Beliefs are more than ideas. They are "dearly held" ideas, or else are "very feared" or "very depressing" ideas. In other words, they have "emotional valence." They are ideas directly attacted to a certain amount or type of emotion. In this sense, they are a source of emotional energy to use as fuel in heading toward our goals.

As far as your pursuit of success, you may have found the natural gift to pursue certain goals with efficiency and knowledge of simply "how to do it." You "just know," and that is intelligence.

You've made mistakes, and found balance, discipline, and fortitude in pursuing it. And that is maturity. But even with a giftedness for something, and perseverence, even then, you may have found yourself, doubting yourself.

People told you that you couldn't achieve it, help which we all need, did not arrive, and soon, you may have found yourself starting to give up on the goal or goals. That may be when you dug into yourself and discovered that you had the "wrong thinking" to achieve the thing. That part of you was actually, silently working against accomplish the thing, and that these beliefs may have come from someone other than you, like a parent or enemy.

You then either had to change what the goal is, because it was not aligned with who you are, and therefore what you even like, or else you needed to get yourself, "an attitude change" in which you "remember who you really are," and got your beliefs in yourself, and therefore the "big dream," more honest and aligned.

It is hard to achieve anything with a partner who has directly opposed beliefs about themselves, you, or the goal or goals. You believe that you can do a thing, and they do not. You believe that it is good to help save animals and they think that resources are better spent, bettering their own lives.

Beliefs are very powerful in propelling you to success, but not just in terms of the ideas contained within them. They are much more powerful than just facts or words, because beliefs also contain a certain quantity of emotional energy in them, too - whether positive or negative. As a result they are durable, and not easily changed, because over time, we have built up supports of them through evidence that they are correct, and the emotional energy in them, gives them a sort of psychological "weight." This effectively "locks" them to the "floor of the mind," and often causes them to "go underground," into the unconscious, still operating to limit the scope of what we even try for in life.

This causes beliefs to be a durable contributor to our success, or lack of it. They define what we think is possible or impossible, and they then limit the scope of what resources, and how much we invest them toward a goal. They also limit the scope and provide the demographics of the kind of partner who might actually benefit or distract us toward or from a goal. They deeply impact each element of the strategies that we will use toward a goal as well.

Positive and useful Beliefs are then one of the 4 Cardinal Traits of Success - Intelligence, Maturity, Beliefs and Goals - that we need to find in a lasting mate and partner.

BACK TO CARDINAL TRAITS OF SUCCESS.

The connection between negative emotion and conflict is clear.¹ And yet it is also well known how positive emotion reduces conflict and maintains marriage.² Furthermore, positive emotion (which is friendship) is additive over time and with the incidence of frequent positive experiences, which is to say that friendship within marriage needs to be invested in, and maintained. ³

We have also spent a great deal of time in this body of work, describing the importance of time and timing in a relationship going well.⁴

Beyond timing, there also needs to be a degree of "bonding" that has occurred between partners, which is the same thing we have been referring to when we say that friendship has four components, similar to that described by Aristotle.⁵ We might, then, survive as a couple based on the sheer effort made at being happy in the presence of the other person, consistently.⁶

Attachment and bonding have been described in Romantic Dynamics as "imprinting" processes - automatic behaviors in all human beings that are best known to occur in infancy and early childhood, and in which a child instinctually latches onto a mother or father with intense desire and need. It took until the past two decades of research to come to the conclusion that attachment also pertains to the style with which adults fall in love and connect instinctually. ⁷

As you might guess, attachment, as a "survival level" process, can produce intense feelings and even trauma when there is loss, such as in a breakup or divorce, or the threat of them. This originally was studied in infancy and childhood as it pertains to our parents.⁸ Yet, even while attachment and loss were originally studied in terms of infancy, what we know now about adult romantic connections and the predictors of the demise of a relationship - such as in the work of Dr. John Gottman - the emotional stakes of a breakup or divorce may feel at the instinctual, unconscious level as no less severe than a threat to life itself, such as seen suffered by infants in orphanages.⁹

One major lesson that we have learned in seeing romance have three phases is that the emotions shared by a couple are paramount, whatever their intellectual differences. ¹⁰ When there is so much at stake about the emotional connection, couples can't afford to let one or the other person's stress, anxiety or anger get in the way.¹¹ In fact, we can't begin to partner toward goals as a couple until we have learned to read each other"s emotional needs as teammates.¹²

Throughout Romantic Dynamics, we must wrestle with the differences in characteristics between romantic factors dictated by the polling data of sociology as a "social science," and the facts and repeatable, reliable and enduring principles of biology as a "hard science."¹³

To this end, there is a prime importance to linguistics and the words we choose in order to describe what we feel and experience as men and women. This can mean a successful relationship if we choose to describe ourselves accurately, and failure if we don't.¹⁴ The notion of language and its accuracy in describing the vague, the invisible, and even the unconscious, unknowable aspects of our minds is an interesting challenge, yet there is a model to use in doing so.¹⁵

At some point in our development, we did have a kind of understanding of what we were perceiving, and yet had no words to describe it yet. In our very early years, at some poinr, we were "preverbal," and yet what we were experiencing was very real.¹⁶ Sometimes, language even seduces us into having sentimentality that we should not, and our imaginations can cause us to make romantic decisions not in our best insterest.¹⁷

To this end, we need tools and methods for decoding language (or its lack) in order to accurately understand romance, and in order to make wise decisions about it.¹⁸We are not fated to have the love which the world serves up to us, randomly. Rather, we can educate ourselves to better relationships.¹⁹

We can change ourselves, no matter what we have experienced before.²⁰ We can alter the course of our lives and loves.²¹ We can learn to trust even after trust is broken.²² As w trust more, in more confidence, we can also become more empathic partners.²³

We are more flexible and adaptable in romance than one might think, which makes biological sense if we consider the highly unlikely chances of living most of our lives in an approximately five square mile radius of several thousand, or tens of thousands of people at best, with limited time to meet mates after earning our day's keep, and planning how to work for the next day's keep. This ability began when we were small, and hopefully, as it pertains to romantic potential, never completely goes away. ²⁴

In Romantic Dynamics, we learn that there are three phases of human courtship - the sexual attraction, the emotional attraction, and the intellectual attraction. Desire, friendship/love, and then commitment, we telescope out for inspection, step by step. Truth be told, however, and we must admit that these three all begin developing upon first meeting a person of potential, although at very different rates. We separate them out so that we can see them operating separately, even if they operate simultaneously by the time we call ourselves, "a couple."

We can see the three phases simultaneously, but when we examine each feature of them, one by one, in each facet we ought to be considering the research backing behind the concept.

SEXUAL ATTRACTION

There is a great deal of conflict going on, not only in our individual relationships, but between the genders in our society in general. Our approach in Romantic Dynamics will not be to stir up such conflict in the form of blaming men for this, or women for that - for our personal, individual failures - but an assumption that people are indeed, attracted to each other, like each other, need each other - that it is the polarity between them - the differences - that attract. Further, we see such psychological principles as "masculinity" and "femininity" to have biological roots, not merely being swayed by sociological observations, public policy, or simply, opinion polls.

When we leave sociological aspects, interspersed among the biological forces at work, romantic attraction remains remarkably complex.²⁵ In this unconscious, nonverbal arena of behavior, it is often difficult to even find language to describe what is going on, and we may tend to use words like, "attraction" and "attracted," to denote any manner of being drawn to another person, from only meaning, "desire," to meaning that we have intellectual curiosity about the mind of another person, or friendship shared with them, all the way to "attraction" actually being a synonym for all aspects of love and romance.²⁶

Sexual Attraction and attraction to another person in general has been said to be multivariate, which is to say that numerous things about another person attract us to them. In Romantic Dynamics, we believe that we have come close to categorizing and deconstructing the most important and effective variables, and connected them in a framework that will make logical and practical sense to you, a different experience from the hodge-podge of blogs, research, gossip columns and other sources that you may have been confused by in the past.²⁷

To those ends, we will look at femininity and masculinity as forces in our psychology which operate by certain rules or processes that are repeatable and reliable, across all cultures and demographics, and indeed, across all human history. This is not to leave out those with sexual preferences not in the majority, but yet another reflection of polarity and differences between two partners which bring them together in attraction.

Masculinity will then have certain repeatable, reliable functions and characteristics. ²⁸ As will femininity. Both of these exist at the "identity level" of a person, and at the same time, constitute automatic, unconscious processes, different from the other, and yet complementary to the other, even encouraging the growth and expression in the other, of what we call, "gender instincts."

Masculinity and femininity are then, sets of instincts, unconscious, coded instructions for automatic behaviors, likely written out at least in some partial fashion, in the X and Y chromosomes, respectively.

Meanwhile, our formative years also have a lasting effect on our future romantic behavior, by way of our interactions with our own same-sex and opposite-sex parents. Our gender identity does not exist in a vacuum, rendering us the same as every other person with the same gender identity. It is affected by the events, interactions, and what we will learn to be called, "imprinting processes" that include attachment, bonding, identification and initiation. These are common to all human beings as processes, and yet, because of the nature of the specifics of the events and people involved, prove our specific romantic stories to be very unique and individual to us. Which you may find to be quite relieving and empowering.²⁹

In fact, the imprinted processes such as attachment have not been intensively studied beyond the childhood years, into adulthood and applied to adult romantic relationships - until the past two decades. ³⁰

We will learn of the usefulness of defining words that pertain to our psychology in a way that is very precise and practical. For example, the usefulness of the synonyms, "desire," "sexual attraction," "survival," "passion," and their connection to the synonyms, "instinct," "unconscious," and "primitive" behavior such as those that can occur around the topic of sex and sexual behavior. All humans feel these feelings and have these behaviors, which may or may not lead to friendship or love, let alone a stable partnership, yet they can and do lead to attachment to each other in adult life.³¹ This is a stabilizing force for an individual or the couple, in a world of social and psychological danger and loneliness.

We become "attached" to our parents and form a bond with them, then later in life, as adults, we "attach" to those with similar traits and features as our opposite sex parent (observed by Freud, in the "Oedipus" complex), yet we are also largely unconscious of our own instinctual behaviors which will bear out in us having at least some traits and behaviors similar to our own same sex parent.³²

One way of describing "masculinity" or "femininity" in behavior in a way that is uniform and repeatable, is to see masculine instincts as those universal behaviors among men which lead males to feel that term, "passion" (for life, and or for a partner.) Likewise, "femininity" is a set of universal instincts among women which leads them to feel more passion for life and or for a partner.³³

This concept will be crucial for singles to understand, but then again, sexuality is a large part of marriage as well.³⁴ In doubling back to the beginning of our courtship sequence, married couples will find themselves having to do just as much work at understanding the instincts of the other gender as they did when they were single, and just as attached, thrilled and frustrated at once, with the "parent" they never saw themselves being attracted to in adult life, and becoming the "parent" that they swore they would never share similarities with, in adult, romantic life.³⁵

In today's world of such universal conflict between the genders, it iwll become ever more challenging to find common language with the opposite sex, let alone language which to them feels appealing and alluring.³⁶

Step one of all courtship, and of sexual attraction, "Boy Meets Girl," - Beauty and Mystery - is nonverbal, and wordless. For the male, with the masculine sensibilities of Ares from the ancient Greek pantheon, the Aphrodite-like beauty of the woman in his eyes will be the first attractor. The way she moves, and the look in her eye, the physical cues she gives unconsciously and automatically draw him in.

In parallel, the woman, with the feminine sensibilities of Psyche to her Eros, will be drawn to the mysteriousness of his behavior, his "aura," his "mystique."  It will be his Hermes instinct to be mysterious as a single man can do, or the secretive ways of Eros to his bride, Psyche, that is the mysterious way of the married man. If he manages to avoid the gossipy plague of the "Sisters of Psyche" whom we learn about, he will be discovered by her to be a "god," not a "monster."

It will become apparent to many that there is a "right answer" and "wrong answer" in the words we choose to communicate with in appealing to the other gender. ³⁷

In a conflict-ridden relationship between men and women, en masse, you may find it frustrating enough that we can no longer choose words which will satisfy so many requirements - that we be true to ourselves, within our gender identity, that we express our interest in another person, that the words we choose, appeal, not offend, and that these word be understood in a way which makes the other person feel good about themselves and their life, as opposed to feeling defensive or misunderstood.³⁸

Step two of sexual attraction - "Ladies and Gentlemen" - will see us moving into nonverbal, physical behavior that is kind and tender, and even parental in nature.  We touch for the first time and reach some small amount of physical intimacy, driven by the instincts of the figures Zeus for the man, and Hera for the woman - the "mother" and "father" instincts which bring alive the old attachments that we long ago made with our opposite-sex parents.

It is the step at which we start to call each other by cute nicknames such as, "baby," which literally resembles the parent-child desire we once had. It is also a preview of how we will be treated when we weaken and need a partner to lift us, or when our partner becomes a source of happiness through allowing us the chance to help them in return.

Desire has been growing, and physical intimacy escalates, but only to a point, where the brakes are put on, and a standing back to re-evaluate the growing passion occurs. It is here that the woman must do a thorough preview of the man's character, of his behavior should she allow him to become a partner someday, and where the man is given the chance to feel even more passionate and special in her eyes, by passing her 'tests of masculinity' and 'tests of character.'

How much more so is it true that in order to reach a full, sexual desire, to fall in love and eventually find ourselves passing all the tests which lead to friendship, partnership and romantic longevity, that we must realize at some point there must be physical touch. If we are to get to physical intimacy, we must at some point, reach an intersection of physical desire and emotional trust, at intellectual respect and raw, animalistic desire. We must learn to know when it is okay to touch courteously at first, and later with passion and ever greater physical intimacy.³⁹

If the man passes the tests he is unconsciously given, he will feel all the more valuable to her, and to himself, and excited to be with her, potentially to commence a deep friendship in the next phase. She too, will feel content with his qualities, that she would befriend him whether or not they were romantically involved, because he meets the standards for friendship in a way that satisfies her as well.

EMOTIONAL ATTRACTION

If attachment is one of the unconscious, "imprinted" processes, and is reinvigorated by meeting a new person for whom we initially develop sexual attraction, then we can also consider many of the workings of the sexual attraction phase of courtship to be unconscious, automatic, instinct-based, and pertaining to the body, actions, and all that is nonverbal.

However, once we move into the area of emotions, "bonding" and friendship, that term, "bonding" - as in a "friendship bond" or "love bond" - starts to have a cross-over meaning in carrying us from the pure, unconscious instincts, into the subconscious emotions that have the potential to be made fully conscious, and have meaning. We may eventually say the phrase, "I love you," then stop to think about that and what it means in terms of defining our relationship more formally. We are no longer unconsciously drawn to desiring another person, but instead, find ourselves also awake and aware of a love and friendship that is developing.

Left to itself, desiring, attaching to, and being sexually attracted to a person as an experience can pull us in all kinds of illogical and dramatic directions. By contrast, the emotions are slower to build and serve us, providing more stable ground to walk on in our relationships, and bouying the intense feelings of attachment.⁴⁰

It is our aim, in Romantic Dynamics, to take what has been elucidated by the research, and render it in normal language that anyone can understand, and more importantly, implement. As such, for us to move into phase two of courtship, and the emotional attraction, friendship and love that exist there, you will start to notice that we move from behaviors and romantic experiences for which there are no words - it is nonverbal/preverbal - to there being common, everyday words for what we are experiencing. The world of the emotions bridges the gap between what is non-verbal or physical in expression, and what is purely intellectual, logical and clear, when we pay attention using the conscious mind.⁴¹

The most logical place to start, in the first step of emotional attraction (step four of courtship overall) - Finding Value in Each Other - makes sense. "Value" is one of the many synonyms for love, friendship, self-esteem and happiness. We value a possession, a concept or a person to the exact degree that they make us happy. And so this first step of emotional attraction sees us noticing the bump of happiness or friendship that we get in being around another person. We then, value them.

It is even suspected by psychologists, that two interdependent people will literally shape each other's psychology. The Michelangelo phenomenon is a phenomenon observed by psychologists in which interdependent individuals influence and "sculpt" each other (opposite of Blueberry phenomenon, in which interdependent individuals bring out the worst qualities in each other).⁴²

We discover that love, friendship, self-esteem, value, and other synonyms for the positive version of emotions that we encounter in this phase, all simply mean, "happiness."⁴³ Love is simply a shared experience of mutual happiness when we sort out other features of romance, such as the sexuality of phase one and the partnership of phase three.

In seeing self-esteem and happiness as equivalents to love, and to how much we value another person and are valued, we can actually start to codify a language of love in which we can analyze, weigh and measure our progress, and the qualities of our romance.⁴⁴

In phase two, the emotional attraction, we learn that in the Romantic Dynamics model, self-esteem comes in two varieties that we define as "well-being" and "confidence." That both are necessary for a healthy love relationship (and for healthy parenting." This love and friendship, the mutual elevation of each other's self-esteem, only adds to the preexisting passion and desire that we feel for each other, and in a way supported by neuroscience research.⁴⁵

Well-being is most similar to having "maternal emotion" or "maternal energy" to provide to ourselves and to others. Since we all occasionally lean on each other emotionally, in parental-dependent ways in a romance, then even in the "unconditional love" of parenting, there is still an ebb and flow of what we provide to each other. If well-being is an emotional sense of satisfaction, or "getting our needs met," then what we "owe" the person who has provided it to us, is "gratitude."⁴⁶

We then "mother ourselves" when we are assertive enough to go get our own needs met as individuals, and we are "mothering" others when we fulfill the needs of others. There is no better an environment to do this loving action than mutually, with a partner in a romance.⁴⁷

Synonyms (and confusion) may still abound, if we don't get precise in defining our terms. For example, in Romantic Dynamics, we intend that "gratitude" be an expression of thanks to someone whom has met our needs, while "satisfaction" is more similar to a direct measure of how much well-being we feel or possess. ⁴⁸ You must certainly know people who have gotten their needs met, and still don't express gratitude in proportion to it. In our lexicon, we tend to refer to this state of a person being one of "pathological narcissism."

It's one of the useful features of separating out the emotional functions of phase two, from the conscious, intellectual and personal growth functions of phase three, and partnership. This is because the emotions may function in romance in a certain way for someone of low maturity level, and the same emotional processes may behave very differently for someone else of high maturity level.⁴⁹

We will also need to separate out the difference between material or career accomplishment, and that of maturity level in their effects on friendship, happiness and love.⁵⁰

To be sure, an operative principle of seeing emotions as squarely sitting between the purely unconscious processes of attachment, desire and passion on the one side, and the purely conscious, rational decisions about when, how and with whom to partner for success in romance, the emotions can serve us as a guide as to what to change about ourselves.⁵¹ We can pull meaning from the emotions, and then we may "know what to do" in our relationships.⁵²

The more emotionally aware we may become of ourselves, the more emotionally "attuned" in empathy we may become to a partner, and in their eyes, become a better partner.⁵³

You may be wondering, "What about the other variety of self-esteem?" That was the emotional state that in Romantic Dynamics, we call, "confidence." Most literature surrounding this term, when it is used at all, tends to not refer to it by our definition: "The emotional capacity to tolerate risk, change, uncertainty or loss." Instead, its absence tends to be referred to, using the general term, "stress," and well-being used as a synonym for both varieties of self-esteem⁵⁴

In Romantic Dynamics, we see confidence as a different state and function from well-being, even though we see both as composing our overall self-esteem.

