Relationships and Money

I was thinking today about sort of a formula regarding relationships and money. This following is what the average person deals with in life. So, this might not be specific to your individual life but it is what people on average deal with in their lives.

First, the optimum time in life to search out potential significant others is between about 15 and 25 in the United States. However, after that, everything begins to change rather radically. So what might be useful and necessary for one between 18 and 25 has a tendency to become counterproductive starting about age 25 to 30. So, by the time most people are about 30 years of age relationships become much more about money and children than they tend to be about love, sex and playfulness. So, in this sense everyone's window worldwide tends to be relatively narrow unless one is rich. And sometimes rich people stay emotionally stilted in this 15 to 25 period of life throughout their lives. For some, this might be okay or good but for others this might be a disaster depending upon the person.

But, the average person has to be very aware of the changes going on or they are left behind and alone very often. Or, they wind up in a very unhappy relationship for 5, 10, 20 years or even a lifetime. Or they wind up alone and rich or alone and poor or alone and somewhere in between.

Especially among men, the men who are self made men tend to be not good at relationships. Because the necessary focus to get rich from being poor makes them usually myopic in regard to relationships. So, usually a woman might find a really nice guy who is good at relationships but doesn't make a very good living or a woman might find a real asshole that really brings in the money. This is kind of the way life actually is.

So, by age 30 this is what people find: either good relationships with no money or bad relationships with a lot of money. But, what you should really avoid is a bad relationship with no money because this only makes people crazy or dead in the long run.

So, for most people realizing that as they pass 25 they need to start thinking about either finding someone they actually want to be with or realizing that they might be alone for life, one or the other.

In my own case I fell in love about 3 times before I was 21. The first time I was 16 and I realized that I was too intense emotionally to be with a really intensely emotional woman. The first person I fell in love with at 16 was 21 and could sing like an opera singer and was very feminine and emotional and intelligent. But I found I couldn't stay balanced in this kind of relationship, partly because of the age difference and partly because I wasn't grown up enough yet to know what I was really doing. So, I started going out with someone who was a year older than I when I was 17 who was just starting out at a Los Angeles University. This was good but then this became a problem because this was someone who I actually wanted to marry and had believed I would marry since I first met her at age 6. But this was a problem because she was already in college and a grown woman and I was only 17 and still pretty much of a boy emotionally. Two years later we broke up because I hadn't been completely faithful to her and then a couple of years later she married and I felt crushed. But, even though I was crushed by this I knew that this would be better for her because I didn't know when I would grow up. At 19 I went with another girl for 2 years that I also thought I could eventually marry but then she was very religious and wanted to stay celibate and I wanted children. So, I broke up with her. Now, I had broken up in two fully adult relationships and now I was really screwed up emotionally from both these breakups.

So, I got angry and decided to never date another virgin again. And to the best of my knowledge I kept this pledge except for a few girls who lied to me about not being virgins anymore. So, between ages 21 and 25 I dated at least 25 girls or more. Then I met a girl I wanted to marry and we had a son at age 26.

But, all the playfulness and flirting that I had found so useful for a lot of my life up until then became very counterproductive to staying married and protecting and raising my son. So, it is funny what really helps you stay alive at one point in your life would harm both your marriage and your children later on. And precedent (the fact that you have behaved in a certain way for a long time) is very difficult to overcome in life often.

So, by the time I was 29 I was divorced from my first wife because she was really too young when we married (she was 21) and then we had a baby at her age 22 even though I was 26 and old enough to be a good father. However, I think people grew up faster in 1974 than now because I meet many people who are even 30 years old that I can tell have no business being married or raising children.

But also, by the time most people are 30 absolutely everything has changed in their lives whether they realize it or not. Time waits for no man or woman or child. So, by age 30 and beyond relationships are much more about friendship and compatibility and money than they are about sex.

Yes. sexual compatibility is very important in almost any relationship with a significant other but after 30 it should not be the most important component of a relationship unless you really want that relationship to fail. The single most important things are friendship and compatibility and the ability to laugh at yourself in all situations. Without these things relationships just aren't going to last. Or if they do they will tend to be very strained and uncomfortable.

Money. Relationships in order to be more permanent at ever age have to have enough money in order to successfully exist ongoing. So, whether that money is coming from your parents until you are 25 or 30 or whether you have jobs (or whether one of you has a trust fund) or whatever. Just remember that it isn't love that tends to break up marriages. If you look at statistically what actually breaks up marriages it is money. Either there is none or there is an unequal distribution of money in the relationship. But, if you ask most people why they divorce it is not because of a lack of love. It is because of Money. This is the primary reason that people break up.

So, understanding this will empower you to be more practical in your decisions at every age regarding relationships and money.