you know you are ready for a relationship? What is a relationship anyway? We all have relationships of different kinds. We have family relationships, hopefully built on unconditional love. We don't have to do anything to earn that love, it just is. We are there for them and they are there for us, we belong to each other. Then there are friendships - people we meet and like, enjoy spending time with and we may even get to the point of loving them like family. Meaning that unconditional, I've got you and you've got me kind of love and of course there are romantic relationships. These are people usually of the opposite sex, who may start out as friends and then something changes. We start to want to have a deeper relationship with them, a physical relationship that goes beyond what we would do with our friends. I don't know anyone who greets their friends with tongue kissing. Sorry to be gross but it's true. There is a difference between a friend and a romantic relationship. When a friendship adds in romantic behavior, language, actions and intimacy - that has crossed the line into a romantic relationship. It's important to understand these things to have clarity. The desire to be intimate with another person is what catapults that relationship into another category. Intimacy with someone affects us in deep ways. It joins us to another person mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually in ways friendship does not. The result of that intimacy could lead to joy, or it could lead to pregnancy, disease, physical pain, emotional pain and confusion. That is why being in a relationship requires a level of responsibility that being a friend doesn't. Imagine holding a glass heart in your hand, you can never put it down or in your pocket, it has to stay in your hand in every situation and circumstance, do you feel the pressure? How do you know when you are ready for that kind of responsibility? Here are some questions you can ask yourself

• Are you able to care about someone more than yourself?
  

• Are you able to tell the difference between people who are worthy of that sacrifice and those who will take advantage of you?
  

• Do you have good communication skills, even when you are angry?
  

• Do you know what you need/want in a romantic partner and do you have those same attributes? - for example if you want someone kind, caring, honest and hardworking, are you those things?
  

• It has been tradition for hundreds of years to equate romantic relationships with marriage - if I engage in this romantic relationship that means we will get married eventually - are you ready to marry? (not do you want to be married, are you ready to be a husband if you are a guy or a wife if you are a girl?)
  

• Being in an intimate romantic relationship means the chance of the female becoming pregnant is always there. Are you emotionally, physically, mentally ready to be a parent? These are just 6 benchmarks, I would say that if someone answers "no" to any of these, that they should wait before entering into a romantic relationship. I know it's a harsh reality. Will you suffer if you wait? You will experience longing, you may experience loneliness and jealousy, you may feel that you are missing out. But here is what can happen if you wait.
  

• You have time to get ready! You can spend the time learning how to communicate, learning about parenthood, learning how to think of others more than yourself and developing the same characteristics you would like to see in your spouse You can avoid becoming a parent before you're ready and you can become a better judge of character. So yes, waiting can feel torturous at times but if you know why you're waiting it makes it bearable. If you ARE ready, congratulations! Make sure they're ready too!