While the endpoint of building well-being ought to lead to an inner sense of satisfaction in ourselves and gratitude toward others for being provided it, confidence ought to instead, lead to an inner sense of safety and peace in ourselves, and something perhaps unexpected toward others, which is "celebration."

You may notice that gratitude is something that we often register toward a specific, individual person, while celebration is something that we most often think of as shared with groups of others. Yet this may make sense to you in seeing that which is "maternal," implying personal intimacy with one person (as in an infant with mother), while that which is "paternal" may be seen as the encouragement to reach out into the vast social world around us, to discover ourselves, our skills and our power among the many.⁵⁵

This is not gender-specific to refer to the "maternal" or "paternal," but merely a way of referring to that which is interiorly satisfying, as in feeding one's hunger, versus that which reaches out into the world around us, to take the actions which provide security, safety, peace and certainty, to face fears and defeat them, which is the same as the concept and state that we call, "courage."

A male may be maternal or paternal, or both, toward others, and a female may be maternal or paternal, or both, toward others. These are the acts of mothering and fathering ourselves and others, and the alternative definition in Romantic Dynamics for describing, "courage" - to face fears regardless of how unpleasant we feel - is to say that courage is the act of "fathering ourselves." The act of courage in facing our fears, always leads to having more of the self-esteem called, "confidence," in the same way that the act of assertiveness in getting our own needs met always leads to more of the satisfaction sense, called, "well-being."

And so the sense of happiness needed in order for us to feel friendship or love (or to be friendly and loving), is not provided solely by having fed a hunger and reaching satisfaction (well-being), because we may still feel fear and uncertainty about the world. The happiness we seek in love and romance is also not fully met, simply by facing our fears and winning (confidence), because we may still be hungry and low on resources in life, and therefore not happy.⁵⁶

To have a complete happiness, a well-rounded love and friendship for another person, and to be fully valued in return, we must all have equal amounts of both well-being and confidence. This is a special key for mastering nearly every emotional situation that comes our way in love and romance, and part of the reason that we view the equation, Self-esteem = Well-being + Confidence as a kind of "E=mc2" of psychology. All emotions, both positive and negative are accounted for in the equation, and a relative imbalance of either, directs us to what it is that we need to change about ourselves and our relationship.

The processes that are emotional, love and friendship based are useful to look at in isolation. However, in Romantic Dynamics, when we talk about the mind with the functional symbolism we term, "reptilian-brained," "mammalian-brained," and "higher-brain." We look at these as being separate in psychological function, and yet they truly interconnect to each other in woven-together ways. As a result, when we see research that shows the relationship between an unconscious, instinctual, "reptilian" function such as imprinting, such as attachment, and more subconscious, emotional, "mammalian" functioning such as self-esteem or happiness, then we find legitimate, scientific, research backing.⁵⁷

Our development of these functions, begins in what you would expect: infancy.⁵⁸

The emotions of the mammalian brain sit squarely between the instincts of the unconscious "reptilian brain," and the conscious "higher brain." One crucial way that Romantic Dynamics looks at progress through these "three brains," is to see each one as progressively higher in maturity - from childishness, to adolescence, to full adult maturity.⁵⁹

The second step of emotional attraction (the fifth step in overall courtship) is Finding Stress in Each Other. This will be the antithesis and threat to our self-esteem, our friendship, our happiness, and our love.

The emotional attraction of the mammalian brain is obviously not just about the positive emotional benefits of love and friendship. They also contain the protection and the antidotes to the negative version of emotions and self-esteem that all couples face. We all know an easy term for the large category here, called, "stress."⁶⁰

It has been said that, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." Since a couple and the relationship formed by two people amounts to the combination of two separate people's lives, and also a third, "new identity" formed, called "the relationship" itself, it also makes sense that, "What doesn't kill the relationship, makes it stronger."

Stress is definitely this feature of life and romance. And stress has both psychological and biological effects on an individual.⁶¹

As a result, by mastering the emotional attraction steps of phase two of courtship, couples really could think of stress as something to be welcomed by them.⁶²

Couples actually shield each other from stress, on top of raising each other's self-esteem as the very definition of love. They do both in love - they raise each other's self-esteem as well as shielding each other from stress with more power than either one can do for themselves.⁶³ If you've ever wondered why it is that friends or couples who endure challenges together, tend to bond to each other even tighter in the relationship, you can probably thank the stress experiences that they encounter, and the mutual empathy that is cultivated there.⁶⁴

The "winters of our discontent" that they experience, the "cold, cruel world" that they would have lived in, apart, as singles, is ironically what cultivates their growing warmth for each other.⁶⁵

In this phase of emotional attraction, we all ought to come to the conclusion that emotions are not just emotions to brush by, or to brush under the table. They are crucial, and can either make or break the overall relationship, based on the quality of the friendship, how one is valued, how happy one is, and what aspects of life can help the couple to be happiest, and as free of stress as possible.⁶⁶

Emotions are not just emotions. They are the very fuel on which romantic relationships run, and their function in romance and friendship are actually predictive of future behaviors and outcomes.⁶⁷ A far cry from emotions being unreliable, fickle, or not of logical use in planning our lives.

The third step of emotional attraction (sixth overall step of courtship) is Finding Completion in Each Other - which is where we discover the interplay between our personality styles. Nearly anyone can find value of some amount in another person. We can befriend at least to acquaintance levels, nearly anyone who can be friendly back.  And nearly any two people can do their best to fight off stress. (It is said that "a common enemy, unites.") But to find someone who is easy to be with, and yet is a great teammate bringing diversity to the partnership - that person is a candidate to go into the whole next phase of courtship - the intellectual attraction of commitment. It is a matter of personality style.

In a media environment where anyone and everyone has a "personality matching system," it is imperative to first define what personality is, and how it differs from the psychoanalytic concept of "character" and character maturity.  They are different, for one is a style, and the other is an evolution. In fact, the third and final phase of courtship depends on all the various aspects of character traits, virtues and vices, even as the match of our personality styles forms a bridge to analyzing and building character for partnership.⁶⁸

In the Social Personality System that we have developed, we start with basic psychological science and the cognitive-behavioral and self-help schools of thought, psychodynamics, and from them, build a system that explains how our personalities cause us to find meaning, communicate it, take action versus thought and strategy, and our social and friendship skills and preferences that can be seen as strengths and weaknesses of the sort that fit like puzzle pieces to the personality of another person - much in line with the concept of the Michelangelo Phenomenon.

In other words, due to the quality of match of our personality styles, we will be better, more masterful or less masterful Michelangelos to each other. The former launches us confidently into the commitment and partnership phase of intellectual attraction.⁶⁹

INTELLECTUAL ATTRACTION

Crossing the bridge from emotional attraction to intellectual attraction bears some similarities to our first transition, from sexual attraction to emotional attraction, in that there are overlapping features, and an interweaving of the processes of the two phases.

In the case of this transition, there are many more psychological processes that we are familiar with. For example, that communication is of the essence in partnership as well as friendship, and that communication carries both data and emotion (or energy) within it.  A similar crossover concept is that of "shared beliefs" - that what we believe in has detail in the data, but the strength of our convictions has everything to do with the amount of positive or negative emotions in the beliefs.

Finally, a third way in which the emotions of the mammalian brain and the ideas of the higher brain are in leagues, is in the form of our Social Personality System, in how it is laid out on a grid composed of two spectra - one for our emotional style" as either more maternal or paternal, and one for our intellectual style as being either more organized and "left-brained" or more disorganized and creative, or "right-brained."

In the end, we will find that the romantic connection between those in intellectual attraction is about mutual success at reaching goals for both members of the couple at this phase. That partnership itself does not require or expect love, nor does it require or expect sex. It is purely the combination and synchrony of the mind power involved. The intention being to successfully reach goals as a team.

Preparing for such a task is a daunting one, since early in this phase, that preparedness would require substantial work on personal growth. Seeing someone grow in front of your eyes, and because of your interactions with them is a miraculous thing, and to know that your own growth happens, in part, because of their intervention is one of the very reasons that we, as homo sapiens, may even relish the prospect of mature romantic love and that last phase - intellectual attraction. It is more than just a feature of personal interest in our own, private goals. Intellectual attraction has equally as its purpose, the notion of constructing a highly functional team of two. As we age, we ought to  mutually mature.⁷⁰

Development is the psychological term for the process of maturing, and we will look at your "personal evolution" from numerous viewpoints which can all work together to explain what maturity is, and why it makes us more prone to success and lasting romance as partners. The works of George Valliant will serve us well, including in his model of what have been called, the "Four Levels of Ego Defense Mechanisms."⁷¹

These, originated by Freud, have been reinterpreted by Valliant and others into four categories which reveal what amounts to one's "level of maturity." And if you wonder why this concept of maturity matters, you will be gratified to find out that your maturity level, as well as that of your chosen partner, will directly dictate how successful your committed relationship will be in terms of longevity, and what you both bring to bear in the world. It will also directly correlate with what your resulting personal success is at getting to your purpose in life, and completing your mission in life.

As you may guess, there will be many core features of partnership in which you, and even the most ideal partner you could muster, will differ on, or even come into conflict over. In fact, you ought to be different in many ways - not the least of which is personality style - in order that you both bring diversity to the table, and to the team goals.

Unfortunately, divorce can fairly accurately be predicted now.⁷² And unfortunately, a perfect, stable, passionate, happy, lasting marriage cannot.

Yet.

Conflict will naturally arise, then, through differences of personality, certainly over differences of maturity level, and or differences in IQ, in culture, in education, economic level, and certainly over the very different, silent, instinctual language of gender differences. In this light, we will need to absolutely bend over backwards to understand each other.⁷³

More and more, there are growing gaps between people in our society, and even between the most well-suited of partners. Sometimes this even extends to there being large age differences between men and women who become partners.⁷⁴

Never before has maturity mattered so very much, in order for people to get along in marriage and commitment. To those ends, we cannot rest with the nature of the ego defenses as our only measure of maturity, in a world full of opinions of all types about what is mature.

We need facts about maturity, and there are some. Maturity tends to be inversely proportional to one's level of "pathological narcissism," which is a good description of what is immature in behavior. Through this lens, we may see more than clues, but actual ways of measuring maturity through the features of psychology that are present in narcissism, and their absence.

One of the greatest measures rests in the qualities of one's personal boundary skill, and a relative preponderance of "doors" in the boundary as opposed to "holes" or "walls."

Another, well-known to psychoanalysts, is the ability to access Observing Ego, that sense of self-awareness and social awareness that is the antidote to the regrets of immaturity, and a good description of what has been called a "cool" or "classy" person.  When it is high, consistently, we are more mature, and when it is lacking, consistently, we are immature.

Other scientists besides Gottman have also laid out detailed analyses of what precise features of our maturity (or its lack) statistically correlate with a successful relationship versus a divorce as the outcome.⁷⁵ Sometimes these statistics do not explain causation for the demise of the relationship, but they are nonetheless useful in terms of being predictive of what we are after in a relationship, and especially the "how-to" part. What do we physically do or say, in order to have a successful partnership?

Trust must have something to do with this, but so do a host of other emotional, intellectual, and even instinctual features of our identities in romance.⁷⁶

Our goal in Romantic Dynamics will be to not only work with the statistics of what is likely to give us better relationships, but is an attempt to explain how that comes about - the causation of it all. In a logical, step-by-step way that also carries a great deal of "how-to" power.

Many people wrongfully assume that "commitment" is a terrible thing, a thing to surrender to. And that very well can be, when we select the wrong mate. However, it is our hope that in Romantic Dynamics, you learn to best "matchmake yourself," to the point that commitment to a mate very well suited to you is a better scenario than being single, and actually helps you achieve goals that you otherwise could not have on your own. Commitment does not have to mean sacrifice of the self, the identity, or the life's purpose or mission you were meant for.⁷⁷ To the contrary - it ought to mean all the more likelihood of not only reaching your own personal goals in life, but discovering new ones which are brought on by the unique features of your partner's psychology.

Some authors have previously considered the use of the triune brain model for looking at romance, such as Harville Hendrix, in his classic, Getting the Love You Want.⁷⁸ Other more recent revered works include forays into communication styles (which likely have something to do with personality styles), such as The Five Love Languages, by Gary Chapman.⁷⁹ Like the famed, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, by John Gray, these are from the genre called, "self-help books," many of which are written from the personal experience of the author, rather than based in research or scientific theory. And so, as we continue to make our way through the literature, it will help to remember that public popularity does not necessarily correlate with accuracy or even usefulness. (Sometimes the public just wants to hear what it deems to be personally gratifying, rather than what works in practical life, yet might take some work or personal change.)

Yet there are some sources of information that are both easy to understand, and also based in rigorous science and statistical methods that do not merely arise from speculation, opinion, or wishful thinking as to what is true about romantic relationships. The works of Dr John Gottman are a prime example of that.⁸⁰

More mundane, less celebrated sources may even be among our best, such as the simple observations about "long first marriages" published in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling⁸¹

In this last phase of courtship, intellectual attraction, we will be looking to the basic statistics about what is helpful for promoting longevity.⁸² But there will also be a method to how we weave together everything that we have learned about romance so far.

We will begin the phase with some common sense, and the "step" of intellectual attraction that we call, "Who I Am: Character Maturity." In this first "step," we focus on how an individual readies themselves to be a most fit partner on a team striving toward joint and individual life's goals.  And so everything to do with individual personal growth will be covered.

For example, individual character traits that are of the mature variety - consider gratitude as a mature ego defense, or social habit - will be predictive of doing better, in a harmonious relationship that has longevity. ⁸³ When we focus on our own personal psychological fitness for partnership, that is not meant to be a guilt trip, or shame that we self-inflict, but instead, an understanding that part of being in a successful couple will involve championing of our own dreams and aspirations at a meaningful life's purpose.⁸⁴

An understanding of ourselves will naturally lead to an understanding of our needs, and therefore to the right kind of mate to select. ⁸⁵ While this will have roots in personality styles, communication and purchasing tendencies and other properties which make us unique, the underlying forces which are universal among people will be just as powerful in determining what mate we select. Such aspects of our identity as the "imprinting processes" of attachment, bonding, identification and finally, "initiation" will also hold sway in a major way when it comes to our neurotic little quirks that lead us to pick who we pick for romance.

We will enter the second step of intellectual attraction with a focus on the "we" as a couple, assuming that both partners have made efforts to become the most mature, team-oriented collaborators that they can be. The step is then, called, "Who We Are: Character Compatibility." The Romantic Dynamics model goes above and beyond what has come before, even in the uses of the triune brain theory. We start to look at how the attachment and bonding processes with our opposite-sex parent, matter in our romantic choices (which Freud once observed in the "Oedipus Complex.") We look at identification with the same-sex parent, and the initiation into their world of tendencies, with the intent to become the next generation with some of the same rules and expectations, but through our own spin on the character nature of that similar parent to ourselves. As a result, we will see four "compatibilities" among couples, emerge:

A compatibility of maturity level is the first. This will make sense to you in looking at partnership as having a goal of harmony in teaming up together for a common goal. This doesn't go well when there is a great gap in maturity level.

Secondly, we tend to do best with someone of similar intelligence or IQ. It won't make sense to partner with a person who doesn't at all get where we are coming from, nor someone who doesn't even understand our life's goals, let alone being someone with who naturally works against what they simply do not understand.

We can naturally, then expect to get in some conflict, and the ways which we use to resolve such conflicts with have great bearing on how long we last.⁸⁶

We may find ourselves in an "empathic failure," no which our spouse experiences us as not caring about their life's goals and dreams.⁸⁷

In conflict, we may find ourselves not understanding the language of the other person, misinterpreting it, or twisting it to fit our view of what is true about the world, or about ourselves.⁸⁸ We must make it our goal to continue to support the identity and expression of the spouse.⁸⁹ In so doing, we will find that we actually have more similarities with each other, than differences.⁹⁰

One of the highest character virtues that we will need to cultivate will be that of forgiveness, since we are all, each of us, imperfect.⁹¹

In this step, we will have struck upon certain things about our development that we cannot help, and which were not our fault (we had the particular mother and father that we did.) From the same-sex parent, we will have developed a "taste for" or "type" that we look for in a mate, and with character flaws and virutes that are unique to our particular parent. Meanwhile, the same-sex parent whom we identified with so long ago, becomes a beacon that we put out in attracting a mate in kind - that causes other people to find us appealing, not because they randomly seek out our particular flaws and virtues, but out of the similarity between us and their own, opposite-sex parent.

Yet, we are now in the conscious part of the mind, and we can make conscious choices that steer those instinctual, long-ago unconsious choices. For example, we will meet numerous people with similarities of virtue similar to our own opposite-sex parent. And yet we do not have to choose to be with the first one who comes along. Instead, we can sit back and watch who is attracted to us, and who we are attracted to, but we can choose the ones who also have more virtue than vices which we had recognized in our own opposite-sex parent. The same is true of our prospective mate.

In the end, we will choosing the fittest possible partner if we side with choosing those with more virtue than vice, and yet who also do resemble in behavior, our well-loved parent. This will preserve both the passion for the right person for us, and yet also will cultivate the spirit of being able to team up toward prosperous goals. In so doing, we find that we are transformed by the other person, as are they, by us.⁹²

We may, after all this time, actually find deal-breakers and incompatibilities between us. Yes, even now.⁹³ Therefore, our ability to describe ourselves as accurately as possible to the other person in terms of needs, wants, desire, habits, style and all those compatibilities such as our beliefs, our intelligence, and the conveyance of our true maturity level, will pay off if we had started early.⁹⁴

We will find ourselves naturally fitting into a life's narrative with the other person, and one which feels right, easy, natural, authentic and satisfying.⁹⁵  To many of us, this will seem almost magical, or of "good luck." In reality, part of it is what we naturally, autonmatically need in a romantic partner, and so of course, that was whom we attracted. Yet another part of this comes from our personal experience, sometimes making the same romantic mistake multiple times until we learn its lessons.

We will, at this point, have proven ourselves to be compatible in several areas to quite a degree, and we will have naturally tested and cultivated four skills of mature romantic partnership: curiosity about the other person, regular communication with them, compromise (not in sacrifice, but in synthesizing together our needs and strengths), ending in execution of our joint actions, and using our joint resources, with collaboration toward life's goals.

These "four commonalities of commitment": Maturity, IQ, Beliefs/Values, and Joint Life's Goals - combined with "the four C's of commitment" - curiosity, communication, compromise, and collaboration - combined, make for "16 master compatibilities of commitment" - which will tie us back to what we inherited, identified with, and learned from our same-sex parent, and what we are attracted to, by attachment, in our opposite-sex parent. This feature of Romantic Dynamics is perhaps, one of the most interesting and targeted technologies of compatibility and romantic assessment that we have developed.

What the 16 compatibilities leads us to is both a way to troubleshoot our relationship, to decide whether to commit for life in the first place, and after we have done so, to always have 16 core items to focus on in building and maintaining the strength and power of our partnership. It is then, that we can be "sure that we're sure" of the person we are with, and can confidently take risks in striving for joint goals in life, together.

