Phil and Maude’s Friday Feature: Core Values
We recently had the pleasure of writing an article for Older Dating, a site which is dedicated to helping older singles meet new people all across the UK. This site offers lots of helpful articles by an array of dating and relationship experts aimed at helping people over 40 create successful relationships.
In our guest article “Why Are Core Values Important for a Successful Relationship?” we wrote about how you can use your accumulated experience and knowledge of yourself. Here’s an excerpt from the article.
At this point in your life, you’ve probably had a few relationships and have an idea of what you are looking for (or at least what you don’t want!). That’s a really great advantage of older dating; whether it be from bad or good dating and relationship experiences, you have already spent some time getting to know yourself.
Its time to put that self-knowledge to work for you in the kind of conscious dating that develops into successful relationships.
When you meet someone new, there’s usually a period of sheer pleasure – of being wanted, of being kissed, of anticipating the next date. But unless you’re spectacularly good at remaining in the present or incredibly indifferent to future disaster, you’ll start looking at where the relationship is going.
We always recommend that in the early stages of dating you use that time to assess whether or not your core values match the person you’re seeing.
Well, what are those core values?
We’ve also written about core values on this blog here, here, here and here, and in our latest book “How Two: Have a Successful Relationship” where we wrote:
Actions have a wide range of acceptability. Think of actions as lying on a spectrum. At one end are core values, both universal and individual.
Universal core values derive from the relationship between all people – that of being one family – the basic understanding that we are all related, all equal, all brothers and sisters. Also called the Golden Rule, every major religion and philosophy has a version of this.
Individual core values are how each person puts these universal values into practice in their daily lives and their relationships. They will vary according to each person, reflecting, for example, choices of religion, philosophy, politics and relationship to the environment. They come from our background, families, communities, and various other elements of the outside world. As we grow, have our own experiences, and come to know ourselves better, these individual core values will align more and more with universal values.
In the beginning of a relationship, evaluate your new partner in terms of your core values.
We recommend the Older Dating site, and think you will profit from reading our article and the many other articles you will find there. And if you live in the UK, maybe you’ll meet someone, too!
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