Many people go their entire lives without ever truly knowing love, and there are also many who seem to not appreciate what they do actually have. Is it possible that you, too, have your priorities wrong in your relationship? Are you too busy looking for things to dislike instead of thinking about the things you will miss when he is gone?
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1. Does He Have to Look Fantastic All the Time?
It is safe to say there are many ways the advice on this post may be taken the wrong way, and this is one of the points you may misunderstand. Insisting that your boyfriend has to look great/presentable all the time is one of the ways your priorities in your relationship are wrong. If you cannot be seen in public with a guy unless he is dressed and pressed in his finest, then you have some deep-seated insecurities that you need to address, plus it is a sign you are secretly ashamed of him (the same is true if he insists you look your best 100% of the time).
You shouldn’t misunderstand this piece of advice. It is okay if you want your boyfriend to look presentable. After all, who wants to walk around town with a scruff bag? But, does he have to look his best if he is just nipping to the supermarket for milk? Or if your sister is coming around the house?
It is also okay to take pride in the way your boyfriend looks, but there is a thin line between pride in his appearance and control. Feel free to change him if you can, but do not do it because you are insecure.
2. Is Him Watching Porn Really Cheating?
Some women dump men if they find that they watch porn, and others try to stop men watching it and consider it cheating. This post is not here to promote the virtues and vices of porn, but you should know a few things about it first.
A research team in Canada tried to conduct research on how the behaviors of men that had and hadn’t seen porn were different. Surprisingly, they couldn't find a single man under the age of 30 that HADN’T seen pornography! (See report via Daily Mail.)
Researchers have found that the average man watches porn for 40 minutes at least 3 times per week, with that number going down by around only 50% for men in relationships, which is a total of an hour of porn per week. That means your man, brother and most likely your father are watching over two days of porn per year!
There were only 50,000 adult sites in the year 2000, there are now estimates that there are between 85 and 255 million websites with adult content! Irrespective of your feelings on porn, your boyfriend is all for it--even if he says he isn’t. Do you really want to spend your life fighting him on it? As long as nobody and nothing get hurt (meaning so long as he watches mainstream porn), then do you really want to fight over it?
Frequently asked questions
3. How Often Does He Have to Prove He Loves You?
If you have been hurt in the past, then it may happen again. If you have never been hurt in the past, then you have a nasty surprise awaiting you. The fact is that we all get hurt at some point. You can live with it, learn from it, and move on to be a little wiser and more careful, or you can put your current boyfriend through hell. You can accuse him, check up on him, nag him, tie him down, and you can force him to prove he loves you every week or every day. You can do as you wish, but one day he will meet a woman that will let him breathe, and he will leave you for her.
4. You Can Spend Time Apart without Him Cheating on You
Focusing on cheating is one of the ways your priorities in your relationship are wrong. If you cannot trust your partner, then get out. Do not spend weeks justifying it. Get out, work on your issues, and start again with somebody new. A relationship without trust is like a boat without a rudder (it is going nowhere). It is true that people cheat, but it is also true there is nothing you can do to stop them. You have to trust your partner until he gives you reason not to trust him. Men do cheat, but we seem to forget the men that turn down women that come onto them. We forget the men that love their girlfriends and wives and feel sick at the thought of cheating.
5. Do You Need to Plaster Your Face in Makeup?
Point one pointed out that you shouldn’t “need” your boyfriend to look his best at all times. The same applies to you. If you feel you “need” to plaster your face in makeup to “make” him stay with you, then you have your priorities all wrong. What is more harmful is when you plaster yourself in makeup in order to compete with another woman you think he may leave you for. You can wear what you like and do as you wish with your body and your face, but if you are doing it for fear of him leaving you or because you cannot go outside without it on, then you have your priorities all wrong because you are insecure.
6. He is Going to Masturbate No Matter What You do or Say
Just like watching porn, he is going to masturbate no matter how much sex you give him and even if you never say no. You should be more worried if he claims he never masturbates and you suspect it is true. Firstly, you should be worried because the health repercussions are frightening, and the second is because men that do not masturbate are more prone to impulsive cheating (the on-the-spot type) because of powerful biological urges.