We will, at this point, have proven ourselves to be compatible in several areas to quite a degree, and we will have naturally tested and cultivated four skills of mature romantic partnership: curiosity about the other person, communication with them regularly, compromise (not in sacrifice, but in synthesizing together our needs and strengths, ending in execution of our joint actions, and using our joint resources, with collaboration toward those life's goals.

The third and final step of intellectual attraction and partnership will then be called, "Where We Are Going: Joint Life's Goals." It is here that we have truly developed a faith in each other and in the relationship. We are ready for the universals, such as sharing a home, having children, and contributing to the community around us as a couple.⁹⁶

This is not to say that striving for life's goals is easy. Having a baby is very HARD, no matter how good your compatibility.⁹⁷

This is true of both our personal life's goals, and the universal joint goals of the couple. The world out there is hard enough, without an incompatibility of the couple itself getting in the way - an "enemy within." Not only are the goals we face, hard to reach, but there will be numerous challenges in the way on top of all this - financial, personal, even heatlh problems.

Even the words we use with each other can cause harm.⁹⁸ Words can (indirectly) kill. Luckily we have already mastered communication that comes from a previously established, loving place, of friendship.

Which is also why the last step of the last phase of courtship - going for the life's goals together - doesn't end at the end of a line, but doubles back to the beginning, a circle, for maintenance of the relationship.  There will always be threats to encounter and adapt to, or fly around as we continue our life's purpose and mission. Even social media and other distractions can get in the way of what we share.⁹⁹ We can be seduced by virtual worlds, porn, gossip, and all the destructive tools of the "Sisters of Psyche" that so unjustly cast the Eros in a man, as somehow a monster.¹⁰⁰

We will find that our friends, both those personal, and those jointly the couple's, will bouy us in rocky seas,¹⁰¹and through it all, we need to remember just those first moments of meeting, the wordless feelings that we had about each other, and what they informed us about in who would become our future mate.¹⁰²

We will have to come face to face with the ever-present possibility of "growing apart" unless we do this ongoing maintenance.¹⁰³ And we will only have the constant communication between us to keep us together, remembering the "Michelangelo Phenomenon" - that we "sculpt each other" and can only do so by contact with each other, and the ongoing sharing, consistency, mutuality and positivity of friendship.¹⁰⁴

We may even need to learn techniques of "fighting fair," since we are always going to be separate individuals trying to find common ground and common goals.¹⁰⁵

We may rely on the feedback of our friends to give us reality testing and ground to walk on in judging our progress, our temprary failures, and our comebacks in romance, knowing that there are seasons of love, and waves of romance to ride through life.¹⁰⁶

We must remember that anger has a good place, and need to be expressed, that it is entirely normal to come into conflict, and just as normal, in fact, mature, to become more and more skilled at working the conflicts out.¹⁰⁷ It may be a good thing to remember that fighting early in dating reveals a great deal about what is to come, and certainly before becoming engaged or married, hopefully you and your partner have had some very dramatic, blowout fights. They will tell all about the future.¹⁰⁸

Often, the fights will be about money or sex, the twin forces of the unconscious, reptilian instincts of desiring each other.¹⁰⁹

You've come so very far at this point, but until many cycles of maintenance have occurred, we may still remain weak in our romance, even with great compatibility.  Sometimes, life works in a way which does not align with what we want or need, and divorce will be inevitable.¹¹⁰

All living things enjoy the warmth of the sun for awhile, and eventually will die. We must accept that this is the case for our own lives and even our relationships. Married for life, each of us will still, someday part. When that day approaches, we can be ready for it, with peace and tranquility, always curious, always learning.¹¹¹

Sometimes, it is through one ending that we learn all we need to know about keeping the next beginning alive for much, much longer.¹¹²

There is even research about the differences between how relationships end at the non-marital (first or second phase) level versus at the marital, committed (phase three) level.¹¹³

Staying in bad relationships affects our health, and the act of getting out of them at least temporarily affects our health.¹¹⁴ We may be wise to let how we sense our health declining in a relationship to spur us to get out.¹¹⁵

Once we reach the consistent, trusting contact that the partnership of intellectual attraction allows, we also may tap into the benefits that are possible - the healing power of love that is lasting and durable.¹¹⁶

We may find that following on the coattails of our good health by virtue of being with a good partner, our financial health improves as well.¹¹⁷ In fact, our overall family now thrives, should we have children, and their minds and bodies are healthy because ours are as well.¹¹⁸ The cycle will continue as our own children attach and bond to us, and are more fit than would otherwise be the case, to someday enter healthy relationships of their own.¹¹⁹ We will have done our homework and prepared for the stress of having had the infant, and now it pays off in their health and progress.¹²⁰ We have proven something about our own partnership when we have had a child, stayed together, and seen them grow up to be healthy and happy, themselves.¹²¹

It is through reaching the end of the steps of courtship, and returning to the beginning once more, that we maintain and strengthen what we've built, that a family grows, and courtship continues all our lives. Someday, we may even become the students of our own children when it comes to love, and someday we may find ourselves needing them more than they need us.¹²²

There are as many ways to opine about the magic of love, the mystery of desire, and the contentment of well-matched partnership, as many ways as there are poets or poems, singers or songs. Music, literature, art, and even film inform us, if not on the hard science of courtship itself, then on what our dreams are for romance. One of the best summations of partnership in romance that I have seen are the words of actress Susan Sarandon, as the wife to Richard Gere's husband in the film, Shall We Dance?

She says that marriage may be a lot of different things, but what is true of it universally, when everything else is boiled away, what does it mean to us, is this: we are witness to each other's lives, like no one else ever could be, (not even our parents.)

We must all remember this as the first, and last thread of our bond, even when things seem to have entirely unraveled. It is the one, remaining good thing about even the worst of the worst dramas of romance we endure. And it is the rock on which we may start over, and build again:

Be curious, and be a good listener, and things will some way, somehow, be alright.

Bluntness, or being overly transparent is a character "vice of excess" stemming from what would otherwise be a character virtue in the form of honesty. It is intellectually narcissistic, which is to say that it contains either the intellectual narcissism of ignorance or prejudice. One may be ignorant of how much of your opinion of themselves that another person wants to hear from you ("TMI" - too much information), overestimating their openness to feedback (poor boundaries), or making them uncomfortable. Bluntness may be prejudicial against those who value their privacy and want to be left alone. In this case, bluntness can verge on the "obnoxious."

Someone who is "blunt," is by definition, forcing their private opinion of you to the point of losing the courtesy, diplomacy, and good boundaries of retaining mutual respect (and the giving of voluntary access to others about your nature.)  However, all human beings communicate on a spectrum between being overly transparent bluntness, and too chicanerous to gain the trust of their audience. This highlights the central psychological skill that counters vices: maturity, which contains the Observing Ego to scan the environment for its composition and needs, matching that to what we endeavor in that social environment.

As a vice which makes partnership within relationships fail to get to goals, and intellectually unattractive, consider this vice to be negative in many ways, including in sexual attraction, since it is "brutal honesty." Radical honesty can go too far, since every lasting romantic partnership needs its ample serving of "little white lies" that are a part of courteous diplomacy.

RETURN TO CHARACTER COMPATIBILITY

Bombast is the vice of deficit associated with the virtue of Scholarliness. we may be on the lookout for signs of frequent “pedantry” or “bombast” - for example, the frequent citing of one’s own education as the force of an argument rather than looking at the facts in the case of pedantry in an admittedly, highly educated person. For bombast, we may see a reliance on emotional arguments, again rather than facts. Someone who is relatively uneducated, beating others over the head as if they are experts on a topic. Also see all of today's internet for the most massive collection of bombast ever assembled.

In either, we may see the biggest shame of all: clearly and frequently pursuing “being right” in a discussion rather than pursuing harmony and happiness for the couple. In other words, “would you rather be right, or rather be happy if you could choose only one?” This is a revealing conversational test of both pedantry and bombast.

RETURN TO CHARACTER COMPATIBILITY

Bonding is an imprinting process (where an instinct is turned on at the right time, in the right conditions) where there is an emotional investment in another person. It is usually without their awareness that a friendship of a sort, was forming. Bonding implies that comfort and encouragement are going to be ours (with the right person), and it all begins with the interactions of our parents, emotionally.

Many research studies and the theory of attachment and bonding depict bonding as a two-way process between parent and child. ¹ Only in recent years has it been studied regarding bonding in adult life or romance. ² However, the mutual, two-way process described in today's research can be confusing to the layman and laywoman, and confused with another imprinting process that is different in nature, called, "attachment." In the Romantic Dynamics lexicon, we want to see bonding as that emotional connection felt by, and expressed by a person in a parenting role.

In adult life, this can represent the emotions of tender care and protection we feel toward a friend. It is also seen in romance, when one of the two in a couple temporarily takes a parenting style role (helping from the point of ample resources), and the other person is in a dependent or child role (receiving love, emotion, and help.)

In a mature, adult romance, it is normal to occasionally vary between being equals in resources, being independent, and being in the more dependent, child role, versus being the teammate and partner who has more strength at the moment and provides them. In fact, we often see the word, "bond" or the word, "bonding" occur in descriptions of friendship.

We know friendship to be an area of romance and socializing that pertains to the mammalian brain, to love, self-esteem and happiness in being together, more than seeing it refer to desire or the instincts of the reptilian brain.  So you can see a difference between attachment and bonding in the form of attachment being a more desire-related, and therefore, reptilian-brained process.

Boundary doors are the most mature boundary anatomy to have. They operate with one's decisional capacity to use wisdom, a combination of conscience, or ethics, and intuition, or a read on the level of opportunity in the environment.

As such, they are the highest character maturity of the boundary anatomy available to us. They are the least narcissistic, as compared to Boundary Holes and Boundary Walls, and can be envisioned as a "door" that may open to others and their communication and partnership (Intimacy), like saying YES to others, on certain conditions. But they may also close to the communication and partnership with others (Independence), like saying NO to others, conditionally. As a result, the Boundary Doors make us DYNAMIC, in that we can relate differently to the same people depending on his they treat us, and what kinds of deals they offer us.

We can then take in and accept communication, resources, and emotion that is good for us, while blocking that which is bad for us, even with the very same person we are relating to.  This is far more mature, adaptive, and fit to the real world of adults, where people can change and alter their approach to us depending on the limits we set and preferences we have.

This makes for a partner who is interdependent, rather than either codependent or overly independent.

In addition, Boundary Doors equip us for mature social interactions, and mature romantic partnerships because they are almost always one of the working parts of our more Mature Ego Defenses, or Defense Mechanisms - such social habits as humor, altruism, anticipation of the future, and suppression of problems that we can't solve at the moment.

Boundary holes allow anything in or out, including good things and bad things. It is like saying, "yes" to everything that happens socially. As a result, one has an "external locus of control," in which the uncontrollable in the social environment, controls us.

The personal boundary normally blocks most stress from getting into us to cause an uproar in our emotions, but when there is a preponderance of boundary holes in a person, stress gets in whenever it likes. And so a person with a dominance of boundary holes also tends to be a very stressed-out person. There is a different way of describing this:

Boundary holes are immature flaws in the personal boundary, where a person tends to suffer. Suffering is the burning of energy for no good reason, the spending of resources without thinking, where one wastes time, energy, care and concern, as well as money, on issues in life that we don't immediately control. As a result, a person with a preponderance of boundary holes in their personal boundary is not only susceptible to stress, but also wastes whatever  resources they have managed to preserve up to now.

These "holes" are the "buttons" that people are said to push in us. They are the places where we are said to "have issues" or to be "oversensitive," or where people "get under our skin."  They are places where we ought to realize the extent of our control over the world from what we do not control, what we own or possess from what we do not, and what is our business from what is not. When we overreach into other people's lives, or

When we overreach into other people's lives, or when we are overly impressionable and allow others to take advantage of us outside our awareness, we are dealing with a boundary hole. And it is through such holes that we suffer.

Boundary holes are on the "end of the spectrum" of one's character maturity in which people tend to get into codependent relationships, and if more passive (King, Queen or Lover Personalities) let others take too much advantage of them, or else if more aggressive (Warrior and Magician Personalities), tend to invade the territory of others.

Over time, these "holes" cause the person to lose many of their resources - time, energy and money. They also tend to latch onto others and hijack their time, energy, money and other resources. They are the most narcissistic boundary anatomy, and leave one most prone to codependence, the most immature state of being between two people.

These holes are the places in our interactions in which we do not recognize our limits, nor the limits set by others. They are the places in our lives that have been called, "issues," or the "buttons" that people push - the places where we misinterpret each other, use each other, manipulate each other, and never tire of wanting more from each other, and from ourselves.

But because of these holes in the boundary, we can never be entirely satisfied. And we always feel empty.

A large tip-off to the fact that one is suffering is when we use the word, "should," which implies that we wish for control over something that we do not have control over, and implies an unconscious entitlement to already having achieved that goal.  Another version of this rests in problems using the word, "NO." Either saying it or hearing it is difficult. Not "taking NO for an answer" is part of suffering.

Fixing boundary holes and ending our suffering then consists in large part, through becoming facile and accepting of the word, "NO" in our lives, and not wasting energy on things we do not control, instead choosing to set intentions toward goals and achieving them like a more mature person with boundary doors instead of boundary holes.

Boundary holes, as the least mature and most narcissistic boundary anatomy, are also always involved in the operations of the automatic human social habits, called, "Ego Defenses," or Defense Mechanisms. The most immature defense mechanisms always have boundary holes operating in them, and the more mature ego defenses have the more mature, "boundary doors" operating in them.

Boundary walls block all things, both good and bad from getting in or out. Often the result of psychological trauma, walls leave one relatively protected against stress, but also lonely and lacking social interaction.

As far as the character maturity of "boundary anatomy" goes, these items are midway between the lowest maturity anatomy (Boundary Holes) and the highest maturity anatomy (Boundary Doors.)  So they are then also midway between the two in level of narcissism.

These people tend to protect themselves, not by saying NO to others, but by being unavailable, by hiding or isolating, or alternatively, finding ways to generally have it be known that they "say NO to everything" others ask of them. And as a result they may seem like "loners," when in fact, they would love to have connection to others.

They are being self-protective. As a result, Boundary Walls might be thought to develop out of the experience of Psychological Trauma in life.  They are then adaptive in a way, in that they protect the individual from being taken advantage of, but they are maladaptive in that such people are culturally cut off from others and from love. They may end up feeling "lonely and hungry" if they employ this boundary anatomy as their dominant type.

These people may be said to lack Intimacy and to be overly Independent as a partnering style, and social mode of being. This is better than being codependent, but not as mature, happy or successful as a partner, as an interdependent person is.

Like intellectual Meddling or physical Martyrdom, which are vices about burdening a partner with a kind of laziness, shunning duties through the rote use of a well-practiced talent, Capriciousness is a character "vice of excess of Resilience". It is is "too resilient" to the point of being "win/lose" or destructive to the goals of the relationship. It is built on the entitlement of people who have the tendency to change their minds quickly, and results in a kind of arrogance that injures the feelings of the more resourceful partner.

In being unjust as a partner at contributing to achieve a goal, the capricious, fickle partner is only pretending to have real, true interest and collaboration toward a goal. Instead, only pretending, allowing the other partner to do all the diligent and disciplined work. This is misleading the partner into thinking that you are a resourceful and stable person when you are merely living on their hard work.

It leads many to comment at the end of the relationship that, "I felt helpless with this person, they changed their minds so much," or "I feel my time is wasted on this person."  That is the capricious person's usual effect - through the holes in the boundary allowing whatever is most top of mind to rule the agenda for anyone's given week. This might be thought to be a person who "settles for less," because they'll settle for anything. All their choices seem to be of equal value.

The capricious person uses an Immature Ego Defense, called, "Undoing" - which is like "a ritual," where one dispells the anxiety built into making a final choice, only to find that there are numerous further choices in life to be anxious about, and we are likely to encounter many or most to them. (The Ego Defenses guide us in finding friends and mates who happen to have similar maturity level.)

It is pathologically narcissistic to be Capricious, because we usually want to be its mature version, while Resilience does make a definite choice, and then is also prepared for failure of that choice, but willing to bounce to the next choice. This makes for "win/win" behavior in the face of a truly uncertain situation.

The other vice of Resilience as a virtue is that of moral deficit, called, "Failty" or "cowardice," where a person of basic skill at something "gets rigid," and lets their anxiety caused by personal boundary holes make them feel as if they must persist in doing the same strategy over and over, to force a result.

Someone who is romantically making use of Failty is a narcissist, stopping cold, the achievement of goals and the dreams of a mate, by pretending to have Resilience at a task they fail at, like a gambler placing the same bet, over and over, and hoping to recoup their losses.  In some ways, this moral error resembles addiction.

As a vice which makes partnership within relationships fail to get to goals, Capriciousness is intellectually unattractive, given that we consider cowardly behavior to be negative in many ways, including in sexual attraction. It actually depletes the reserves of one's own, or the other partner's masculinity or femininity" by way of osmosis or bleeding of indecision from one partner to another.

RETURN TO CHARACTER COMPATIBILITY

"Two-factor Authentication" is a term we use for combining these two sets of four factors, to make a total of 16 Cardinal Virtues of Romance - the permutation and combination of each of four skills of intellectual attraction with four common beneficial features of intellectual attraction which also make an individual successful in life.

The Four Skills of Commitment that smooth our teamwork are also called the "4 C's" - Curiosity, Communication, Compromise, and Collaboration. One leads to the next, for example, we won't even bother to communicate if one or both of us lack curiosity. We can't begin to compromise and join resources if we can't communicate accurately and with appeal, and we certainly can't collaborate, if we have very different agendas and conflicting life's goals, having not gone through the synthetic process of compromise, to prevent major "sacrifices" in the future.

The Four Traits or Commonalities of Commitment that power individual success (but also influence choice of goals) are Intelligence, Maturity, Similarity of Beliefs (and Preferences), and Similarity of Life's Goals. It is important to remember that the power of the commonalities of Commitment rests in the fact that they are "in common": Two people with similar intelligence, similar maturity, similar beliefs, and similar life's goals. One person, alone, cannot carry all the weight of the team with these, and so they should be used early, in screening a date, boyfriend or girlfriend as a potential partner. In addition, large differences in these four, results in a "difference in cultural background" - the two people are "just too different to be compatible," a problem that just can't be overcome by more intelligence, more maturity, or more of any of the virtues, like heroism, resilience, or others. Many people beat their head against a wall over this, thinking, "If only I could be even more X, better, smarter, etc," then things will work out. They won't, without commonality of a majority of these traits.

Combining the first four with the latter four, give us 16 Cardinal Virtues of all intellectual, goal-oriented romantic connections to a mate, even though one can have hundreds of kinds of virtues to their character. In the example at left, we see the Trait of Life's Goals combine with the Skill of Collaboration to give us the last important Virtue of Commitment, or "Cardinal Virtue" or "character virtue" a partner needs to cultivate in order to be a solid partner in romance, for life: Resilience.

