Final preparations

My last five posts were on the anticipation phase of transitioning out of the single life that lasts forever into the life of no-longer-single, the point right after you decide to become serious about finding a somebody, taking an active approach as opposed to the passive approach you may have been taking previously. It is a fun time of exploring new things you haven't done, going out and meeting new people, figuring out exactly what you want in a partner and who might fit that picture. This anticipation phase will not last as long as the prior phase when you were just waiting for something to happen, but it can still take quite a bit of time. It may take several months, even a few years. That's okay; it is good to be selective so long as you keep the end goal in mind.

But what happens when you eventually do find that good relationship candidate? What happens when you really start to hone in on a particular person, and that person appears to be honing in on you? Do you just jump from anticipation to "together" in the blink of an eye? Some couples would say yes, that's exactly what happened to them.

They're lying, of course.

Okay, maybe "lying" is too strong of a word. That may be how they remember it, but you can be sure that isn't how it went down. It might seem to them like the anticipation part came to sudden close, but what really happened is that anticipation just morphed into another phase before the deal was finally sealed. I call this next phase the preparation phase because you are preparing yourself to leave the comfortable "me" life for the unfamiliar "us" life. The preparation is the brief period of time where a decision is made, on both sides, whether or not the "something" is really something or about to become a something. And I say "brief" because this period of time is indeed brief; so brief that it commonly gets confused and even merged with anticipation. But it is definitely a separate phase even if you may not recognize it at first.

By its very definition, this preparation phase has to be brief. Even if you are the kind of person that likes to take your time to think about big decisions, there is no escaping the ticking clock during the preparation. You can choose to act or to wait. However, simply waiting is still a decision of inaction, and that decision will have its own ultimate consequence — whether or not you intended it — because if you wait too long and do nothing, any shred of opportunity for the something to become something will cool down and become the nothing you made it by doing nothing. That may sound harsh or have the bad taste of a high-pressure sales pitch, but unfortunately, it's the nature of the beast and you can't change the truth just because you don't like it — well, you can, but you're only hurting yourself if you do. Denial and indecision won't get you to the place where you want to be, which is (I presume) the place of no-longer-single.

The preparation phase is the phase where there is the highest risk of emotional pain outside of a real relationship. It's where you will be most vulnerable, because you'll be forced to peek out from behind your wall and say "I think I know the direction this is heading, and yes, it is my strong desire for this to go in that direction. Is it your desire too?" Scary stuff, right? No wonder singles like to put it off and why couples tend to gloss over or ignore it when recounting the story of how they fell in love. It feels good when you get past it, but while you're in the midst it, the anxiety can become unbearable, which gives added incentive to power through it as quickly as possible.

But going through it quickly does not mean you throw caution to the wind. Indeed, though the preparation is brief, there are still some important principles to follow as you go through this very difficult transition. My next few blog entries will touch on some of those principles.