7. A Baby Doesn’t Prove He Loves You
If your main priority is to get pregnant so you can start your permanent family, then you are living a lie. Having a baby with you doesn’t mean he loves you and certainly doesn’t mean he is going to stay with you. It is usually the opposite, as many men leave their girlfriends and wives whilst they are pregnant because the woman’s personality undergoes a fundamental change (sometimes temporary and sometimes not). The 2012 census in the USA showed 39 million families with children under 18 years old. Just 4% were single fathers and 27% were single mothers. That is 10,530,000 single mothers in the USA, so ask yourself again if you think having a baby with him will make him stay.
8. Just Because There Are Bad People Doesn’t Mean There Are No Good Ones
This is actually a paraphrasing of a line from the surprisingly good film called “ParaNorman.” There are some women out there that have a bad opinion of the motives of all men. These are often women that shortsighted people call “damaged goods.” They have often been hurt by men and so have a very bad opinion of them.
There are some very bad men and women out there, but do not forget that there are some good ones too. If a guy offers to do things for you all the time, then he is probably trying to manipulate you into dating him the same way a guy may buy you flowers and take you for meals. On the other hand, there are some men out there that want to help others with no devious or underlying motives. On the flip side, these are often the men that are taken advantage of by unscrupulous women.
9. Crying is a Weapon of Mass-relationship Destruction
Some women discover that they can use crying to get what they want from their boyfriends. If you use this manipulative move then that is your prerogative, but your reasons for using it are indicative of ways your priorities in your relationship are wrong.
If you feel the need to manipulate your boyfriend in order to get what you want, then you have a distinct lack of control in your relationship. It seems like a paradox, but if you are having to use manipulative techniques such as crying, then you have no real power in your relationship.
Instead of finding and using manipulation to get your own way, shouldn’t your priority be to improve the communication in your relationship? Shouldn’t your priorities be based around building more mutual respect and working as a team in your relationship? At the very least, shouldn’t your priority be to find out why you NEED to manipulate your boyfriend to get your own way? Isn’t it possible that one or more of you is selfish, or maybe that you do not have enough common and shared goals? Maybe you are both simply incompatible.
10. Are You Too Busy All the Time?
If you are always too busy, then he is too low down on your list of priorities. Best not to write much more under this point as you will be too busy to fini…
11. Betrayal Comes from the Ones You Love
There are some people that set their life around the possibility of being betrayed, yet people spend so much time looking outside their immediate circle that they are easy to manipulate and betray.
There are some women that are manipulated to a massive degree by their boyfriends or husbands, and their priorities are so twisted that they never let people help. They believe their friends say, “He’s no good” because they are jealous, and their families say it because they don’t like her being happy.
We are betrayed by the ones we love because they have the opportunity to betray in the first place. It is the gift you give them when you trust them. You can trust that person whilst still being vigilant of their actions and motives, or you can put your fingers in your ears and ignore every friend that tells you his is not treating you right.
12. Get off Your Phone
Some men are just as guilty as women on this front, but if mobile-social-media figures show anything, they show that women are really the biggest phone users. It is highly likely that you know at least a handful of women that are almost always on their phone.
Many of those women are the same when they are around the man they purport to love. Maybe they have become too comfortable around their man, or maybe they are truly deluded as to what real-life entails. They spend so much time on their phone that they miss out on time with the man in their life. He may not seem neglected, and he may even like the fact he can sit you in a corner with your phone and you will stay out of his hair.
The trouble is that sooner or later he will meet a woman that pays him more attention than simply looking up from her phone every few minutes. She will offer conversation that is based on more than Facebook updates and she will be more creative with him and the time she spends with him because her life isn’t wrapped around her phone. Right now, you may believe your man will never leave you no matter how much you ignore him, but he needs as much attention as you, and maybe he isn’t getting all he needs from you when all he sees of you is the top of your head as you hunch over your phone.
13. If He is Your World, then How Can You Be His?
In the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (by Susan Jeffers), there is 99% filler that is full of mush only Ginger Spice would listen to (it is the reason she quit all those years ago). There is 1% that is worth reading and it is devoted to what you fill your time with.
It shows a grid, and on the grid you see things such as work, kids, health, entertainment, love, sex, and a whole host of other things. There is another grid showing what happens when you fill your life with only one thing. When that one thing goes missing, the woman feels empty because there is nothing else in her life.