In addition, the uniqueness of our own attachments and identifications with our specific and unique parents, and the random lot we have been given in being born to our particular parents will result in tendencies of being intellectually attracted to particular kinds of people with traits similar to our opposite sex parent, and to having made part of our core character tendencies, similar traits of our same sex parent. This occurs through the imprinting processes of attachment and identification, respectively.

These will lead us to wanting to find all 16 Cardinal Virtues in one person and one romance, if that were possible. But regardless of our imperfections, we can do almost all we seek to accomplish in a romantic life, if we can at least find one, what Romantic Dynamics calls, "Golden Virtue" in the potential partner. This will be the one Cardinal Virtue that the other partner both imprinted and cultivated from their own same-sex parent, and which is similar to that one virtue of our opposite-sex parent, which we found most appealing and compelling to aspire to.

If the core feature of there even being an advantage to being in a long term relationship is that of having success in getting to lifelong goals with a partner, then it might make sense to you that your union should have a combination of the 4 most crucial personal traits of a successful individual - intelligence, maturity, beliefs, and goals - combined with the 4 most crucial skills of any pairing on a team, or partnership - curiosity, communication, compromise (synthesis), and collaboration (execution.)

With this in mind, let us look at the 16 Cardinal Virtues that define Step 8 of courtship.

The 16 Cardinal Virtues of Romance

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF CURIOSITY

The first skill of partnership in a long-term romantic relationship is perhaps the most important: CURIOSITY. It means more than just an interest in current events. It means having an active mind that asks kind questions of ourselves and our partners, and without it, we cannot build the other three Skills of Commitment, or Partnership.

Curiosity means that we don't just believe anything we read, or gossip we hear, but we are willing to investigate the emotional truth of any matter, and by using the psychological core skill of personal growth, Observing Ego, we are awake and aware to what is happening in our relationship and our environment, willing to grow and change with them both. Without Observing Ego, and therefore, without Curiosity as a skill, we end up with major regrets in our relationships. These 4 Virtues, below, can guarantee you a leg up on having more curiosity in your relationship.

1. Scholarliness: Intelligence + Curiosity ➳

Scholarliness is a combination of the skill of Curiosity with the trait of intelligence. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. The skill of curiosity is universally useful, no matter what one's intelligence level is, but in the absence of the latter, a curious person may have a lot of obstacles and pitfalls to overcome on their life's path - like the medieval fictional character, Parcival, noble, but rife with mistakes and lessons before getting to his goals. As a result, it is very advantageous to pair someone with both ample book-learning education, yet also with a robust set of lessons in life's experience, and an inborn gift of intelligence from the start - the large capacity to efficiently fill up on both forms of learning: education AND experience.

2. Philosophy: Maturity + Curiosity ➳

Philosophy is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of maturity. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. It has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

3. Honor: Beliefs + Curiosity ➳

Honor is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of beliefs. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. Beliefs, you may recall, pertain to ideas that we deem to be true and valid, and yet carry such a large degree of emotion in them, that they are valued by us, and become such a part of our decision-making strategies, that they are far more than just ideas. We think of them as "truths" in part, because they also emerge as a function of our very identity. Honor has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

4. Aspiration: Goals + Curiosity ➳

Aspiration is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of having eyes on goals. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. Goals, you may recall, pertain to actual accomplishments that we do not yet attain, own or control, which makes the attaining of goals, the only mature, legitimate way of actually gaining more real control over our world. We think of them as "what we want to become,"which is the same as aspiration, only if we really do care about them and have curiosity about their nature and how we might gather our resources to attain them.  They, then, also emerge as a function of our very identity. Aspiration has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COMMUNICATION

The second Skill of Partnership is one that cannot happen without Curiosity, first. Communication is more than just sending text messages and emails. It is the crucial foundation for the other two necessary long term partnership skills of Compromise and Collaboration. It is also, other than the sensations of touch and sight, the major means by which we can even convey love, through emotional expression, the Emotional Attraction, Phase 2 of Courtship.

While Sexual Attraction may be conveyed largely nonverbally, through touch and sight, Intellectual Attraction - the seeking of goals successfully as a couple, and whole purpose of Phase 3 of Courtship - would not be possible without great communication. We need to communicate accurately, dynamically, and remember that communication is both that of ideas and emotions too, simultaneously.  When we are not good at this, we essentially are crippled at loving, and find it impossible to reach success as a team and couple. These 4 Virtues below, can guarantee you success at communication.

5. Influence: Intelligence + Communication ➳

Influence is a major virtue of commitment, which is a combination of the skill of communication with the commonality, or trait of intelligence. Communication can be looked at in various ways. Simply put, it is an expression of ideas that also likely carry emotional energy as well. This makes them similar to beliefs, which have the same structure, but the difference is that beliefs are contained within us, sometimes unconsciously, until expressed to others in communication.

6. Elegance: Maturity + Communication ➳

Elegance is defined as "making the complex, simple to understand," and is composed of the skill of communicationwith the commitment trait of maturity. It is the quality of being graceful and stylish in appearance or manner; style." A slender woman with grace and elegance" is an example.

7. Honesty: Beliefs + Communication ➳

Beliefs are first and foremost, private and personal, and so the communication of beliefs is quite honest. When you convey your ideas honestly, you include the data, but also the heart-felt emotion associated, and are taking a bit of a risk with the audience in so doing. This makes honesty a virtue, because you are being constructive and win/win in offering your ideas to others, some of which may be beneficial to them, and to you. But in choosing the wrong audience or wrong composition of the audience for your message, you may be misunderstood, or worse, unfairly criticized or attacked by them for your ideas.

8. Inspiration: Goals + Communication ➳

Beliefs are first and foremost, private and personal, and so the communication of beliefs is quite honest. When you convey your ideas honestly, you include the data, but also the heart-felt emotion associated, and are taking a bit of a risk with the audience in so doing. This makes honesty a virtue, because you are being constructive and win/win in offering your ideas to others, some of which may be beneficial to them, and to you. But in choosing the wrong audience or wrong composition of the audience for your message, you may be misunderstood, or worse, unfairly criticized or attacked by them for your ideas.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COMPROMISE

The third skill of Commitment and Partnership - Compromise - must be in place before we can actually reach the final step of achieving success in our shared goals in life as a couple, through Collaboration. Otherwise we will be actively investing in goals, but secretly or not so secretly working at cross purposes in the 11th hour before success. We all know what the word means, and usually people assume that it is entirely composed of sacrifices of some sort, when we are discussing relationships.

However, in the Romantic Dynamics definition, we are trying to minimize "sacrifice," to instead focus on SYNTHESIS of two different people's lifelong goals and dreams. It is a discussion, and without communication ability, and curiosity to begin with, we cannot hope to get to compromises on what our shared, joint goals will be.

In a successful, long term relationship, there absolutely has to be an honoring of each individual's PERSONAL life's goals and dreams. Without this, the entire concept of a committed relationship is doomed, by way of being nothing but a giant sacrifice for both parties, or else a many-years-long bullying session, where one codependent partner dominates the other, and only one person lives their dreams while the other person is up for lifelong sacrifice. Compromise as a master Skill of Commitment, guarantees that both people "win," thorugh a constructive synthesis that joins their personal goals at the hip, to make joint, couples' goals. These four Cardinal Virtues can be cultivated to help you master Compromise at this level.

9. Authority: Intelligence + Compromise ➳

Authority is defined in the dictionary as "the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience." The nature of this term is seen as being of appeal as a trait in a partner which one needs if they are more of a thinking and feeling type person, as opposed to a "do-er." It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring a partner with a "take charge attitude." Authority is a combination of the Skill of Compromisewith the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

10. Justice: Maturity + Compromise ➳

Justice is one of the mature, high character virtues which rightfully gives feedback to others in the form of guilt. As opposed to passive-aggressiveness or masochism, which seeks to dump anxiety or guilt on others, justice is meant to encourage a correction of behavior in the areas of the conscience or ethics on the part of the receiving partner, or correction of the naivete or lack of intuition on the part of the overly conscientious partner learning to execute justice.

11. Service: Beliefs + Compromise ➳

Service is defined in the dictionary as "supplying or delivery," or "a system supplying a public need such as transport, communications, or utilities such as electricity and water." The nature of this term is seen as being of appeal as a trait in a partner which one needs if they are more of a thinker and private person, but enjoy access to people and experiences other than their more comfortable, humble world. It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring a partner with both "devotion" (as in, "to a cause") and "access" or "connections." Service is a combination of the Skill of Compromise with the trait (or Commonality) of Beliefs.

12. Heroism: Goals + Compromise ➳

Heroism is defined in the dictionary as "bravery, courage, valor, intrepidity, boldness, daring, audacity, fearlessness." It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring to help or even save a partner. Heroism is a combination of the Skill of Compromise with the trait (or Commonality) of success at goals.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COLLABORATION

The 4th and final Skill of Commitment or Partnership is the one where we finally take everything we share, and join forces and resources to actually commit to investing them in a direction toward achieving our joint goals. There is no turning back, now.  Which is why, if we didn't have Curiosity, Communication, and Compromise online first, we would be doomed to failure and the waste of our resources of time, energy and money. Without Curiosity, we shouldn't be with such a person. They are wasting our time as a pseudo-teammate in life. Without accurate and heart-felt Communication, we will be prone to error and misunderstandings that cause failure.

Without Compromise, we have not yet "synthesized" our personal goals and dreams together with joined, shared, RELATIONSHIP goals and dreams as a couple, causing such confusion, cross-purposes and sacrifice instead of success, that we would not last as a couple.

With Collaboration, we learn to work as a dynamic team, willing to change direction, fight threats, overcome obstacles, all with the full passion of the reptilian brains - our masculinity and femininity - those instincts which light up when we pursue our dreams. With Collaboration, we also become ever-tighter friends, best-friends, in fact, sharing love and the positive emotions of friendship.

Finally, it is only with Collaboration that the "two may join as one" - seen in the world's marriage rites, where the power of a team of two (at achieving goals and dreams jointly) - that a couple can consistently succeed at their dreams, time and time again. These 4 Virtues will help you master this skill as partners.

13. Competence: Intelligence + Collaboration ➳

Competence is defined in the dictionary as "the ability to do something successfully or efficiently." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal quickly and with the least waste of resources, which is efficiency. Competence is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

14. Equanimity: Maturity + Collaboration ➳

Equanimity is defined in the dictionary as "mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal smoothly and with the least waste of resources on drama, error, overwhelm and fear, which is obviously a function of having good boundaries with doors rather than boundary holes. Equanimity is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Maturity.

15. Resourcefulness: Beliefs + Collaboration ➳

Resourcefulness sounds like a general term, but it is highly specific in Romantic Dynamics terminology as combining the Skill of Collaboration with the Trait or Commonality of Beliefs, to make for a person who is gifted and practiced at gathering team resources together to ready them for actual execution toward a joint goal. To others, it may seem like they can "do magic" with very little, and so the character virtue falls into the domain of natural funciton of the Magician Personality Style.

16. Resilience: Goals + Collaboration ➳

Resilience sounds like a general term, but it is highly specific in Romantic Dynamics terminology as combining the Skill of Collaboration with the Trait or Commonality of Goals and their execution and achievement, to make for a person who is gifted and practiced at actual execution toward a joint goal as a team. It may seem surprising that this character virtue is not one like "decisiveness" or 'being a winner" (although Resilience is really the ONLY way to actually "win" in the end.) It recognizes the human condition as imperfect and prone to little failures on the way to a goal, but the ability to "pick one up by the bootstraps" and persist, anyway.

Character Compatibility is a different harmony between partners than an alignment of personality styles, or of polarity of masculinity and femininity. It goes far beyond shared interests, to be sure.  Since Phase 3 of Courtship - Teamwork, Partnership, and Commitment - are about aligning to be a successful team at getting to joint goals in intellectual attraction. Then the compatibility we are talking about must be about a joint encouragement of the faculties of the intellect, executive function, and maturity of character that makes not only an individual highly efficient and effective at getting to goals, but of the "sum being greater than its parts" in making each other more successful than the individuals could, alone.

As such, there is a mutual amplification of the tendency to grow more mature and successful on account of each other. To expand each partner's personal growth on account of the interventions of the other partner. To the principles of Romantic Dynamics, this means a mutual set of virtues of character that are unique and special to that couple.

Virtues of character make for a good person, a wise person and a successful person, but virtues are not all interchangeable or of equal amplification of each other. Some are more or less, related to each other and others have more diversity when collected together. In the end, there are certain combinations of virtue in two partners that are going to be more in alignment, more balancing and rounding out of each other in composing a couple.

So, Character Compatibility will need to see us coupling with a person whose own character virtues of their maturity having a special "chemistry" with our own, and one that leads to more efficient, effective success at our joint life's goals as a couple.

In Phase 3 of Romantic Dynamics and the courtship process, Step 7, "Who We Are," then we need to look at the 4 Skills of Commitment, in how advanced they are for each partner, as well as the 4 Commonalities of Commitment in how aligned we are, "culturally," which will suggest an automatic harmony of any attempt at joint goals as a couple.

"Two-factor Authentication" is a term we use for combining these two sets of four factors, to make a total of 16 Cardinal Virtues of Romance - the permutation and combination of each of four skills of intellectual attraction with four common beneficial features of intellectual attraction which also make an individual successful in life.

The Four Skills of Commitment that smooth our teamwork are also called the "4 C's" - Curiosity, Communication, Compromise, and Collaboration. One leads to the next, for example, we won't even bother to communicate if one or both of us lack curiosity. We can't begin to compromise and join resources if we can't communicate accurately and with appeal, and we certainly can't collaborate, if we have very different agendas and conflicting life's goals, having not gone through the synthetic process of compromise, to prevent major "sacrifices" in the future.

The Four Traits or Commonalities of Commitment that power individual success (but also influence choice of goals) are Intelligence, Maturity, Similarity of Beliefs (and Preferences), and Similarity of Life's Goals. It is important to remember that the power of the commonalities of Commitment rests in the fact that they are "in common": Two people with similar intelligence, similar maturity, similar beliefs, and similar life's goals. One person, alone, cannot carry all the weight of the team with these, and so they should be used early, in screening a date, boyfriend or girlfriend as a potential partner. In addition, large differences in these four, results in a "difference in cultural background" - the two people are "just too different to be compatible," a problem that just can't be overcome by more intelligence, more maturity, or more of any of the virtues, like heroism, resilience, or others. Many people beat their head against a wall over this, thinking, "If only I could be even more X, better, smarter, etc," then things will work out. They won't, without commonality of a majority of these traits.

Combining the first four with the latter four, give us 16 Cardinal Virtues of all intellectual, goal-oriented romantic connections to a mate, even though one can have hundreds of kinds of virtues to their character. In the example at left, we see the Trait of Life's Goals combine with the Skill of Collaboration to give us the last important Virtue of Commitment, or "Cardinal Virtue" or "character virtue" a partner needs to cultivate in order to be a solid partner in romance, for life: Resilience.

In addition, the uniqueness of our own attachments and identifications with our specific and unique parents, and the random lot we have been given in being born to our particular parents will result in tendencies of being intellectually attracted to particular kinds of people with traits similar to our opposite sex parent, and to having made part of our core character tendencies, similar traits of our same sex parent. This occurs through the imprinting processes of attachment and identification, respectively.

These will lead us to wanting to find all 16 Cardinal Virtues in one person and one romance, if that were possible. But regardless of our imperfections, we can do almost all we seek to accomplish in a romantic life, if we can at least find one, what Romantic Dynamics calls, "Golden Virtue" in the potential partner. This will be the one Cardinal Virtue that the other partner both imprinted and cultivated from their own same-sex parent, and which is similar to that one virtue of our opposite-sex parent, which we found most appealing and compelling to aspire to.

If the core feature of there even being an advantage to being in a long term relationship is that of having success in getting to lifelong goals with a partner, then it might make sense to you that your union should have a combination of the 4 most crucial personal traits of a successful individual - intelligence, maturity, beliefs, and goals - combined with the 4 most crucial skills of any pairing on a team, or partnership - curiosity, communication, compromise (synthesis), and collaboration (execution.)

With this in mind, let us look at the 16 Cardinal Virtues that define Step 8 of courtship.

The 16 Cardinal Virtues of Romance

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF CURIOSITY

The first skill of partnership in a long-term romantic relationship is perhaps the most important: CURIOSITY. It means more than just an interest in current events. It means having an active mind that asks kind questions of ourselves and our partners, and without it, we cannot build the other three Skills of Commitment, or Partnership.

Curiosity means that we don't just believe anything we read, or gossip we hear, but we are willing to investigate the emotional truth of any matter, and by using the psychological core skill of personal growth, Observing Ego, we are awake and aware to what is happening in our relationship and our environment, willing to grow and change with them both. Without Observing Ego, and therefore, without Curiosity as a skill, we end up with major regrets in our relationships. These 4 Virtues, below, can guarantee you a leg up on having more curiosity in your relationship.

Scholarliness: Intelligence + Curiosity ➳

Scholarliness is a combination of the skill of Curiosity with the trait of intelligence. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. The skill of curiosity is universally useful, no matter what one's intelligence level is, but in the absence of the latter, a curious person may have a lot of obstacles and pitfalls to overcome on their life's path - like the medieval fictional character, Parcival, noble, but rife with mistakes and lessons before getting to his goals. As a result, it is very advantageous to pair someone with both ample book-learning education, yet also with a robust set of lessons in life's experience, and an inborn gift of intelligence from the start - the large capacity to efficiently fill up on both forms of learning: education AND experience.

Philosophy: Maturity + Curiosity ➳

Philosophy is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of maturity. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. It has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

Honor: Beliefs + Curiosity ➳

Honor is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of beliefs. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. Beliefs, you may recall, pertain to ideas that we deem to be true and valid, and yet carry such a large degree of emotion in them, that they are valued by us, and become such a part of our decision-making strategies, that they are far more than just ideas. We think of them as "truths" in part, because they also emerge as a function of our very identity. Honor has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

Aspiration: Goals + Curiosity ➳

Aspiration is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of having eyes on goals. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. Goals, you may recall, pertain to actual accomplishments that we do not yet attain, own or control, which makes the attaining of goals, the only mature, legitimate way of actually gaining more real control over our world. We think of them as "what we want to become,"which is the same as aspiration, only if we really do care about them and have curiosity about their nature and how we might gather our resources to attain them.  They, then, also emerge as a function of our very identity. Aspiration has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COMMUNICATION

The second Skill of Partnership is one that cannot happen without Curiosity, first. Communication is more than just sending text messages and emails. It is the crucial foundation for the other two necessary long term partnership skills of Compromise and Collaboration. It is also, other than the sensations of touch and sight, the major means by which we can even convey love, through emotional expression, the Emotional Attraction, Phase 2 of Courtship.

While Sexual Attraction may be conveyed largely nonverbally, through touch and sight, Intellectual Attraction - the seeking of goals successfully as a couple, and whole purpose of Phase 3 of Courtship - would not be possible without great communication. We need to communicate accurately, dynamically, and remember that communication is both that of ideas and emotions too, simultaneously.  When we are not good at this, we essentially are crippled at loving, and find it impossible to reach success as a team and couple. These 4 Virtues below, can guarantee you success at communication.

