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Marriage

What Are Your Deal Breakers?

While you’re dating (and as you are deciding whether or not you want to get married to a particular person), you’re going to find a lot of things that you like about your partner. You’ll find a bunch of things that you love about them.

You’re going to find some things that you don’t particularly care for, but you can live with. Then all of a sudden, you are going to run face first into this massive obstacle, something you can not tolerate in your boyfriend or girlfriend. And that my friend is called a deal breaker.

Let’s talk about it.

Hey! While you’re here, check out my video on What Are Your Deal Breakers?

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What Is A Deal Breaker?

A deal breaker is something in life that you can’t deal with; that you just won’t live with. Something that is intolerable for you.

It could be a situation. It could be a character trait. It could be a belief or a thought or the way somebody acts.

YOU define what it is and you do have them. I know, in your brain right now, you do have certain things where you’re like, “I just won’t deal with this. I need this situation to be a certain way.”

You can think of deal breakers as black and white statements:

  • I want to have kids.
  • You need to change your last name.
  • I want to go to church.
  • I don’t want to go to church.
  • I want to live with my parents.
  • I don’t want to live in the same state as my parents.

Deal breakers are things that you’re just dead set on or against.

Deal breakers are things that your partners needs to pass in order for you to get married to them. Think of them like checkpoints in a video game. They have to pass the checkpoint to move forward, otherwise you run out of gas and the game stops.

Start By Being Honest With Yourself

Sometimes your deal breakers will be specific to a person.

You hate their friend or they need to like your friends They have really, really bad morning breath or they snort when they laugh.

Who knows- you just decide what it is. You get to decide what these deal breakers are for yourself. So look honestly at yourself and decide what it is that you can and cannot live with.

What do you do when you find a deal breaker? I have a whole separate post about that called How To Deal With Deal Breakers. I break it down into a very simple process, because you don’t want to just throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Write Down Your Deal Breakers

As you proceed through your marriage decision process, I want you to pay attention and jot down what your deal-breakers are. If there’s something you can think of- write it down.

Then remember that you need to be honest with your partner about it, because if you have these deal breakers and you can’t honestly communicate them to your boyfriend or girlfriend, then how are you ever going to figure this out?

Are you going to go around being upset your entire life? Are you just going to call off your marriage because you have some perceived violation of a deal breaker on the part of your partner that you didn’t even talk to them about?

That’s no way to be an adult. That’s not a way to solve your problems. Also keep this in mind- the more deal breakers you have, the harder it’s going to be to find someone who fits all of your criteria.

Make A Decision

When you find a deal breaker sit down and think, “Is this really a deal breaker? Or is this something that I can live with? They check ninety-nine out of a hundred boxes and they don’t check this one box. Let’s really focus on this one.”

Maybe you can get past a particular deal breaker…or not. You need to decide.

If your boyfriend or girlfriend doesn’t check one of these deal breaker boxes, you don’t want to just cut it off. You want to talk about it. You want to see if you can work around it. Sometimes it’s just a misunderstanding. Check out my post How To Deal With Deal Breakers for more information on that.

Figure out what your deal breakers are. Let me know. Leave me a comment.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. There’ll be more.

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By Alex Blasingame

I'm awesome.

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