I Think We Need To Talk

By Thomas Nagle

This book was written to get you to start thinking. We have written this book it in a way that encourages you to critically think your own assumptions about love, life and relationships. You will gain new insights and acquire new tools to help you make better decisions in many aspects of your life. We will attempt to answer many of the "why" questions that you may have. In the end you should draw your own conclusions. This book will hopefully spare you from making some mistakes that we have already made and save you from wasting valuable time. It may also help clarify what it is exactly that you are really looking for in a relationship. In a nutshell, you will be better equipped to make wiser decisions when it comes to “matters of the heart.”We will take you full circle from wanting to find a relationship, how to find the right kind of partner and how to avoid hooking up with toxic people. You will learn to see the red flags and warnings that you will want to stay clear of when searching for a new mate. You need to be open minded and willing to change your own bad habits, thought process and behavior patterns if you wish to change the outcome of past bad relationships.
We will then enter the phase of a new relationship with a new partner and provide you with tips to help you keep your new relationship healthy. This will give you the tools that you need to make a healthy long-term relationship. You will learn how to leave your old baggage behind you for good.The middle of the relationship section of the book examines and provides more tips and ideas to keep your life and your love healthy and sustainable. We will tackle the relationship and family issues that come up while on this journey of raising children. We will arm you with the power of making decisions based on a good thought process. We give you new insights to learn how to avoid falling into the negative traps and bad behaviors that you may have fallen into before. You can then resolve these negative issues in a more mature way. We will show you how to put your partner first and how to work as a team along with your partner for the greater good. You will learn how to keep the relationship fresh and healthy, instead of stale and “old hat” boring. The next chapter explores issues that put relationships in the conflicted zone. You may not be very happy in your relationship if you are conflicted. Do you stay or do you bail? We will go over the pros and the cons of saving it or leaving it. You will gain some insight as to why you may need to vacate a toxic situation. It is up to you to decide your own future. Nobody can make this kind of decision for you because you are the only one that knows what you are experiencing. The next chapter tackles the break up, divorce or the ending of a relationship. This is a time when you will experience many emotions at the same time. You could feel hurt, angry, mad, sad, confused, relieved, free, happy, lost or in denial of the break up. We will help you to see that you are not alone. We will give you the tools to help you deal with many of the issues involved with breaking up and moving forward. We will help you deal with this trauma and how to dump your emotional baggage for good. You will learn that you must find closure and that you need to heal your wounds before you can move forward. You will then be able to move forward again and be able to find a healthy, happy and sustainable relationship. You can then use all the tools you have learned in this book to do it right the next time. This has now taken you step by step right back to the beginning of being “Back on the market” again. The insights that you have gained here will stay with you long after you have finished reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nagle
• Release date: Aug 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452469676

Thomas Nagle

Professor Thomas W Nagle & Tamra Lynn smith have joined together to give you a fresh look at Life, Love & relationships today. This is a non gender biased book with the right mix of academia & real life experience that you can relate to. Professor Thomas W Nagle is serving as an educator at Northland Pioneer College & Tamra Lynn Smith is a published songwriter & article writer. Both writers have grown children and Tamra has 11 grandchildren.

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For bulk sales orders, information, interview and appearance bookings including charity organization fundraisers to help raise money for your group, please contact the authors

[e-mail]

http://ithinkweneedtotalk.com

Other websites by the Authors are:

http://projecttroops.org or http://tipsforlove.net

http://theconsultantguy.com

FORWARD

This book is hard hitting comprehensive, down in the trenches look at relationships in today’s world. It is the brainstorm of Professor Thomas W. Nagle. He started doing research for this book 10 years ago and became serious about writing it about 5 years ago. Hundreds of men and women were interviewed during this time to gather the important information regarding what makes a good relationship and what doesn’t work.

This is your user and repair guide for present day relationships.

Some of the concepts in this book are embedded in multiple articles. This is by design. We want you to get the essence of all the important concepts within multiple contexts. Many of these concepts will apply to various cycles of a relationship and the overlaps will help you remember them. For example, stress management applies to the looking for a new relationship, sustaining an existing relationship and exiting a bad relationship.

Tamra Lynn Smith came into the picture when Thomas and she met up in 2010. They met each other on an Internet dating site that he was using for research at the time. She loved the idea of the book so she created the http://tipsforlove.net web site to show her support for Thomas. She wanted to help him achieve his lifelong goal of getting this book finished so she encouraged him to keep working and helped him to showcase his writing on the site. This was the first web site that they started together. They realized that by working on the articles together that it made them better and more interesting. It also kept it a non-gender biased book. It brought a witty sense of humor where needed and a deeper feeling on the hard hitting subject matter. They have spent many hours talking about relationships and discussing their own triumphs and failures. The writers have actually experienced these topics themselves or watched them play out with their own adult children. They only covered subject matter that they had lived through and had experienced. The book is real and true to life and the writer’s tell it like it is. There is no sugar coating on the issues that couples face today.

The website was an instant hit and the feedback was very positive. They were able to see that there was a big need for the information that they were giving out and this gave them the inspiration that they needed to push ahead and finish the book. They decided to share the same articles on another web site that Tamra was already involved with, http://projecttroops.org (See about the authors and chapter 6 for more information on Project Troops.) The articles brought a new life into the Project Troops website when their military friends started reading them. Since they added the articles to the site, there have been visitors from 125 countries worldwide and about 400,000 hits that came through the sites from 01/2012 and 05/2012. The web sites have become very popular and everyone has loved the relationship and life articles along with the original music.