5. Influence: Intelligence + Communication ➳

Influence is a major virtue of commitment, which is a combination of the skill of communication with the commonality, or trait of intelligence. Communication can be looked at in various ways. Simply put, it is an expression of ideas that also likely carry emotional energy as well. This makes them similar to beliefs, which have the same structure, but the difference is that beliefs are contained within us, sometimes unconsciously, until expressed to others in communication.

6. Elegance: Maturity + Communication ➳

Elegance is defined as "making the complex, simple to understand," and is composed of the skill of communicationwith the commitment trait of maturity. It is the quality of being graceful and stylish in appearance or manner; style." A slender woman with grace and elegance" is an example.

7. Honesty: Beliefs + Communication ➳

Beliefs are first and foremost, private and personal, and so the communication of beliefs is quite honest. When you convey your ideas honestly, you include the data, but also the heart-felt emotion associated, and are taking a bit of a risk with the audience in so doing. This makes honesty a virtue, because you are being constructive and win/win in offering your ideas to others, some of which may be beneficial to them, and to you. But in choosing the wrong audience or wrong composition of the audience for your message, you may be misunderstood, or worse, unfairly criticized or attacked by them for your ideas.

8. Inspiration: Goals + Communication ➳

Beliefs are first and foremost, private and personal, and so the communication of beliefs is quite honest. When you convey your ideas honestly, you include the data, but also the heart-felt emotion associated, and are taking a bit of a risk with the audience in so doing. This makes honesty a virtue, because you are being constructive and win/win in offering your ideas to others, some of which may be beneficial to them, and to you. But in choosing the wrong audience or wrong composition of the audience for your message, you may be misunderstood, or worse, unfairly criticized or attacked by them for your ideas.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COMPROMISE

The third skill of Commitment and Partnership - Compromise - must be in place before we can actually reach the final step of achieving success in our shared goals in life as a couple, through Collaboration. Otherwise we will be actively investing in goals, but secretly or not so secretly working at cross purposes in the 11th hour before success. We all know what the word means, and usually people assume that it is entirely composed of sacrifices of some sort, when we are discussing relationships.

However, in the Romantic Dynamics definition, we are trying to minimize "sacrifice," to instead focus on SYNTHESIS of two different people's lifelong goals and dreams. It is a discussion, and without communication ability, and curiosity to begin with, we cannot hope to get to compromises on what our shared, joint goals will be.

In a successful, long term relationship, there absolutely has to be an honoring of each individual's PERSONAL life's goals and dreams. Without this, the entire concept of a committed relationship is doomed, by way of being nothing but a giant sacrifice for both parties, or else a many-years-long bullying session, where one codependent partner dominates the other, and only one person lives their dreams while the other person is up for lifelong sacrifice. Compromise as a master Skill of Commitment, guarantees that both people "win," thorugh a constructive synthesis that joins their personal goals at the hip, to make joint, couples' goals. These four Cardinal Virtues can be cultivated to help you master Compromise at this level.

9. Authority: Intelligence + Compromise ➳

Authority is defined in the dictionary as "the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience." The nature of this term is seen as being of appeal as a trait in a partner which one needs if they are more of a thinking and feeling type person, as opposed to a "do-er." It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring a partner with a "take charge attitude." Authority is a combination of the Skill of Compromisewith the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

10. Justice: Maturity + Compromise ➳

Justice is one of the mature, high character virtues which rightfully gives feedback to others in the form of guilt. As opposed to passive-aggressiveness or masochism, which seeks to dump anxiety or guilt on others, justice is meant to encourage a correction of behavior in the areas of the conscience or ethics on the part of the receiving partner, or correction of the naivete or lack of intuition on the part of the overly conscientious partner learning to execute justice.

11. Service: Beliefs + Compromise ➳

Service is defined in the dictionary as "supplying or delivery," or "a system supplying a public need such as transport, communications, or utilities such as electricity and water." The nature of this term is seen as being of appeal as a trait in a partner which one needs if they are more of a thinker and private person, but enjoy access to people and experiences other than their more comfortable, humble world. It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring a partner with both "devotion" (as in, "to a cause") and "access" or "connections." Service is a combination of the Skill of Compromise with the trait (or Commonality) of Beliefs.

12. Heroism: Goals + Compromise ➳

Heroism is defined in the dictionary as "bravery, courage, valor, intrepidity, boldness, daring, audacity, fearlessness." It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring to help or even save a partner. Heroism is a combination of the Skill of Compromise with the trait (or Commonality) of success at goals.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COLLABORATION

The 4th and final Skill of Commitment or Partnership is the one where we finally take everything we share, and join forces and resources to actually commit to investing them in a direction toward achieving our joint goals. There is no turning back, now.  Which is why, if we didn't have Curiosity, Communication, and Compromise online first, we would be doomed to failure and the waste of our resources of time, energy and money. Without Curiosity, we shouldn't be with such a person. They are wasting our time as a pseudo-teammate in life. Without accurate and heart-felt Communication, we will be prone to error and misunderstandings that cause failure.

Without Compromise, we have not yet "synthesized" our personal goals and dreams together with joined, shared, RELATIONSHIP goals and dreams as a couple, causing such confusion, cross-purposes and sacrifice instead of success, that we would not last as a couple.

With Collaboration, we learn to work as a dynamic team, willing to change direction, fight threats, overcome obstacles, all with the full passion of the reptilian brains - our masculinity and femininity - those instincts which light up when we pursue our dreams. With Collaboration, we also become ever-tighter friends, best-friends, in fact, sharing love and the positive emotions of friendship.

Finally, it is only with Collaboration that the "two may join as one" - seen in the world's marriage rites, where the power of a team of two (at achieving goals and dreams jointly) - that a couple can consistently succeed at their dreams, time and time again. These 4 Virtues will help you master this skill as partners.

13. Competence: Intelligence + Collaboration ➳

Competence is defined in the dictionary as "the ability to do something successfully or efficiently." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal quickly and with the least waste of resources, which is efficiency. Competence is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

14. Equanimity: Maturity + Collaboration ➳

Equanimity is defined in the dictionary as "mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal smoothly and with the least waste of resources on drama, error, overwhelm and fear, which is obviously a function of having good boundaries with doors rather than boundary holes. Equanimity is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Maturity.

15. Resourcefulness: Beliefs + Collaboration ➳

Resourcefulness sounds like a general term, but it is highly specific in Romantic Dynamics terminology as combining the Skill of Collaboration with the Trait or Commonality of Beliefs, to make for a person who is gifted and practiced at gathering team resources together to ready them for actual execution toward a joint goal. To others, it may seem like they can "do magic" with very little, and so the character virtue falls into the domain of natural funciton of the Magician Personality Style.

16. Resilience: Goals + Collaboration ➳

Resilience sounds like a general term, but it is highly specific in Romantic Dynamics terminology as combining the Skill of Collaboration with the Trait or Commonality of Goals and their execution and achievement, to make for a person who is gifted and practiced at actual execution toward a joint goal as a team. It may seem surprising that this character virtue is not one like "decisiveness" or 'being a winner" (although Resilience is really the ONLY way to actually "win" in the end.) It recognizes the human condition as imperfect and prone to little failures on the way to a goal, but the ability to "pick one up by the bootstraps" and persist, anyway.

• Charity -  Agape, or unlimited loving kindness towards all others.

Like intellectual Bombast or physical Abdication, which are vices about sabotaging a partner's status at the cost of our own success, "faking it" behavior, or Charlatanry is a character "vice of deficit of Competence" that sees one as being the essence of "win/lose" or destructive in a way our grandmothers might have advised us to "not cut of your nose to spite your face." Only in this case, it is about faking as if we have resources and power to please or distract a partner, which secretly sabotages the whole overall goals of the relationship and therefore the partner. It is not a team approach. It makes the Poseidon, or "father instinct" feel terrible and not the master possessor of resources he likes to be, and makes the Hera, or "queen of resources" in women feel dishonored, and therefore not able to grant ownership of resources, which is her instinctual romantic and spiritual right as a woman. Similar to "wasteful fraud" as opposed to mere "negligence," but with the "sabotage" of community resources by the charlatan. It is unattractive sexually, therefore.

In being unjust as a partner at contributing to achieving a goal, the charlatan partner is only pretending to have real and true skills but is instead utterly wasting the resources of the other partner on joint efforts meant to be honest and real, not fake or unattainable. This is misleading the partner into thinking that you are a resourceful and happy person when you are not, and leads many to comment at the end of the relationship that, "I feel let down and hollow," or "I feel baited and switched," or "what looked promising is not what I ended up getting from you." That is the charlatan's usual effect - through the holes in the boundary of the cowardly partner.

The charlatans use an Immature Ego Defense, called, "Idealization" - which is like "a mirage, where one starts to self-delude into thinking that what's possible is already probable," or worse - that what is only a wish is somehow an actual attainable reality. (The Ego Defenses guide us in finding friends and mates who happen to have similar maturity levels.)

It is pathologically narcissistic to be charlatan-like, because we usually want to be its mature version, given that Charlatanry produces destructiveness, and a "win/lose" behavior, while Competence, makes for "win/win" behavior.

The other vice of Competence as a virtue is that of moral deficit, called, "Usurpation" or "self-nomination," where a person of basic skill at something "assumes they have the right to take over resources," just because they happen to have some skill and want the same goal as us, when they really have no qualifications, boldly and ignorantly take over the couple's resources (and employing the Defense Mechanism of Rationalization as their strategy for constantly revising what is "true" between them in their real goals.)

Someone who is romantically making use of charlatanry is a thief, indirectly taking resources away from the goals and dreams of a mate, by pretending to have competence at a task that actually wastes and burns the community resources on things that don't better their lives.

As a vice which makes partnership within relationships fail to get to goals, and is intellectually unattractive, consider cowardly behavior to be negative in many ways, including in sexual attraction, since it actually depletes the reserves of one's own, or the other partner's masculinity or femininity"

RETURN TO CHARACTER COMPATIBILITY

• Chastity - Discretion of sexual conduct, the practice of courtly love, honesty to the self.

Being chicanerous is a character "vice of deficit" stemming from what would otherwise be a character virtue in the form of honesty. It is not the same as lying, but rather of remaining silent and observant, "withholding the truth for the sake of advantage over others." It is intellectually narcissistic, which is to say that it contains either the intellectual narcissism of ignorance or prejudice. One may be ignorant of how much a potential partner needs to know about you to feel intimate and connected. Everyone wants to start with honesty, not just "lies of omission." Chicanery may be prejudicial against those who expect equal, trusting self-disclosure in exchange for their own. After all, that kind of shared honesty is part of what makes intimate partnerships so special.

Someone who is "chicanerous," is by definition, soliciting private information from another person, but giving no real clues to who they are in return. It shows poor boundaries for ever retaining mutual respect (and the enjoyment of slow discovery of the identity of the other person.)  However, all human beings communicate on a spectrum between being overly transparent, and too chicanerous to gain the trust of their audience. This highlights the central psychological skill that counters vices: maturity, which contains the Observing Ego to scan the environment for its composition and needs, matching that to what we endeavor in that social environment.

As a vice which makes partnership within relationships fail to get to goals, and intellectually unattractive, consider this vice to be negative in many ways, including in sexual attraction, since it is "unintimate," and "emotionally withholding."

RETURN TO CHARACTER COMPATIBILITY

Codependence is a state of connection between two people which, like the states of intimacy, independence, and interdependence, pertain to the function of personal boundaries between the two people. In the case of codependence there are a larger amount of boundary holes in the personal boundary of both partners than other boundary anatomy - such as boundary walls, or the most mature boundary anatomy of all - boundary doors.

In codependence, the two people, by way of their boundary holes, have a tendency to invade each others' privacy and feel entitled for the other person to maintain each others' resources, without expectation of receiving value back. As a result, they both tend to bully each other and hoard most of the resources of the couple - a "Win/Lose" deal in which one person tends to eventually dominate the relationship and the resources, leaving very little for the other person to subsist on, including the sense of being loved.

For the person of advantage, this arrangement may seem like a "good deal," or even a loving relationship. For the disadvantaged person, it can be a nightmare. But due to their weakness, they may feel that there is nothing they can do about the relationship to get out of it.

Instead of codependence, we need to try for the "Goldilocks Zone" of relationships.

How do people get out of codependence? The obvious first strategy would of course be to begin to patch the boundary holes in one's personal boundary, learning to say, "NO," and hear, "NO," from others. If the partner is not willing to change, then of course there will be drama and resistance to this, and much suffering. It may also cost a great amount of energy to enforce.

The next move one might need to do to preserve energy may be to try periods of more independence in order to create a solid boundary or barrier in the relationship in order to reestablish one's center and preservation of personal resources - a kind of "retaining wall."  This is one level up in maturity from codependence.

The highest level to reach in a relationship will look somewhat similar to codependence in the "togetherness" involved. However, this more mature state of togetherness is called, "intimacy." Which is a state that is not constant or perpetual, but voluntarily entered here and there when conditions are right, and both agree. This state of interdependence, which contains occasional intimacy and at other times, independence to go work on one's interests, depends on the most mature boundary anatomy, called boundary doors.

Collaboration is so much of a must for the very purpose of intellectual attraction and partnership on successfully reaching goals as a couple, that it nearly names the whole purpose of the phase of courtship. Collaboration.

There is so much involved, however, in being qualified to collaborate as a team. First, one must be mature enough to even take this on as a skill. Lower level social habits of relating, such as the Primitive Ego Defenses and Immature Ego Defenses will not do. Secondly, one needs to have gotten in place, the other skills of committment first: Curiosity, Communication, and Compromise, before we even get to Collaboration.

Think of these four skills, in order, as going from "interest" in one's partner (and self), to "connection" with them, to "synthesis" of identity and goals, then finally, "unity" with each other in a new, action-oriented form.

Likewise, the four "commonalities" or traits that we may have in common, think of as, "how-to" (for intelligence), which comes before "balance of interests and resources" or "pooling of resources" (which comes with maturity), followed by "why do this thing" (that comes from an examination of one's personal and shared beliefs, otherwise, why do the thing?), and then "execution" (which is the nuts and bolts of going for the specific goal, in how we perform.)

As we join the permutations and combinations of "skills" and "traits" (or commonalities) together in this way, we understand the process of intimacy for a couple at a whole new level.

When one pilot on an airline flight goes to sleep on a long voyage, the other pilot, and/or autopilot takes over, but they can’t maintain this arrangement for the whole flight (especially takeoff or landing.) Collaboration is also dynamic and shifting to and fro to accomplish goals, adjusting to obstacles and imperfections. It needs Observing Ego to be constantly aware of the changing circumstances and keeps our eyes on the major goals we have, while at the same time, being open to the need for adaptation and adjustment of our goal-reaching strategy. It keeps an eye on our potential mate, their strengths, weaknesses and resources, so that we can truly join forces toward a goal.

In collaboration, we need to have the ability to sometimes fly the plane jointly, simultaneously, and communicate frequently to each other. At other times, we really do need to turn over the steering wheel to the more skilled partner at a specialized task, and not get in their way, not accidentally sabotaging their efforts.

This give and take needs communication, but also curiosity, openness to learning while doing, and of course to not let in pathological narcissism or selfishness toward our own personal goals sabotaging the group effort at the joint goals.

While we are familiar with the pairing of a left-brained person with a right-brained person in our metaphor of steering the plane to our goals, we might also add the concept of flying at hgiher or lower altitude in terms of ethics and intuition, and having enough fuel, both gasoline (confidence) and oil (well-being) for our journey, and the mutual Observing Ego turned on as our radar and flight guidance system, good boundaries to also keep the scope of our journey in a defined limit.  In fact, Observing Ego can be likened to being off "autopilot" and our instincts, habits and mature virtues as "being the autopilot." Our "North Star" in spirituality and goodness.

BACK TO SKILLS OF COMMITMENT

Commitment is the same as Intellectual Attraction, and is the Third Phase of Human Courtship, whose prime feature is that of two different people finding better success at getting to their personal and joint goals, than either one could have alone.

It doesn't automatically assure a sexual attraction or connection, and it doesn't automatically feature friendship or emotional attraction.

It is about success in reaching goals together, however, it can be certainly empowered by the other two attractions. In fact, we wouldn't have a genuine romance without the sexual attraction and emotional attraction which precede commitment and partnership, which is what Romantic Dynamics calls, Intellectual Attraction.

The way to understand commitment in the Romantic Dynamics system is to center on first developing one's self psychologically (Step 7 of Courtship - "Who I Am"), and then move on to Character Compatibility (Step 8 of Courtship - "Who We Are".) Step 9 of Courtship is the action part of actually achieving our goals as a couple ("Where We Are Going"), and also serves as the masculine partner's chance to screen and evaluate the more feminine partner for fitness for a long term, committed romantic relationship in the same way the feminine partner screened him for fitness to become more intimate in the earlier, Sexual Attraction Phase, Phase One of Courtship.

The middle step, Step 8, is perhaps the most detailed for two people to learn simultaneously, because it is about their compatibility for long term partnership.

Character Compatibility is then, a different harmony between partners than an alignment of personality styles, or of polarity of masculinity and femininity. It goes far beyond shared interests, to be sure.  Since Phase 3 of Courtship - Teamwork, Partnership, and Commitment - are about aligning to be a successful team at getting to joint goals in intellectual attraction. Then the compatibility we are talking about must be about a joint encouragement of the faculties of the intellect, executive function, and maturity of character that makes not only an individual highly efficient and effective at getting to goals, but of the "sum being greater than its parts" in making each other more successful than the individuals could, alone.

As such, there is a mutual amplification of the tendency to grow more mature and successful on account of each other. To expand each partner's personal growth on account of the interventions of the other partner. To the principles of Romantic Dynamics, this means a mutual set of virtues of character that are unique and special to that couple.

Virtues of character make for a good person, a wise person and a successful person, but virtues are not all interchangeable or of equal amplification of each other. Some are more or less, related to each other and others have more diversity when collected together. In the end, there are certain combinations of virtue in two partners that are going to be more in alignment, more balancing and rounding out of each other in composing a couple.

So, Character Compatibility will need to see us coupling with a person whose own character virtues of their maturity having a special "chemistry" with our own, and one that leads to more efficient, effective success at our joint life's goals as a couple.

In Phase 3 of Romantic Dynamics and the courtship process, Step 7, "Who We Are," then we need to look at the 4 Skills of Commitment, in how advanced they are for each partner, as well as the 4 Commonalities of Commitment in how aligned we are, "culturally," which will suggest an automatic harmony of any attempt at joint goals as a couple.

"Two-factor Authentication" is a term we use for combining these two sets of four factors, to make a total of 16 Cardinal Virtues of Romance - the permutation and combination of each of four skills of intellectual attraction with four common beneficial features of intellectual attraction which also make an individual successful in life.

The Four Skills of Commitment that smooth our teamwork are also called the "4 C's" - Curiosity, Communication, Compromise, and Collaboration. One leads to the next, for example, we won't even bother to communicate if one or both of us lack curiosity. We can't begin to compromise and join resources if we can't communicate accurately and with appeal, and we certainly can't collaborate, if we have very different agendas and conflicting life's goals, having not gone through the synthetic process of compromise, to prevent major "sacrifices" in the future.

