Summarized from Matthew Kelly’s book The Seven Level’s of Intimacy:
The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved. Pg. 174-185
Knowing the dreams of the people you love and helping them fulfill those dreams brings a certain dynamism to relationships that is both energizing and inspiring. Few things energize an individual like the passionate pursuit of a dream, and few things can infuse a relationship with such energy and enthusiasm as the pursuit of dreams. Whether revealing or chasing your dreams, both can have a very powerful impact on any relationship. Our dreams are the vision that shapes both our lives and our relationships.
When it comes to the pursuit of dreams, the first question to ask yourself is, are you willing to delay gratification? If you answer no, you are not ready for relationships, and any worthwhile dream will evade you. Our present culture proposes that life is all about getting what you want, when you want it, and is propelled forward by a constant need for gratification and a contempt and disdain for anything that would delay gratification. Now even instant gratification isn’t fast enough. As a result, we are now witnessing the rise of entire generations who possess no patience, little self-control and an almost complete inability to discipline themselves.
The reality is that success in any field, whether it is business, career, sports, investing, inventing, health and well-being, spirituality, or relationships, requires delayed gratification. You cannot be successful without delaying gratification – unless your goal is instant gratification. And if this is your goal, you may experience some temporary success but you are doomed to fail sooner or later.
Our ability to delay gratification determines our success in a great many areas of out lives.
Personal finance is a great example, perhaps one many of us will be able to relate to a little more closely! Millions of Americans retire each year with little or no net worth. Having given the best forty years of their life to work, they have frighteningly little to show for it. They will collect their Social Security and they may marginally survive but a great many of them will spend the rest of their lives watching pennies. Is there an alternative?
Absolutely. If you saved $1 a day for 55 years you would have $20,000 in savings. You may say, so what? Well, if you invested your $30 at the end of each month in government bonds at a return of 5 percent, after 55 years you would have $101,000. Still not convinced that you should delay your gratification? Invest your $1 a day at a return of 9 percent, and after fifty-five years you will have $481,795. Is it unreasonable to expect a return of 9 percent? You decide, but the S&P has averaged a return of 12.4 percent since 1925.
Still not convinced? Save an entire $3 a day for fifty-five years and invest at 9 percent and you will walk away with $1,445,385. That’s right, almost $1.5 million in return for a $3 a day delayed gratification. Increase your savings to $5 a day and you will amass $2,408,975. Why do most people retire with little or no net worth? Two reasons. They are unwilling to delay gratification, and they never really took the time to develop a financial dream.
On the other hand, the average household in the US that carries a credit card balance has more than $7,000 of credit card debt. (likely more today!)
Consumer debt is at record levels as is instant gratification. Coincidence? I think not. Is the battle between saving and spending? I don’t think so. The battle more than ever, is in your mind debating instant gratification versus delayed gratification.
I am certainly not suggesting that wealth is the be-all and end-all, but when given a choice between riches and poverty, I would choose wealth every time. And I’d encourage you to do the same. The reality is that most of us in America up until now at least, could be argued, have actually been given the choice between riches and poverty.
Now, may we kick up the stakes a notch and consider our relationships rather than merely money? First think about the people you know who have failing relationships or who cannot keep a relationship together. Are they willing to delay gratification? Do they see relationships simply as a source of pleasure? Do they hold the unreasonable expectation that a good relationship should not have problems? Are they willing to put the relationship ahead of their personal agenda and pleasures?
Every worthwhile dream absolutely demands delayed gratification, and the dream of a great relationship is absolutely no different. The very nature of relationships is strategically giving, continually giving, and seldom if ever, getting; it is helping someone else in their journey to become their best possible version of themselves.
While building such encounters, we must be willing to delay our own personal gratification. There will be times in your primary relationship when you will be required to delay gratification (individually and as a couple) if you wish to live the dream of a great relationship, and if you wish to achieve some of the other dreams you as a couple have identified and are committed to achieving.
So how do people who delay their gratification do it? They keep in mind the future gratification and in relationships, that is so critical! When we love someone, we think about building a life with that person and about all the exciting possibilities the future holds. Dreams extend our time horizon beyond the self centeredness of instant gratification and into a future filled with the love, intimacy, and mutual respect for which we all yearn. Dreams, a common essential purpose, and the willingness to delay gratification will ignite your relationship like no pleasure the world has ever offered or prescribed.
Building future relationship together by knowing what awakens the passion, energy, and enthusiasm in the lives of the people you love is crucial if you are going to develop a deep level of intimacy. The reason it is so important for us to know the dreams of the people we love is that they view their lives in relation to their dreams. In fact, did you realize how our dreams are the lenses through which we view everything.
Let me give you a quick example. Your wife says to you, “I saw a beautiful dress at the store today. I think I’ll go back and buy it tomorrow.” You may ask how much it costs, to which she replies, “Two hundred and fifty dollars.” It is an arbitrary amount and many people could justify the expenditure. But you may become upset because you see this expenditure as frivolous. As you see it, you wife already has fifty dresses she hardly ever wears. But this is not the point; you are not upset because your wife wants a new dress. The real point is that you would rather see this money used for something else – that is, for one of your dreams.
Your dream may be to retire early and travel with your wife while you are still young enough to enjoy it. You may be saving relentlessly to make this dream come true, but you haven’t told your wife about it. You may have alluded to it, but have you sat down together, done the math, and determined what you both need to do to make the dream a reality? Let’s face it: if you gave your wife the choice between a handful of new dresses and traveling together after your early retirement, I think she would pick the latter. If she wouldn’t, you got bigger problems than whether or not she buys the dress.
Dreams do bring clarity and focus to our relationships. If you are going to build a future together, you have to know each other’s dreams. Too often, we live in the miscredited fantasy that one day we will wake up and everything will be exactly as we have always wished it would be. It won’t. Seriously now folks, somewhere deep down inside of you, you know that is pure fictional fantasy, And that dear reader, is precisely the difference between a wish and a dream.
If you want to be intimate with the people you love, you need to know what drives them. In different stages of our lives, we are driven by different things, different values. For example, if you asked your spouse what his or her dreams were when you first started dating and you haven’t spent much time on the subject since, you will likely discover that he or she has a whole new set of dreams now. If this is the case, may I suggest you ask this question first of your spouse or significant other as a starting point for likely the much needed renewal in your relationship: Which of your dreams got lost along the way while I was too busy pursuing my own?
It is never too late to make such corrections! Go forth rejoicing enjoying your needed renewal and your scheduled carefree timelessness, while you can! merlin