Making Mistakes in a Relationship or While Dating

Most of us were taught through a process of punishment or humiliation or both that mistakes are just a horrid and stupid thing to make. You should never make mistakes. Mistakes lead to bad grades, poor choices in friends, and of course, stupid life changing mistakes that might “affect” where you are headed. Mistakes can make us look as though we don’t have two working brain cells in our heads, to quote my father. But now we are in the land of grown up-ville and mistakes no longer have to mean that same horrible innuendo that they once did.

While we have all carried our share of shame regarding a mistake, we are now in the wonderful position of deciding that those shameful events were nothing more than mere learning experiences. It is interesting, and maybe some of you had parents with a similar take on things. When the mistake reflected poorly on the parent, such bad grades or an inappropriate public comment, there was all kinds of shame and punishment involved in the process. When the mistake was something that only reflected upon us, like a fight with a friend or a really bad catch at the school’s soft ball game, it was simply a learning experience. Interesting that it wasn’t or couldn’t be a learning experience when it meant the parents had to suffer their own embarrassment. When you look at it that way, it can be so much easier to let go of the theory that mistakes and shame go together.

When you make a mistake with a woman, it doesn’t mean that the whole thing is shot. Your response to your own mistake can determine how she is going to react. I once made a totally boneheaded move of accidentally flinging the little stirrer to my drink clear across the restaurant. I had been playing with it and I was not really paying attention to what I was doing and it sprung out from under the ice cube in my drink and flew clear across the bar and hit someone in the back of the head. I had met the woman I was with less than ten minutes earlier. Instead of getting embarrassed and feeling like a stupid schmuck, I laughed it off, told some thirty second childhood mishap story that was similar and moved on. She told me later that it was the way I recovered from that moment that really made her start falling for me.

Unless your mistake is gargantuan on the scale of mistakes, like physical aggression or something else totally inappropriate (which is debatable whether aggression is even a mistake or not), never believe that the mistake is as horrible as you might think it is. Let her fill you in on her impression before drawing any conclusions. Most things are fixable if you approach it with sincere apologies and the ability to move on.

A buddy of mine drove his date home in his car and he ended up having a really bad accident. She was terribly hurt and spent months rehabilitating and never fully regained her original condition. They had been dating for several months at this point and she was really into him. She confessed a few years later that it wasn’t the accident that ended their relationship, but that he refused to move on. He refused to help her grow and learn and become closer to normal and instead insisted on doing everything for her. His guilt drove her away. She just wanted him to treat her as the woman she really was, not what he believed he turned her into. On the scale of mistakes, this is a pretty big one, but it was still a salvageable situation had he ever learned to deal with his guilt and find a way to be helpful and supportive.

Learning to respond to our mistakes as learning experiences and as situations that we are truly fully equipped to deal with is part of turning into a well rounded, full fledged adult. When we can move forward in life and take our lessons with our lumps, we turn into extraordinary people. When we hang onto our every mistake as a badge of our own self induced proof that we are not good enough individuals, then we are self sabotaging our own situation and we end up pretty much alone most of the time. Women especially like a man who can stand up and own his mistake and then move forward in the most dignified manner.

Now, what about when she won’t forgive your mistake. Let me quantify that I don’t believe that certain actions are truly mistakes. Hitting, sleeping around, and lying are not really mistakes, but choices. If you make a self centered choice and end up being caught in the act, then owning up to it is your only choice. Running around whining about how you made a mistake and she won’t forgive you for it isn’t owning up to it. Admitting that you made a bad choice and that you regret the choice you made is a step closer.

Sometimes, though, a woman doesn’t want to forgive a smaller mistake that actually was a true to life mistake. Then the problem is hers and not yours. Open yourself up to asking her what she needs from you, but if you are expected to nail yourself to the cross and hang there until she’s done punishing you, then she isn’t handling something in her very well. Sometimes women use our mistakes as a reason to dump us when they were already thinking about it. They build up whatever we did in their head as some sort of wake up call and they create a scenario that they would be stupid to stay with us. Let her think what she wants. If there isn’t a reasonable solution to solving the mistake and moving forward without continued guilt, then there isn’t much to build more of a relationship on.

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