The Four Traits or Commonalities of Commitment that power individual success (but also influence choice of goals) are Intelligence, Maturity, Similarity of Beliefs (and Preferences), and Similarity of Life's Goals. It is important to remember that the power of the commonalities of Commitment rests in the fact that they are "in common": Two people with similar intelligence, similar maturity, similar beliefs, and similar life's goals. One person, alone, cannot carry all the weight of the team with these, and so they should be used early, in screening a date, boyfriend or girlfriend as a potential partner. In addition, large differences in these four, results in a "difference in cultural background" - the two people are "just too different to be compatible," a problem that just can't be overcome by more intelligence, more maturity, or more of any of the virtues, like heroism, resilience, or others. Many people beat their head against a wall over this, thinking, "If only I could be even more X, better, smarter, etc," then things will work out. They won't, without commonality of a majority of these traits.

Combining the first four with the latter four, give us 16 Cardinal Virtues of all intellectual, goal-oriented romantic connections to a mate, even though one can have hundreds of kinds of virtues to their character. In the example at left, we see the Commonality of Beliefs combine with the Skill of Collaboration to give us the last important Virtue of Commitment, or "Cardinal Virtue" or "character virtue" a partner needs to cultivate in order to be a solid partner in romance, for life: Resilience.

In addition, the uniqueness of our own attachments and identifications with our specific and unique parents, and the random lot we have been given in being born to our particular parents will result in tendencies of being intellectually attracted to particular kinds of people with traits similar to our opposite sex parent, and to having made part of our core character tendencies, similar traits of our same sex parent. This occurs through the imprinting processes of attachment and identification, respectively.

These will lead us to wanting to find all 16 Cardinal Virtues in one person and one romance, if that were possible. But regardless of our imperfections, we can do almost all we seek to accomplish in a romantic life, if we can at least find one, what Romantic Dynamics calls, "Golden Virtue" in the potential partner. This will be the one Cardinal Virtue that the other partner both imprinted and cultivated from their own same-sex parent, and which is similar to that one virtue of our opposite-sex parent, which we found most appealing and compelling to aspire to.

If the core feature of there even being an advantage to being in a long term relationship is that of having success in getting to lifelong goals with a partner, then it might make sense to you that your union should have a combination of the 4 most crucial personal traits of a successful individual - intelligence, maturity, beliefs, and goals - combined with the 4 most crucial skills of any pairing on a team, or partnership - curiosity, communication, compromise (synthesis), and collaboration (execution.)

With this in mind, let us look at the 16 Cardinal Virtues that define Step 8 of courtship.

The 16 Cardinal Virtues of Romance

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF CURIOSITY

The first skill of partnership in a long-term romantic relationship is perhaps the most important: CURIOSITY. It means more than just an interest in current events. It means having an active mind that asks kind questions of ourselves and our partners, and without it, we cannot build the other three Skills of Commitment, or Partnership.

Curiosity means that we don't just believe anything we read, or gossip we hear, but we are willing to investigate the emotional truth of any matter, and by using the psychological core skill of personal growth, Observing Ego, we are awake and aware to what is happening in our relationship and our environment, willing to grow and change with them both. Without Observing Ego, and therefore, without Curiosity as a skill, we end up with major regrets in our relationships. These 4 Virtues, below, can guarantee you a leg up on having more curiosity in your relationship.

1. Scholarliness: Intelligence + Curiosity ➳

Scholarliness is a combination of the skill of Curiosity with the trait of intelligence. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. The skill of curiosity is universally useful, no matter what one's intelligence level is, but in the absence of the latter, a curious person may have a lot of obstacles and pitfalls to overcome on their life's path - like the medieval fictional character, Parcival, noble, but rife with mistakes and lessons before getting to his goals. As a result, it is very advantageous to pair someone with both ample book-learning education, yet also with a robust set of lessons in life's experience, and an inborn gift of intelligence from the start - the large capacity to efficiently fill up on both forms of learning: education AND experience.

2. Philosophy: Maturity + Curiosity ➳

Philosophy is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of maturity. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. It has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

3. Honor: Beliefs + Curiosity ➳

Honor is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of beliefs. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. Beliefs, you may recall, pertain to ideas that we deem to be true and valid, and yet carry such a large degree of emotion in them, that they are valued by us, and become such a part of our decision-making strategies, that they are far more than just ideas. We think of them as "truths" in part, because they also emerge as a function of our very identity. Honor has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

4. Aspiration: Goals + Curiosity ➳

Aspiration is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of having eyes on goals. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. Goals, you may recall, pertain to actual accomplishments that we do not yet attain, own or control, which makes the attaining of goals, the only mature, legitimate way of actually gaining more real control over our world. We think of them as "what we want to become,"which is the same as aspiration, only if we really do care about them and have curiosity about their nature and how we might gather our resources to attain them.  They, then, also emerge as a function of our very identity. Aspiration has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COMMUNICATION

The second Skill of Partnership is one that cannot happen without Curiosity, first. Communication is more than just sending text messages and emails. It is the crucial foundation for the other two necessary long term partnership skills of Compromise and Collaboration. It is also, other than the sensations of touch and sight, the major means by which we can even convey love, through emotional expression, the Emotional Attraction, Phase 2 of Courtship.

While Sexual Attraction may be conveyed largely nonverbally, through touch and sight, Intellectual Attraction - the seeking of goals successfully as a couple, and whole purpose of Phase 3 of Courtship - would not be possible without great communication. We need to communicate accurately, dynamically, and remember that communication is both that of ideas and emotions too, simultaneously.  When we are not good at this, we essentially are crippled at loving, and find it impossible to reach success as a team and couple. These 4 Virtues below, can guarantee you success at communication.

5. Influence: Intelligence + Communication ➳

Influence is a major virtue of commitment, which is a combination of the skill of communication with the commonality, or trait of intelligence. Communication can be looked at in various ways. Simply put, it is an expression of ideas that also likely carry emotional energy as well. This makes them similar to beliefs, which have the same structure, but the difference is that beliefs are contained within us, sometimes unconsciously, until expressed to others in communication.

6. Elegance: Maturity + Communication ➳

Elegance is defined as "making the complex, simple to understand," and is composed of the skill of communicationwith the commitment trait of maturity. It is the quality of being graceful and stylish in appearance or manner; style." A slender woman with grace and elegance" is an example.

7. Honesty: Beliefs + Communication ➳

Beliefs are first and foremost, private and personal, and so the communication of beliefs is quite honest. When you convey your ideas honestly, you include the data, but also the heart-felt emotion associated, and are taking a bit of a risk with the audience in so doing. This makes honesty a virtue, because you are being constructive and win/win in offering your ideas to others, some of which may be beneficial to them, and to you. But in choosing the wrong audience or wrong composition of the audience for your message, you may be misunderstood, or worse, unfairly criticized or attacked by them for your ideas.

8. Inspiration: Goals + Communication ➳

Beliefs are first and foremost, private and personal, and so the communication of beliefs is quite honest. When you convey your ideas honestly, you include the data, but also the heart-felt emotion associated, and are taking a bit of a risk with the audience in so doing. This makes honesty a virtue, because you are being constructive and win/win in offering your ideas to others, some of which may be beneficial to them, and to you. But in choosing the wrong audience or wrong composition of the audience for your message, you may be misunderstood, or worse, unfairly criticized or attacked by them for your ideas.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COMPROMISE

The third skill of Commitment and Partnership - Compromise - must be in place before we can actually reach the final step of achieving success in our shared goals in life as a couple, through Collaboration. Otherwise we will be actively investing in goals, but secretly or not so secretly working at cross purposes in the 11th hour before success. We all know what the word means, and usually people assume that it is entirely composed of sacrifices of some sort, when we are discussing relationships.

However, in the Romantic Dynamics definition, we are trying to minimize "sacrifice," to instead focus on SYNTHESIS of two different people's lifelong goals and dreams. It is a discussion, and without communication ability, and curiosity to begin with, we cannot hope to get to compromises on what our shared, joint goals will be.

In a successful, long term relationship, there absolutely has to be an honoring of each individual's PERSONAL life's goals and dreams. Without this, the entire concept of a committed relationship is doomed, by way of being nothing but a giant sacrifice for both parties, or else a many-years-long bullying session, where one codependent partner dominates the other, and only one person lives their dreams while the other person is up for lifelong sacrifice. Compromise as a master Skill of Commitment, guarantees that both people "win," thorugh a constructive synthesis that joins their personal goals at the hip, to make joint, couples' goals. These four Cardinal Virtues can be cultivated to help you master Compromise at this level.

9. Authority: Intelligence + Compromise ➳

Authority is defined in the dictionary as "the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience." The nature of this term is seen as being of appeal as a trait in a partner which one needs if they are more of a thinking and feeling type person, as opposed to a "do-er." It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring a partner with a "take charge attitude." Authority is a combination of the Skill of Compromisewith the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

10. Justice: Maturity + Compromise ➳

Justice is one of the mature, high character virtues which rightfully gives feedback to others in the form of guilt. As opposed to passive-aggressiveness or masochism, which seeks to dump anxiety or guilt on others, justice is meant to encourage a correction of behavior in the areas of the conscience or ethics on the part of the receiving partner, or correction of the naivete or lack of intuition on the part of the overly conscientious partner learning to execute justice.

11. Service: Beliefs + Compromise ➳

Service is defined in the dictionary as "supplying or delivery," or "a system supplying a public need such as transport, communications, or utilities such as electricity and water." The nature of this term is seen as being of appeal as a trait in a partner which one needs if they are more of a thinker and private person, but enjoy access to people and experiences other than their more comfortable, humble world. It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring a partner with both "devotion" (as in, "to a cause") and "access" or "connections." Service is a combination of the Skill of Compromise with the trait (or Commonality) of Beliefs.

12. Heroism: Goals + Compromise ➳

Heroism is defined in the dictionary as "bravery, courage, valor, intrepidity, boldness, daring, audacity, fearlessness." It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring to help or even save a partner. Heroism is a combination of the Skill of Compromise with the trait (or Commonality) of success at goals.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COLLABORATION

The 4th and final Skill of Commitment or Partnership is the one where we finally take everything we share, and join forces and resources to actually commit to investing them in a direction toward achieving our joint goals. There is no turning back, now.  Which is why, if we didn't have Curiosity, Communication, and Compromise online first, we would be doomed to failure and the waste of our resources of time, energy and money. Without Curiosity, we shouldn't be with such a person. They are wasting our time as a pseudo-teammate in life. Without accurate and heart-felt Communication, we will be prone to error and misunderstandings that cause failure.

Without Compromise, we have not yet "synthesized" our personal goals and dreams together with joined, shared, RELATIONSHIP goals and dreams as a couple, causing such confusion, cross-purposes and sacrifice instead of success, that we would not last as a couple.

With Collaboration, we learn to work as a dynamic team, willing to change direction, fight threats, overcome obstacles, all with the full passion of the reptilian brains - our masculinity and femininity - those instincts which light up when we pursue our dreams. With Collaboration, we also become ever-tighter friends, best-friends, in fact, sharing love and the positive emotions of friendship.

Finally, it is only with Collaboration that the "two may join as one" - seen in the world's marriage rites, where the power of a team of two (at achieving goals and dreams jointly) - that a couple can consistently succeed at their dreams, time and time again. These 4 Virtues will help you master this skill as partners.

13. Competence: Intelligence + Collaboration ➳

Competence is defined in the dictionary as "the ability to do something successfully or efficiently." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal quickly and with the least waste of resources, which is efficiency. Competence is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

14. Equanimity: Maturity + Collaboration ➳

Equanimity is defined in the dictionary as "mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal smoothly and with the least waste of resources on drama, error, overwhelm and fear, which is obviously a function of having good boundaries with doors rather than boundary holes. Equanimity is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Maturity.

15. Resourcefulness: Beliefs + Collaboration ➳

Resourcefulness sounds like a general term, but it is highly specific in Romantic Dynamics terminology as combining the Skill of Collaboration with the Trait or Commonality of Beliefs, to make for a person who is gifted and practiced at gathering team resources together to ready them for actual execution toward a joint goal. To others, it may seem like they can "do magic" with very little, and so the character virtue falls into the domain of natural funciton of the Magician Personality Style.

16. Resilience: Goals + Collaboration ➳

Resilience sounds like a general term, but it is highly specific in Romantic Dynamics terminology as combining the Skill of Collaboration with the Trait or Commonality of Goals and their execution and achievement, to make for a person who is gifted and practiced at actual execution toward a joint goal as a team. It may seem surprising that this character virtue is not one like "decisiveness" or 'being a winner" (although Resilience is really the ONLY way to actually "win" in the end.) It recognizes the human condition as imperfect and prone to little failures on the way to a goal, but the ability to "pick one up by the bootstraps" and persist, anyway.

The Four Commonalities of Commitment are the most common four things that two people must share, in order for a partnership toward specific life's goals to go well. They are akin to a compatibility in intellectual attraction in a committed relationship. They will also seem common-sense to you as necessary for people to not be working at cross-purposes toward a goal.

However, you will find that each of them has a basis in some major part of our basic psychological workings in the area of character maturity and virtue that are necessary for a committed relationship.

In Romantic Dynamics, we often talk about different kinds of "compatibility," in terms of other areas of courtship, such as the emotional attraction of friendship. (We don't need a "compatibility" for sexual attraction, since the only requirement is that there be a polarity between masculinity and femininity in each partner, with knowledge and encouragement of the features in our partner that we ourselves don't have in gender instincts.) With emotional attraction and friendship, there will be

With emotional attraction and friendship, there will be differing styles of emotion and self-esteem. For example, Warriors and Magicians have ample confidence, while Kings, Queens and Lovers do not. They are dominant in the other type of self-esteem - well-being - that Warriors and Magicians, lack, themselves. These four personalities of the Social Personality System also tend to have opposite complementary intellectual styles in some of them being more analytical and left-brained, while others are more creative, and right-brained.  As a result, there can be emotional and intellectual "compatibility" among friends, which draws from being "different" or "complementary opposites" of each other that lead to a more whole, complete best-friendship, naturally drawing two people together in emotional attraction.

However, in intellectual attraction and partnership, the phase of the day is, "Like attracts like." People with similarities have "compatibility" in the sense of "birds of a feather, flock together." The reason behind this has to do with the notion of pursuing goals together. Where friendship needs diversity and differences to be most powerful, the goals we strive for need a single-minded approach of agreement on the goal. This will be part of what we call, "Character Compatibility" of Step 8 of human courtship - "Who We Are" (as a couple.)

While these four may seem common-sense to anyone as agreed-upon features in partners, they are both universal to people, and specific to the idea of success in getting to goals. They use the needed "working parts" of psychology to get to goals. And among the most powerful combinations of our psychological features is to pair these 4 "commonalities" with the 4 "skills of commitment," to make what we call, "Two-factor Authentication" of your mate - sixteen combinations of skills and similarities.

When people lack one or more of these 4 commonalities, it not only impairs their ability to function as a team toward shared goals, but also can feel to them like they "don't speak the same language" or "don't come from the same culture." Such mismatched traits as intelligence, beliefs, goals and maturity can feel to the two people like they "just don't get each other," and it can serve you well to test these four areas whenever you feel that way about a date, boyfriend or girlfriend, before moving upward into the intellectual attraction phase of courtship, and partnership where the stakes are high for you.

People usually can't "work on" or change their "commonalities," since they usually have to do with an inherent trait of a person - intelligence level, tastes and preferences, beliefs and the like. Why would you want to even try to change such things? They are a part of who you are. And so among the most powerful combinations of relationship ideas for a full, "intellectual compatibility" between couples on a team comes when we combine the 4 Commonalities of Commitment with the 4 Skills of Commitment.  The former we usually can't or don't want to change about ourselves, and the latter, we actually can work on and build, the more mature we are.

So, let's look at the things that generally contribute to "Who We Are" as a couple, (which is step 8 of human courtship - "Compatible Character.")

The Four Commonalities of Commitment

Commonality of Intelligence ➳

Keep in mind that when we refer to intellectual style" in Romantic Dynamics, that has to do with how we process data in the form of analytical, historical, "left-brained" information versus creative, artistic, future-oriented, "right-brained" information. Intelligence is something a bit different. Whether left-brained, or right-brained, or hopefully both as a "style" of the intellect, intelligence in our model refers more to the sheer amount, efficiency, and fire-power" of both of the styles of intellect. Which may depend on a balance of both left- and right-brained processing, and the AMOUNT of power in both.  It's how smart you are, as in IQ. And the highest IQ will have both left- and right-brained processing.

Commonality of Maturity ➳

This social habit is more than just ‘zoning out,” since it involves utterly losing touch with one’s sense of personhood for a time, to separate the experience of trauma, attack or anxiety on that personhood, a bit like getting up and leaving a room in which there is an argument going on, only the room is you.

Commonality of Beliefs and Values ➳

This social habit is more than just ‘zoning out,” since it involves utterly losing touch with one’s sense of personhood for a time, to separate the experience of trauma, attack or anxiety on that personhood, a bit like getting up and leaving a room in which there is an argument going on, only the room is you.

Commonality of Shared Goals ➳

This social habit is more than just ‘zoning out,” since it involves utterly losing touch with one’s sense of personhood for a time, to separate the experience of trauma, attack or anxiety on that personhood, a bit like getting up and leaving a room in which there is an argument going on, only the room is you.

BACK TO INTELLECTUAL ATTRACTION

It may seem like common sense that two people teaming up toward joint goals in partnership need to share some similar beliefs and things they value, or else partnership will not go so well. Even so, we need to think a bit about what a belief is, since it doesn't need to pertain to the fine details of what goals they choose together. It may be as simple a mismatch as one partner being much more the optimist of the relationship and the other being far more a pessimist.

They may then, both enjoy beach vacations as a family goal, but when one of them is far more pessimistic, this may get in the way of actually even enjoying success if they do reach the goal, or if one is far more overly optimistic as to be foolish about the goal, or "pie in the sky" in thinking, it may sabotage actually reaching the goal by way of first having a realistic strategy together.

There are many unforeseen incompatibilities of one's beliefs and things of value that need to be explored by a couple, before they ever get together in the first place, and among those are the beliefs held dearest in life, including those pertaining to your personal "life's mission" or "life's purpose." Depending which phrase you like best, there will be "dearest beliefs" that also feed your sense of gender instincts as a man or woman, and these cannot be violated, even for the sake of very admirable "joint goals." Both your personal goals as individuals, and joint goals as a couple must be met in the partnership, for it to last.

For example, he may despise living in the suburbs because they directly interfere with the convenience of excelling at his personal career mission, and neglect of this sabotages his very sense of masculinity. Sexual attraction, and attractiveness, dies as a result and so does the relationship.

She may despise living in the noisy city center, which is unfit for raising children - a major goal of hers - and for the calm needed in her career purpose as a writer and artist.  Neglect of this set of beliefs, "cities are noisy," is the death-knell of the relationship, due to a subduing of her femininity and instinctual expression that carries certain "dearly held" beliefs within it.

