As parents, we all want the best for our children. We want to provide them with access to the best food, education, role models, and opportunities to improve their quality of life. Our guidance in these matters is crucial, especially for young adults who are beginning to understand the world and people around them more deeply.
When it comes to the realm of dating, however, many parents prefer to take a hands-off approach. Explaining to our children how to communicate with others and form meaningful relationships with them is one thing, but the thought of our babies growing into young adults and dating can be uncomfortable to explore and talk about. Regardless, it is our duty as parents to help our kids learn how to treat others, compromise, and navigate challenging situations with a romantic partner to help them best be prepared for the future.
The caveat here is that how we instruct our children to accomplish this varies between each parent. Thankfully, for parents who are either less comfortable with having potentially awkward or embarrassing conversations with their children about dating, there are a number of resources they can lean on to help guide these conversations and teach their children how to date. One such resource is The Couples Contract—an innovative, step-by-step guide that helps instruct us how to best approach intimate communication and build lasting relationships with others.
How to navigate new relationships and romance
Regardless of how much love or intimacy is shared between partners, no relationship is without its share of downturns. Miscommunication can rapidly spark feelings of anger, fear, or sadness, bringing about arguments and disagreements which can foster resentment towards the other person. Children who are just entering the dating world are bound to eventually discover this for themselves, and as their parents, our behavior and guidance create the foundation for how our kids will behave and react when navigating new relationships for the first time.
This intricate navigation of relationships is exactly what The Couples Contract aims to help, according to its creator, Patrick Frank. Although the name can be interpreted as a tool meant primarily for romantic or intimate couples, Frank has designed the contract in such a way that it can be utilized as a non-legally binding agreement between any two parties, be they romantic, platonic, or even familial.
“The Couples Contract was launched as a way to offer alternative ways for people to connect on a more impactful level while also having fun with one another,” Frank says. “It explores and unpacks more serious aspects of relationships, making it an engaging learning method for parents to help guide their children in creating, building, and maintaining relationships with others once they begin dating.”
With different sections covering topics like communication, hygiene, individual responsibilities, and even goals, the contract can offer parents a launching pad to help their kids navigate the tumultuous dating world. In return, this offered guidance can help foster a stronger sense of trust in children towards their parents, leading to a deeper mutual understanding of not only what dating can potentially entail, but also why our kids rarely grant us a window into their dating life.
Why children don’t often give parents insight into their dating life
Dating and everything it entails is naturally unnerving. From the time we enter puberty, the rapid changes to our bodies — both physical and mental — can be as terrifying as the prospect of being manipulated or left heartbroken by a potential partner.
However, the experience of dating in adolescence is different for each kid. Some may be more comfortable or vocal with exploring romantic relationships, whereas others find the idea terrifying or even embarrassing to talk about; especially with a parent. Those feelings of embarrassment can quickly become compounded after we, as parents, sit down with our children for “the talk.”
Talking about our intimate relationships, feelings, wants, needs, and desires inherently make us vulnerable. While we tend to better understand why this might be as adults, for adolescents fresh onto the dating scene, it (much like the notion of dating itself) is entirely new territory. Oftentimes, we tend not to open up to others out of a fear of being judged. Our children are no different. Furthermore, expressing those vulnerabilities to a parent can be uncomfortable for children because, the more intimate details of our own experiences we share with our children, the more they begin to view us less as a parent and more as another person with our own intimate feelings, relationships, and desires.
How to have awkward talks about uncomfortable topics
Another reason why it can be difficult for parents to help guide their children on how to date lies in our innate want to protect them. Oftentimes, our wish to keep our children free from harm can cause us to become overbearing. In turn, this makes having difficult (but necessary) conversations like “the talk” more awkward, further preventing our children from wanting to open up to us about their dating life. Although, the longer our children go with the notion that having awkward conversations about uncomfortable topics should be avoided, the more likely they are to experience harm in their relationships with others.
This is another area in which Frank’s Couples Contract can assist the communication between parents and their children about dating. The more we normalize certain aspects of dating and the communication that it needs to create successful relationships, the more our children will understand that everyone they meet will have their own needs and wants when it comes to dating. By leaning on the contract to help guide our children on the value of communicating openly and productively in order to build healthy relationships with others.