The point the author is trying to make, and the only point worth reading, is that you need a balanced lifestyle with balanced priorities. If he fills up most of your thoughts and your time, then you are lost without him, and that is not healthy.
Relationships are beautiful things, but few of us can ever boast of a perfect one. That’s because they’re hard work and we all would define “the perfect relationship” uniquely. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue of relationship priorities. Please share.
Comments
Skylar: Agree with Ayra
Mirsha: Whether porn shouldn't be taken as a big concern according to this article and find more a reason to justify it is still a wrong practice. It makes people to fantasize and have higher expectations from their partners to perform the same as in porn films. Also, many times by watching porn we don't really know what we are contributing to. Some of those women are being exploit and or are victims of human trafficking. So watching this stuff is like supporting those kind of atrocities. Maybe here in America women who perform on these films voluntarily is because they are promiscuous and for financial gaining by selling their body at any cost. So is still not to be justify or ok to watch it, it makes people to expect more unrealistic desires from their significant others.
Crystal: This article was ruined by the whole accepting men watch porn thing, that is a NO NO, for me anyways, each to their own
Allison: I am very against porn, and when my boyfriend and I talk about the subject he fees the same as I do and I do trust him and believe him when he tells me he doesn't watch it. We are also together 99% of the time and I know for a fact he wouldn't lie to me. Posts like this saying "Your man is all for it even if he says he isn't" is the ONLY thing causes relationships to go bad because it is giving women the doubt that their man is lying to them and DOES watch porn... Not sure if this is as clear and I want it to sound but hey, I know us women and girls against our boyfriends watching porn will understand. In my mind, cheating isn't the right term, but it is still very wrong.
Alli: the world is very ruined! glad SOMEONE on this post feels the same as I
Katie: Fun fact for all those who think porn affects the average person's sex life. Until video porn, a woman shaving her pubes was NOT attractive. If one had to to, say, get rid of lice, they would wear a pubic wig because that hair was SEXY. But no hair= easier to get close up shots of the action. Not think of the enormous pressure that's now on women to be hairless. And if a man you've dated has ever said he just didn't find you as attractive as the giant breasted women in porn and would rather masturbate to it than be intimate with you... You'd rethink your stance on it as well.
Allison: Porn isn't fucking art! Oh my god what is wrong with people! I am appalled like holy shit.
Mirsha: *Can't satisfy*
Jennapher: No disrespect intended Neecey, I know this is not your intention, but essentially in #2, the argument is that it's OK because "every man" watches porn? Say you had a 15 year-old son, and you caught him surfing porn sites, what would you do? Hopefully, you'd sit him down and tell him that curiosity is one thing, but making a habit of it is another. If his reply to you is "oh mom, everybody watches porn, what's the big deal?", what will you say? Probably something along the lines of "just because 'everybody does it, doesn't make it OK!" Or, if you are from my generation, "if everyone was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, you would jump too?" Porn has become ubiquitous, but that doesn't justify watching it. No healthy average guy I have ever known has not seen porn. But, very few if them have spent hours devoted to watching it. I don't think it has anything to do with sex! Neecey, you are so right when you say just about every guy will masturbate, just as it's safe to say so will just about all of us women too. We know why, it's pleasurable. But it is one thing to engage in a normal healthy sexual practice that is pleasurable, and another to spend time on line watching people having all kinds of virtual sex. And "porn" is an all-encompassing genre of sexual experiences and fantasies. Some of them can be violent, some of them can be fetishistic, some of them can be erotic and sexy...and some of them can be downright disturbing. And, as we have known for decades, the sex trade industry exploits women of all ages, and boys too, and the people who make money from even the most "average" porn sites are mostly people who are involved in much nastier stuff. Any guy can look at porn, or have fantasies, or masturbate. But watching porn in a regular basis? No, I must disagree, that is not tolerable behavior for a man. Same as if a guy comes home from work and consumes 12 beers every night, and says it no big deal, he's just drinking beer, we know better. Imho, porn is a lot more complicated than "all guys watch it."
Beryl: Well written Neecey. Full of common sense. Porn ? Well,they are all different really . Most men know it's just fantasy land. Just look at their pot bellies and stubbly chins and don't they just wish! Once a cheat,always a cheat so remember there are plenty more fish in the sea. Love is when each gives 60% to make the relationship a happy one.
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