You have likely encountered many times when there has been a great mismatch between the quality of a partner's beliefs - such as political, religious, or parental style beliefs that are very different from your own. This tends to cause one of the partners to have to work extra hard for them to reach the personal success at their personal, "life's purpose" or "life's mission" on account of sacrifice of it for the "joint goals" of the couple - even when they fully agree with the latter.  Which can lead to the resentment of the one doing far more work, energy expenditure, time expenditure, when their personal goals do not simultaneously also carry weight in the "joint goals." And where the partner's personal goals are very similar to the stated "joint goals" of the couple. This often happens when there is codependence in the relationship, and one partner is more of a "bully" about what constitutes "joint goals" than those of the other.

He's a Republican and she's a Democrat. He's Jewish and she's Catholic. He's from the Eastern Seaboard, and she is from the West Coast - all of which carry certain cultural beliefs. It's where you often hear, "you're not with the program," or "get with the program" in a fight, or when at breakup, one of the partners says, "we grew apart" (meaning that the life's goals personally put on hold to sacrifice for the "relationship," were neglected all along by the more narcissistic partner, who bullied the partnership into their personal goals being the same as the supposed, "joint goals.)

Stop this at the beginning, by comparing beliefs in a prospective mate, that are attuned to personal goals, "life's mission" or "life's purpose" in the first place.

BACK TO COMMONALITIES OF COMMITMENT

Keep in mind that when we refer to intellectual style" in Romantic Dynamics, that has to do with how we process data in the form of analytical, historical, "left-brained" information versus creative, artistic, future-oriented, "right-brained" information. Intelligence is something a bit different. Whether left-brained, or right-brained, or hopefully both as a "style" of the intellect, intelligence in our model refers more to the sheer amount, efficiency, and fire-power" of both of the styles of intellect. Which may depend on a balance of both left- and right-brained processing, and the AMOUNT of power in both.  It's how smart you are, as in IQ. And the highest IQ will have both left- and right-brained processing.

It is a good thing when two personality styles get together and give even more intellectual "fire-power" to get to goals. Like a "left-brained" pilot and a "right-brained" pilot, the partners may work together to get to a goal by taking up the slack in the intellectual skill the other lacks. When the left-brained person gets too "tunnel visioned" the right-brained person loosens them up to see more adaptive possibilities. When the right-brained person gets too lost in their big vision at the cost of the fine details, the left-brain person focuses them down to what we need to do in today's bullet-point list.

However, you have likely encountered many times when there has been a great mismatch between the sheer "size" of a partner's left-brain or right-brain - much larger or smaller than your own. This tends to cause one of the partners to have to rely too heavily on the other to have them both reach success, to the resentment of the one doing more intellectual work. It also can feel to them to be a kind of "cultural difference" that carries beliefs and goals not at all matching each other, and in an almost "language I can't comprehend," when one partner is far smarter than the other.

It is then good to assure you have picked a partner of opposite style of intellect - a King or Queen with a Magician or a Lover with a Warrior - but you also need to make sure that you have picked a mate of similar sheer intelligence on the whole.

BACK TO COMMONALITIES OF COMMITMENT

Similar to a match of intelligence, two people as a couple need to be on similar levels in terms of their maturity level, or "character maturity," with regard to how much pathological narcissism and vice they have as individuals, versus how many character virtues they have.  If there is a vast difference in maturity level, this leads to more of a relationship between "mother and son" or "father and daughter," which have taboos of their own in terms of sexual attraction (dying off), and even of friendship working. Such a mismatch then causes the other two kinds of attraction - sexual and emotional - from phase one and two of courtship, to fail before we even get started.

You have likely encountered many times when there has been a great mismatch between the sheer "size" or quality of a partner's character maturity - much more advanced, spiritually, or on the other hand, lesser than your own. This tends to cause one of the partners to have to rely too heavily on the other to have them both reach success, through the wisdom, honesty, generosity, and other virtues of one partner that are far greater than those of the other. Which can lead to the resentment of the one doing more "adult," responsible, disciplined work and sacrifice than the other. To the more spiritually advanced, mature partner, it can feel like the burden of "parenting" the other, which is not what we sign up for in a mature romantic relationship. To the less advanced, more immature partner, this realization either is not comprehensible, or feels hurtful, because to them, at their maturity level, they may be "doing their best."

The situation can lead to fighting of course, for which there is no solution, and also can feel to them to be a kind of "cultural difference" that carries beliefs and goals not at all matching each other due to the mismatched maturity, and in an almost "language I can't comprehend," when one partner is far more mature than the other.

BACK TO COMMONALITIES OF COMMITMENT

Shared goals are tricky, because we need to understand the differences between codependence (and intimacy), independence, and interdependence in order to wrap our minds around a major task of intellectual attraction - to both meet our personal life's goals (called a "mission" or "purpose"), while at the same time, agreeing upon major, shared, "joint goals" as a partnered couple.

If you could imagine two circles that intersect and join at each other's center, then the oval, "mandorla" shape of their overlap is what we call, "the relationship." It will have shared resources, shared beliefs and values, shared responsibility (it is a shared personal boundary.) However, all that constitutes a person is not just within that overlap. There is personal privacy, thoughts, emotions, and personal goals that remain personal, even within a mature partnership.  When this overlap is really large, then the relationship is "codependent."  When the overlap is so small that you have to wonder whether there is intimacy ever, or a relationship at all, it is an "overly-independent," cold relationship. But when it's just right, "the Goldilocks Zone" of relationships, it is "interdependent."  Which means that both personal and shared goals are given value and can be met successfully in intellectual attraction.

You have likely encountered many times when there has been a great mismatch between the details of a partner's personal goals - such as financial, career, or parental goals that are very different from your own. Because you are so passionate and enamored at first, you may shrug this off as something that you can compromise on or even sacrifice about yourself, for the sake of getting together or staying together. It is a Faustian Deal that you are making, and it will eventually rear its ugly head.

He is a cowboy from the West, and she is an attorney from the city. They have very different goals. She wants one child and he wants six. This is an obstacle to goals that are dearly held, which carry beliefs that are dearly held, too.  When they get together, will they live in the city or the country? Will they all become Catholic or Jewish? Or only the children? And how many will they have?  When you hear of such personal, dearly-loved goals in frist dating, do pay attention, because it may cause trouble later.

This tends to cause one of the partners to have to work extra hard for them to reach the personal success at their personal, "life's purpose" or "life's mission" on account of sacrifice of it for the "joint goals" of the couple - even when they fully agree with the latter.  Which can lead to the resentment of the one doing far more work, energy expenditure, time expenditure, when their personal goals do not simultaneously also carry weight in the "joint goals." And where the partner's personal goals are very similar to the stated "joint goals" of the couple. This often happens when there is codependence in the relationship, and one partner is more of a "bully" about what constitutes "joint goals" than those of the other.

It's where you often hear, "you're not with the program," or "get with the program" in a fight, or when at breakup, one of the partners says, "we grew apart" (meaning that the life's goals personally put on hold to sacrifice for the "relationship," were neglected all along by the more narcissistic partner, who bullied the partnership into their personal goals being the same as the supposed, "joint goals.)

These dear goals will also tend to be very different from that of the partner because of Gender Instinct differences between men "on a mission" and women "with a purpose." They can't be compromised or sacrificed to the "joint goals" of the couple, or risk obliterating the very sense of self in one of the partners, by way of destruction of their masculinity or femininity (which will then also harm the sexual attraction and happiness of "feeling alive with passion for life.")

Even in the overlap between personal goals of a man or woman with the joint goals of a couple, the WAY in which the person's identity is expressed will be different. For example, a man may feel that "fathering" is a different thing with different goals than the "parenting" envisioned as a set of goals for the woman's point of view as "mothering."

Stop this at the beginning, by comparing dearly held, personal life's goals in a prospective mate, that are attuned to personal beliefs and values, "life's mission" or "life's purpose" in the first place.

BACK TO COMMONALITIES OF COMMITMENT

We can't move on to Compromise or Collaboration as relationship skills before we master the Communication between us, and we can't work on the communication between us if one or the other person doesn't even have interest in us - Curiosity and an openness to new learning.

Without intimacy (two people being present minded at the same time), communication falls flat or is inaccurate, distracted, and includes erroneous or irrelevant information, when Observing Ego is not employed. Bad communication also comes from a lack of Observing Ego to make us not miss details about someone else’s ideas or emotions in sending and receiving communication. It also comes from a lack of personal boundary skill to assure that there is not distortion or a twisting of their words or actions into something that was not intended to be conveyed in the way it did.

Think of these four skills, in order, as going from "interest" in one's partner (and self), to "connection" with them, to "synthesis" of identity and goals, then finally, "unity" with each other in a new, action-oriented form.

Likewise, the four "commonalities" or traits that we may have in common, think of as, "how-to" (for intelligence), which comes before "balance of interests and resources" or "pooling of resources" (which comes with maturity), followed by "why do this thing" (that comes from an examination of one's personal and shared beliefs, otherwise, why do the thing?), and then "execution" (which is the nuts and bolts of going for the specific goal, in how we perform.)

When we think about the communication needs of a committed relationship, we usually think too simplistically, in that any person on the planet can, of course, communicate. What we miss is that the necessary communication skills of true partners who accomplish goals together needs something very specific.

First, it needs to be free of cognitive distortions that are very common in the Primitive Ego Defenses and Immature Ego Defenses, the universal, age-appropriate, unconscious, automatic social skills of small children and early adolescents. One problem that cannot be overcome by general immaturity of character rests in this skill, in that it is nearly impossible for someone operating at that Ego Defense level to even begin to acquire the necessary communication quality free of distortion enough to make the relationship last in the intellectual attraction - where we must successfully reach our goals.

Just think of the stakes for two mountain-climbers, climbing alone on a mountain, and facing bad weather, the altitude, cold, risk of falling, ice, and other deadly conditions. This is the risk of teaming up with an immature partner who twists communication into inaccuracy, or danger to both you, and to themselves. Take that metaphor into the financial, legal, career, and parenting arenas and imagine what errors can be made over time, until there is one stress that comes along and not only does in the relationship, but does in the financial or occupational (or physical) health of one of the partners or their children.

Thus, communication is a major skill of commitment.

BACK TO SKILLS OF COMMITMENT

Character Compatibility is a different harmony between partners than an alignment of personality styles, or of polarity of masculinity and femininity. It goes far beyond shared interests, to be sure.  Since Phase 3 of Courtship - Teamwork, Partnership, and Commitment - are about aligning to be a successful team at getting to joint goals in intellectual attraction. Then the compatibility we are talking about must be about a joint encouragement of the faculties of the intellect, executive function, and maturity of character that makes not only an individual highly efficient and effective at getting to goals, but of the "sum being greater than its parts" in making each other more successful than the individuals could, alone.

As such, there is a mutual amplification of the tendency to grow more mature and successful on account of each other. To expand each partner's personal growth on account of the interventions of the other partner. To the principles of Romantic Dynamics, this means a mutual set of virtues of character that are unique and special to that couple.

Virtues of character make for a good person, a wise person and a successful person, but virtues are not all interchangeable or of equal amplification of each other. Some are more or less, related to each other and others have more diversity when collected together. In the end, there are certain combinations of virtue in two partners that are going to be more in alignment, more balancing and rounding out of each other in composing a couple.

So, Character Compatibility will need to see us coupling with a person whose own character virtues of their maturity having a special "chemistry" with our own, and one that leads to more efficient, effective success at our joint life's goals as a couple.

In Phase 3 of Romantic Dynamics and the courtship process, Step 7, "Who We Are," then we need to look at the 4 Skills of Commitment, in how advanced they are for each partner, as well as the 4 Commonalities of Commitment in how aligned we are, "culturally," which will suggest an automatic harmony of any attempt at joint goals as a couple.

"Two-factor Authentication" is a term we use for combining these two sets of four factors, to make a total of 16 Cardinal Virtues of Romance - the permutation and combination of each of four skills of intellectual attraction with four common beneficial features of intellectual attraction which also make an individual successful in life.

The Four Skills of Commitment that smooth our teamwork are also called the "4 C's" - Curiosity, Communication, Compromise, and Collaboration. One leads to the next, for example, we won't even bother to communicate if one or both of us lack curiosity. We can't begin to compromise and join resources if we can't communicate accurately and with appeal, and we certainly can't collaborate, if we have very different agendas and conflicting life's goals, having not gone through the synthetic process of compromise, to prevent major "sacrifices" in the future.

The Four Traits or Commonalities of Commitment that power individual success (but also influence choice of goals) are Intelligence, Maturity, Similarity of Beliefs (and Preferences), and Similarity of Life's Goals. It is important to remember that the power of the commonalities of Commitment rests in the fact that they are "in common": Two people with similar intelligence, similar maturity, similar beliefs, and similar life's goals. One person, alone, cannot carry all the weight of the team with these, and so they should be used early, in screening a date, boyfriend or girlfriend as a potential partner. In addition, large differences in these four, results in a "difference in cultural background" - the two people are "just too different to be compatible," a problem that just can't be overcome by more intelligence, more maturity, or more of any of the virtues, like heroism, resilience, or others. Many people beat their head against a wall over this, thinking, "If only I could be even more X, better, smarter, etc," then things will work out. They won't, without commonality of a majority of these traits.

Combining the first four with the latter four, give us 16 Cardinal Virtues of all intellectual, goal-oriented romantic connections to a mate, even though one can have hundreds of kinds of virtues to their character. In the example at left, we see the Trait of Life's Goals combine with the Skill of Collaboration to give us the last important Virtue of Commitment, or "Cardinal Virtue" or "character virtue" a partner needs to cultivate in order to be a solid partner in romance, for life: Resilience.

In addition, the uniqueness of our own attachments and identifications with our specific and unique parents, and the random lot we have been given in being born to our particular parents will result in tendencies of being intellectually attracted to particular kinds of people with traits similar to our opposite sex parent, and to having made part of our core character tendencies, similar traits of our same sex parent. This occurs through the imprinting processes of attachment and identification, respectively.

These will lead us to wanting to find all 16 Cardinal Virtues in one person and one romance, if that were possible. But regardless of our imperfections, we can do almost all we seek to accomplish in a romantic life, if we can at least find one, what Romantic Dynamics calls, "Golden Virtue" in the potential partner. This will be the one Cardinal Virtue that the other partner both imprinted and cultivated from their own same-sex parent, and which is similar to that one virtue of our opposite-sex parent, which we found most appealing and compelling to aspire to.

If the core feature of there even being an advantage to being in a long term relationship is that of having success in getting to lifelong goals with a partner, then it might make sense to you that your union should have a combination of the 4 most crucial personal traits of a successful individual - intelligence, maturity, beliefs, and goals - combined with the 4 most crucial skills of any pairing on a team, or partnership - curiosity, communication, compromise (synthesis), and collaboration (execution.)

With this in mind, let us look at the 16 Cardinal Virtues that define Step 8 of courtship.

The 16 Cardinal Virtues of Romance

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF CURIOSITY

The first skill of partnership in a long-term romantic relationship is perhaps the most important: CURIOSITY. It means more than just an interest in current events. It means having an active mind that asks kind questions of ourselves and our partners, and without it, we cannot build the other three Skills of Commitment, or Partnership.

Curiosity means that we don't just believe anything we read, or gossip we hear, but we are willing to investigate the emotional truth of any matter, and by using the psychological core skill of personal growth, Observing Ego, we are awake and aware to what is happening in our relationship and our environment, willing to grow and change with them both. Without Observing Ego, and therefore, without Curiosity as a skill, we end up with major regrets in our relationships. These 4 Virtues, below, can guarantee you a leg up on having more curiosity in your relationship.

Scholarliness: Intelligence + Curiosity ➳

Scholarliness is a combination of the skill of Curiosity with the trait of intelligence. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. The skill of curiosity is universally useful, no matter what one's intelligence level is, but in the absence of the latter, a curious person may have a lot of obstacles and pitfalls to overcome on their life's path - like the medieval fictional character, Parcival, noble, but rife with mistakes and lessons before getting to his goals. As a result, it is very advantageous to pair someone with both ample book-learning education, yet also with a robust set of lessons in life's experience, and an inborn gift of intelligence from the start - the large capacity to efficiently fill up on both forms of learning: education AND experience.

Philosophy: Maturity + Curiosity ➳

Philosophy is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of maturity. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. It has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

Honor: Beliefs + Curiosity ➳

Honor is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of beliefs. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. Beliefs, you may recall, pertain to ideas that we deem to be true and valid, and yet carry such a large degree of emotion in them, that they are valued by us, and become such a part of our decision-making strategies, that they are far more than just ideas. We think of them as "truths" in part, because they also emerge as a function of our very identity. Honor has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

Aspiration: Goals + Curiosity ➳

Aspiration is a combination of the skill of curiosity with the trait of having eyes on goals. Curiosity, you may remember, is largely composed of the core psychological skill of Observing Ego, paired with an educated eye, full of "left brain" ability for detail, history, and organization. Goals, you may recall, pertain to actual accomplishments that we do not yet attain, own or control, which makes the attaining of goals, the only mature, legitimate way of actually gaining more real control over our world. We think of them as "what we want to become,"which is the same as aspiration, only if we really do care about them and have curiosity about their nature and how we might gather our resources to attain them.  They, then, also emerge as a function of our very identity. Aspiration has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COMMUNICATION

The second Skill of Partnership is one that cannot happen without Curiosity, first. Communication is more than just sending text messages and emails. It is the crucial foundation for the other two necessary long term partnership skills of Compromise and Collaboration. It is also, other than the sensations of touch and sight, the major means by which we can even convey love, through emotional expression, the Emotional Attraction, Phase 2 of Courtship.

While Sexual Attraction may be conveyed largely nonverbally, through touch and sight, Intellectual Attraction - the seeking of goals successfully as a couple, and whole purpose of Phase 3 of Courtship - would not be possible without great communication. We need to communicate accurately, dynamically, and remember that communication is both that of ideas and emotions too, simultaneously.  When we are not good at this, we essentially are crippled at loving, and find it impossible to reach success as a team and couple. These 4 Virtues below, can guarantee you success at communication.

5. Influence: Intelligence + Communication ➳

Influence is a major virtue of commitment, which is a combination of the skill of communication with the commonality, or trait of intelligence. Communication can be looked at in various ways. Simply put, it is an expression of ideas that also likely carry emotional energy as well. This makes them similar to beliefs, which have the same structure, but the difference is that beliefs are contained within us, sometimes unconsciously, until expressed to others in communication.

6. Elegance: Maturity + Communication ➳

Elegance is defined as "making the complex, simple to understand," and is composed of the skill of communicationwith the commitment trait of maturity. It is the quality of being graceful and stylish in appearance or manner; style." A slender woman with grace and elegance" is an example.

7. Honesty: Beliefs + Communication ➳

Beliefs are first and foremost, private and personal, and so the communication of beliefs is quite honest. When you convey your ideas honestly, you include the data, but also the heart-felt emotion associated, and are taking a bit of a risk with the audience in so doing. This makes honesty a virtue, because you are being constructive and win/win in offering your ideas to others, some of which may be beneficial to them, and to you. But in choosing the wrong audience or wrong composition of the audience for your message, you may be misunderstood, or worse, unfairly criticized or attacked by them for your ideas.

8. Inspiration: Goals + Communication ➳

Beliefs are first and foremost, private and personal, and so the communication of beliefs is quite honest. When you convey your ideas honestly, you include the data, but also the heart-felt emotion associated, and are taking a bit of a risk with the audience in so doing. This makes honesty a virtue, because you are being constructive and win/win in offering your ideas to others, some of which may be beneficial to them, and to you. But in choosing the wrong audience or wrong composition of the audience for your message, you may be misunderstood, or worse, unfairly criticized or attacked by them for your ideas.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COMPROMISE

The third skill of Commitment and Partnership - Compromise - must be in place before we can actually reach the final step of achieving success in our shared goals in life as a couple, through Collaboration. Otherwise we will be actively investing in goals, but secretly or not so secretly working at cross purposes in the 11th hour before success. We all know what the word means, and usually people assume that it is entirely composed of sacrifices of some sort, when we are discussing relationships.

However, in the Romantic Dynamics definition, we are trying to minimize "sacrifice," to instead focus on SYNTHESIS of two different people's lifelong goals and dreams. It is a discussion, and without communication ability, and curiosity to begin with, we cannot hope to get to compromises on what our shared, joint goals will be.

In a successful, long term relationship, there absolutely has to be an honoring of each individual's PERSONAL life's goals and dreams. Without this, the entire concept of a committed relationship is doomed, by way of being nothing but a giant sacrifice for both parties, or else a many-years-long bullying session, where one codependent partner dominates the other, and only one person lives their dreams while the other person is up for lifelong sacrifice. Compromise as a master Skill of Commitment, guarantees that both people "win," thorugh a constructive synthesis that joins their personal goals at the hip, to make joint, couples' goals. These four Cardinal Virtues can be cultivated to help you master Compromise at this level.

9. Authority: Intelligence + Compromise ➳

Authority is defined in the dictionary as "the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience." The nature of this term is seen as being of appeal as a trait in a partner which one needs if they are more of a thinking and feeling type person, as opposed to a "do-er." It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring a partner with a "take charge attitude." Authority is a combination of the Skill of Compromisewith the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

10. Justice: Maturity + Compromise ➳

Justice is one of the mature, high character virtues which rightfully gives feedback to others in the form of guilt. As opposed to passive-aggressiveness or masochism, which seeks to dump anxiety or guilt on others, justice is meant to encourage a correction of behavior in the areas of the conscience or ethics on the part of the receiving partner, or correction of the naivete or lack of intuition on the part of the overly conscientious partner learning to execute justice.

11. Service: Beliefs + Compromise ➳

Service is defined in the dictionary as "supplying or delivery," or "a system supplying a public need such as transport, communications, or utilities such as electricity and water." The nature of this term is seen as being of appeal as a trait in a partner which one needs if they are more of a thinker and private person, but enjoy access to people and experiences other than their more comfortable, humble world. It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring a partner with both "devotion" (as in, "to a cause") and "access" or "connections." Service is a combination of the Skill of Compromise with the trait (or Commonality) of Beliefs.

12. Heroism: Goals + Compromise ➳

Heroism is defined in the dictionary as "bravery, courage, valor, intrepidity, boldness, daring, audacity, fearlessness." It is a character trait and virtue that you want, when you see yourself desiring to help or even save a partner. Heroism is a combination of the Skill of Compromise with the trait (or Commonality) of success at goals.

THE PARTNERSHIP SKILL OF COLLABORATION

The 4th and final Skill of Commitment or Partnership is the one where we finally take everything we share, and join forces and resources to actually commit to investing them in a direction toward achieving our joint goals. There is no turning back, now.  Which is why, if we didn't have Curiosity, Communication, and Compromise online first, we would be doomed to failure and the waste of our resources of time, energy and money. Without Curiosity, we shouldn't be with such a person. They are wasting our time as a pseudo-teammate in life. Without accurate and heart-felt Communication, we will be prone to error and misunderstandings that cause failure.

Without Compromise, we have not yet "synthesized" our personal goals and dreams together with joined, shared, RELATIONSHIP goals and dreams as a couple, causing such confusion, cross-purposes and sacrifice instead of success, that we would not last as a couple.

With Collaboration, we learn to work as a dynamic team, willing to change direction, fight threats, overcome obstacles, all with the full passion of the reptilian brains - our masculinity and femininity - those instincts which light up when we pursue our dreams. With Collaboration, we also become ever-tighter friends, best-friends, in fact, sharing love and the positive emotions of friendship.

Finally, it is only with Collaboration that the "two may join as one" - seen in the world's marriage rites, where the power of a team of two (at achieving goals and dreams jointly) - that a couple can consistently succeed at their dreams, time and time again. These 4 Virtues will help you master this skill as partners.

13. Competence: Intelligence + Collaboration ➳

Competence is defined in the dictionary as "the ability to do something successfully or efficiently." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal quickly and with the least waste of resources, which is efficiency. Competence is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

14. Equanimity: Maturity + Collaboration ➳

Equanimity is defined in the dictionary as "mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal smoothly and with the least waste of resources on drama, error, overwhelm and fear, which is obviously a function of having good boundaries with doors rather than boundary holes. Equanimity is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Maturity.

15. Resourcefulness: Beliefs + Collaboration ➳

Resourcefulness sounds like a general term, but it is highly specific in Romantic Dynamics terminology as combining the Skill of Collaboration with the Trait or Commonality of Beliefs, to make for a person who is gifted and practiced at gathering team resources together to ready them for actual execution toward a joint goal. To others, it may seem like they can "do magic" with very little, and so the character virtue falls into the domain of natural funciton of the Magician Personality Style.

16. Resilience: Goals + Collaboration ➳

Resilience sounds like a general term, but it is highly specific in Romantic Dynamics terminology as combining the Skill of Collaboration with the Trait or Commonality of Goals and their execution and achievement, to make for a person who is gifted and practiced at actual execution toward a joint goal as a team. It may seem surprising that this character virtue is not one like "decisiveness" or 'being a winner" (although Resilience is really the ONLY way to actually "win" in the end.) It recognizes the human condition as imperfect and prone to little failures on the way to a goal, but the ability to "pick one up by the bootstraps" and persist, anyway.

Competence is defined in the dictionary as "the ability to do something successfully or efficiently." It is a character trait and virtue that you want when you see yourself desiring to get to a goal quickly and with the least waste of resources, which is efficiency. Competence is a combination of the Skill of Collaboration with the trait (or Commonality) of Intelligence.

We finally move from a focus on each other, and the actions of teamwork, to a new alignment with each other that has us turning outward at the world, our contribution to it, and rewards as a couple, from it. We are unified and focused on both our contribution to it, and the rewards of meeting our goals in it, through the Virtues of Collaboration as a skill of commitment.

What makes Competence unique as a character virtue, is that it addresses the focus on getting to a goal efficiently, which also assumes the mature, realistic expectation of some "trial and error," or "a learning curve." One or the other partner may even have to make a major sacrifice to the relationship, itself, just to learn a necessary lesson.

We see this often in such metaphors as a mountain climbing expedition, where a major expenditure of time might be lost, such as trying to summit Mt Everest and finding that we have to turn back and give up until the following year. It just isn't safe.

Or when a partner bites off more than they can chew in a new job opportunity, having to double back to a job they don't like, to save the family finances, or to keep the other partner happy on their particular path. Yet, there is an expectation of a gain in competence for so doing - the price we often pay for new education or experience being, "time." Whether in the form of having to go back to school for four whole years without one of two major incomes, or simply having to save for longer to take the next, educational vacation, we expect as a couple or a family to be even better for the personal sacrifice of new, perpetually useful knowledge and maturity.

From Aristotle's Golden Mean, we learn that every virtue also has two vices. In the case of Competence, the vice of excess is Usurpation, or "self-nomination," like crowning one's self, King or Queen. This also calls to mind that the King or Queen personality style - being one that lends itself so much to all things analytical and intellectual - is a good fit for the character trait of Competence. And so their darker side is one of being "snooty" or "Holier than Thou," assuming leadership as a given rather than being voted into leadership of something by your partner.

The vice of deficit for Competence is called, "Charlatanry," which is an easy opposite to understand: rather than being VERY gifted at something and making an assumption of leadership, one's pathological narcissism is facilitated by the "potential to learn" in a sharp, inborn, left-brained analytical mind, but in absence of actual education or competence sometimes seen in Lover or King/Queen personalities.

When it comes to life's goals and your dreams, it doesn't make for a good teammate to have "self-nomination to leadership" in a partner - bossiness - nor to have Charlatanry in a partner.

Usurpation toward a potential partner is similar to the common phrase that partners say: "She crowned herself, Princess." Or "He acts like he's all that, and assumed I'd just move to the new city and his new job with him," or in the case of Charlatanry, my boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse "Had me being the blind, following the blind."

These features show the vice in some relationships that pertain to the deep nature of how commitment and partnership really are a team approach, and even of the many ways that modern couples tend to ignore or violate their own marriage vows -  "to join the two, as one," rather than go to their goals in separate corners of the house, and "adhere to each other in good times and bad," rather than only when it's convenient.

We might often see a couple have a falling out, because they can see, hear and feel the deep level of disempowerment for either gender in "self-nominated leadership" or Charlatanry as vices, when instead, we needed their Competence (or potential for growing it) as a virtue - something that can only come from a mature, constructive place, characterized by a "win/win" actions toward real intimacy in the partnership. Intimacy that is not just sexual or honest, but actually joins them in action toward goals.

Competence has bearing on our performance in phase three - intellectual attraction - step eight, where we seek to amplify the best virtues toward our goals. It is what causes us to see our mate as "knowledgeable" in our lives, and us to feel that we will have losses, but will have more gains that losses with them.

RETURN TO CHARACTER COMPATIBILITY

To reach Compromise as a Skill of Commitment, we have to have first had mutual Curiosity to even care to learn and integrate goals with another person. And after that, we have to have some reasonable Communication Skills to be able to get across our goals, take in the goals of the partner, and reach some joint goals between us. Then we can move on to Compromise, a kind of synthesis of goals to whatever degree we can do.  After Compromise, only then are we ready to truly Collaborate.

When we look to discover what it is we can live without so that there may be harmony and teamwork in our relationship, we have to pay attention enough to valuate what our proposition is for moving toward the joint goals of true teamwork and partnership of intellectual attraction. Without Observing Ego, we may be giving up some part of ourselves in service of the team, which we really couldn’t afford to give up, causing team failure. We might also be demanding of our partner of what they cannot give, and what we shouldn’t even bother to ask.

Think of these four skills, in order, as going from "interest" in one's partner (and self), to "connection" with them, to "synthesis" of identity and goals, then finally, "unity" with each other in a new, action-oriented form.

Likewise, the four "commonalities" or traits that we may have in common, think of as, "how-to" (for intelligence), which comes before "balance of interests and resources" or "pooling of resources" (which comes with maturity), followed by "why do this thing" (that comes from an examination of one's personal and shared beliefs, otherwise, why do the thing?), and then "execution" (which is the nuts and bolts of going for the specific goal, in how we perform.)

The virtue of x is intelligence + compromise. The virtue of Justice is Maturity + Compromise. The virtue of Heroism is Beliefs + Compromise   And the virtue of Service is shared Life’s Goals + Comprimise.

Because of what we learn about intellectual attraction, in that it demands that we be fit partners to strive for joint goals as a couple, we must also not forget that the two individuals need to achieve their personal goals too, the "life's mission" or "life's purpose" that they individually seek. Because we aren't identical twins in beliefs, values or goals, we probably will have to strike some compromises on our personal goals for the sake of the joint goals of the couple, but this does not mean that we abandon or must sacrifice entirely and in total, ALL OF OUR DREAMS. This is foolish, and contrary to why people might even want to enter a relationship in the first place.

Compromise might be deferring or delaying part, but not all of one's personal ambitions, dreams or goals, or it might be striving for a more moderate level at them, channeling resources more to the joint goals or the children, than to one's personal needs, or working on them slower in tandem, or taking turns at various points of life. This is another one of those, "you're not with the program" conversations, possibly. Or it gives rise to the saying, "I put my dreams on hold for you" statements.

The truth is that nobody's dreams should ever be permanently put on hold, but compromised on and deferred in parts, or ideally, synthesized in a new collaboration and strategy, where everything gets done in concert.

The less developed you are at compromise skills, the harder the relationship will be, and the more you will be sacrificing, or causing sacrifice in the other partner. Meanwhile, if you had a majority of the commonalities of commitment in place - the beliefs and values, goals, maturity and intelligence in similarity between you, the easier it is to compromise instead of sacrifice.

BACK TO SKILLS OF COMMITMENT

This type of self-esteem we call, "Confidence," is an action-taking, protective, defensive positive emotion, and an energy of action, akin to being "paternal" or fatherly toward one's self and others. It is the antidote to the other of the two types of stress, called, "loss." In terms of the laws of thermodynamics, it is a "kinetic energy," an energy of action. Confidence is then the ability to take action to withstand risk, change or loss, and is equal in exact amount to the amount of threat or loss that one can tolerate without falling into the negative emotions of anxiety and fear in response.

One's overall self-esteem in Romantic Dynamics and the second phase of human courtship - friendship, or the emotional attraction of love - depends on equal amounts of these two types of self-esteem: well-being and confidence.

To have a complete and well-rounded self-esteem, one needs both well-being and confidence in order to be fully happy, and capable of lasting friendship and love with others.

Warriors (Choleric personalities), as well as Magicians (Sanguine personalities), are dominant in this self-esteem type, and they are good at defending, physically protecting and lending works of action to others as an effective emotional resource of friendship and love, solving problems through targetted, specific actions (Warriors), or through large-scale, visionary strategies taken to action (Magicians, whose actions can seem like "magic.") Those who lack this self-esteem type are the King or Queen and Lover personalities, also called the Phlegmatic and Melancholic types in Galen's system of personality. In friendship and love, Kings, Queens and Lovers make good emotional matches for Warriors and Magicians.

The opposite of confidence's positive emotional energy is the negative emotional energy in the type of stress called, "Loss." Loss feels like an outside threat has come in to take resources from you, stealing, cheating or threatening to take your happiness, and can take any form from threatening words, financial dealings of a destructive nature, or even such threats as infidelity taking away the happiness of your former comfort with being a part of a couple or of a family. Since self-esteem and its subtype, confidence, are forms of emotional or chemical energy, the laws of thermodynamics rule over their dynamics, and so the exact amount of loss that stresses or threatens a person, and gets in through one's personal boundary, is the same as the amount of confidence that will be depleted by that threatened loss.

As a result, one may find themselves needing to recover from and rejuvenate from threats and losses, by transforming them into the positive, by a decision to use the courage that is described in the Anxiety Map. Warriors and Magicians may have a natural gift for doing this transformation if they are mature people, but if one feels anxious, fearful, impulsive or even tempted by addictions to hide from their anxiety and stresses of loss, the depletion of the energy of confidence needs to be recovered from. The personal boundary is the first line of defense against this, but even it can weaken.

Mastering these tasks, and of the Anxiety Map (viewed as a rescue map for getting away from threats in life), is one of the major steps of both friendship, love and emotional attraction, as well as forming part of step five of human courtship in general, "Finding Stress in Each Other."

Conscience is something that guides our decisions in terms of what the likely effect will be on others in those decisions. Will it be destructive (win/lose) or constructive (win/win) toward others. After we make a decision, either constructive or destructive, we get to learn whether the result was conscientious, or ethical, by way of feedback from others. And so our "tank" of conscience or ethics fills a bit. In other words, people teach us lessons about whether we are ethical enough toward them, to want to work well together.

Conscience, then tells us whether we are doing right by people, being mature of character, virtuous and constructive, or else being unethical, with vice, and destructive.

Conscience as a virtue, carries two vices in the form of naivete (overabundance of conscience) and criminality (lack of conscience.)

Intuition tells us whether a particular environment or kind of environment is being kind, generous, beneficial, and constructive back at us, or whether it is a destructive environment or one in which normally good decisions still lead to destructive treatment back at ourselves.

That which is destructive also correlates with immaturity, regression, criminality and even evil in our sense of the word, and is part of what is pathological narcissism. Destructiveness is what is within both the upper right branch and the down arrow of both the Anger Map and the Anxiety Map.

That which is constructive correlates with virtue, character maturity, goodness, partnership, success, and is seen in the upper left branches of both the Anger Map and Anxiety Map in the mature emotional decisions called Assertiveness and Courage, respectively.

The conscious mind has been a core interest of philosophers throughout history. It has been referred to in many ways, from Aristotle to Freud. In Romantic Dynamics, we seek to get more precise and circumscribed about what it means exactly and how we can make the definition practical to ourselves.

And so for our purposes, we will view the conscious mind as those mental processes that operate within our conscious awareness, and in our control. One easy way of seeing this is that Observing Ego is the necessary skill to do so - a feature of the Higher Brain which comes with character maturity, and prevents regret by way of seeing "our internal processes" as well as our "social surroundings," to make a match between the two which goes well for our goals and status among others.

The conscious mind would then include such functions as the ability to use language, to strategize, to communicate, to work in partnership and collaboration, to have solid, mature boundaries with others, to be aware of our own emotions and what to do with them (Emotional Intelligence), and to do all the "executive functions" such as calculation, problem solving and decision-making.

Some philosophers see the conscious mind as composing what is called "a person," in which one has cognitive (intellectual, left-brained and right-brained thought, emotional, and volitional (decision-making) capacity), with a sense of rights and privacy (the personal boundary).

Making the unconscious, conscious is one of the goals of psychoanalysis - to become aware of our own instincts and habits, but to put them to good constructive use in mature character. It is also a general personal growth goal for many people to become aware of their hidden, unconscious belief systems and memories.

The functional set of processes that Romantic Dynamics seeks to assign to the general notion of the conscious is what we call, "The Higher Brain."  The inner "software" of the mind which deals with problem solving, partnership, commitment, and all the human virtues of maturity and high character. It is the area of concern for the modern Positive Psychologists and those who like the brand name, Emotional Intelligence.

In Romantic Dynamics, we conceive of two kinds of "boundaries" within the mind, seeing the mind as a "3D" structure which has an exterior, personal boundary, forming an interface with the outside world. And an interior "boundary" that we call the "Ego Boundary," which demarcates what is conscious from what is unconscious to us, on the inside, and isn't necessarily expressed to the outside world or social environment (unless we do what is called "acting out," an ego defense in which a person's unconscious instincts and drives directly expresses into the environment and social scene.)

The prime way to start becoming aware of your own unconscious processes to make them conscious is to employ that most important skill of personal growth, called Observing Ego, which allows you to "see" what's going on inside yourself, what's going on outside yourself, to make a match between the two which is effective at getting to your goals, and general awareness of your own mental processes, both conscious and unconscious. It gives you the ability to say and do the "right thing in the right way at the right time." Observing Ego then has a role in helping you make the unconscious, more conscious.

We view what Freud called the "Unconscious" as the "Reptilian Brain" and the Conscious as the "Higher Brain." The "subconscious" is akin to the emotional knowledge of the "Mammalian Brain," which acts as a set of signals telling us that we need to think deeper and further on an issue, until it becomes fully conscious.