Some of the articles that they wrote for the websites are covered in the book but they added to them and finished the story. There are also many new articles that were written just for the book and have never been seen or read before now. They added Chapter 6 for their military readers and friends. It is a chapter that deals with relationships and life issues for military families. They have hardships and issues that are unique to the military way of life. This was a way to thank their military friends.

A breath of fresh air has just blown into the world of old school relationship books.

Most everyone will be able to relate to the articles regardless of gender, income class or relationship status. They have mixed the academia theory along with the school of hard knocks to bring you the perfect blend of both. You will be armed with new tools and ideas to handle most of the relationship issues that may come your way. This information can change your way of thinking and help you to see things about yourself and others that you may have never thought about before. Happily married, on the market, not happy, conflicted or just breaking up, this book has you covered on what you need to know. This is a definite value added book and everyone can learn something new about Life and Love.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A special acknowledgment goes out to our children, Tom, Cory, Shauna, James, Brian, Tony and Brittany. They have watched us experience many ups and downs in life and more than a few break ups on our quest for happiness. We love you and are proud of all of you. Thank you to our mothers Ruth & Dee, who have tried their best to guide us along our path. We have to thank all our ex’s that are out there somewhere in the world that have given us the life experience that we needed to write about these relationship issues. Good or bad, it would be very difficult to write about these subjects without actually living through them yourself. Thank you to all our friends who have supported us on this book and to all our active military, veterans and military families that have embraced our music and articles that we have put up on our site http://projecttroops.org/. (See Chapter 6 military families, for more information on http://projecttroops.org) To our readers http://tipsforlove.net/ we thank you for following us and sending so many of your friends back to us as we have continued to move ahead. We could not have made the site a success without your help.

Special thanks go out to all our Facebook, Reverbnation and Twitter friends. To all our contributing musicians, artists, vocalists, writers and music producers involved with Project Troops. Many Thanks to Lantern Lane for her help in co-founding Project Troops with Tamra Lynn Smith and all the work that she does out there in the world for our military and veteran friends. Iona Ellsworth Jensen, Becky Davis, Nelson Blanchard, Carmella Inchierchiera, Rich Owen, Randall Johns, Nadia MCcaffrey (Gold Star Mother who lost her son Patrick in Iraq), Greg Austin, Tom Lang, Kenny Lee, David C. Sanford, Bill Modad Vann, Jamie Willis, Kelcy Lee, Alan Winn (For his big heart and help that he has given to Project Troops,) Luanna Hayes, Armas Alto Ristamaki, Randy Hadley, Jim Farrar, William Bill Chrissy, Chuck Luther and Disposable Warriors, Henry Lee, Dr. Kirk Putlitz and Terrie Pasch, Jennifer and his office staff and ANI for their excellent help and care. The Veteran Memorial Foundation, the American Legions, VFW’s, The White Tank VFW Riders, George Crom, John Keith and all the other groups that have kept their faith in us. To all our fans and followers, we owe a huge thank you for your loyal support. Thomas would like to thank his colleagues, coworkers and students from Northland Pioneer College.

JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER

Once you finish reading this book, you will want to make sure that you keep up to date with all of our new material that will be available monthly. Information about our newsletter service is available on our web http://tipsforlove.net/ for more information on our sites and services please go to our websites. You can also join http://projecttroops.org/

Thomas and Tamra will be donating a portion of the net sales of this book to charities that help our veterans, active military and families.

LEGAL DISCLAIMOR

From the authors of the book I Think We Need To Talk Professor Thomas W. Nagle holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology but we are not specialists in relationships nor are we licensed therapists. This book is written from our own life experience and is the opinion of the authors. It is meant to give you some insight into a new way of thinking and viewing relationships. It is not meant as a total guide to give you directions on how to live your life and it doesn't replace a licensed therapist. What may work for us may not work for you and you should never use any book, advice from friends or relatives to make any life-altering decisions. You should make your decisions based on what you feel is right for your own life because you are the one that has to live with your final decisions. If you read this book then you are agreeing that you have read this disclaimer and understand that the authors are not liable for any decisions you make or the outcome of your decisions and how they may affect you or anyone else that you associate with. If you need more help than what is given here then please contact a licensed specialist to help you. Written on 07/01/2012

HOW TO GET THE MOST FROM THIS BOOK

This book was written to get you to start thinking. We have written this book it in a way that encourages you to critically think your own assumptions about love, life and relationships. You will gain new insights and acquire new tools to help you make better decisions in many aspects of your life. We will attempt to answer many of the why questions that you may have. In the end you should draw your own conclusions. This book will hopefully spare you from making some of the mistakes that we have already made and save you from wasting valuable time. It may also help clarify what it is exactly that you are really looking for in a relationship. In a nutshell, you will be better equipped to make wiser decisions when it comes to matters of the heart.

We will take you full circle from wanting to find a relationship, how to find the right kind of partner and how to avoid hooking up with toxic people. You will learn to see the red flags and warnings that you will want to stay clear of when searching for a new mate. You need to be open minded and willing to change your own bad habits, thought process and behavior patterns if you wish to change the outcome of past bad relationships.

We will then enter the phase of a new relationship with a new partner and provide you with tips to help you keep your new relationship healthy. This will give you the tools that you need to make a healthy long-term relationship. You will learn how to leave your old baggage behind you for good.

The middle of the relationship section of the book examines and provides more tips and ideas to keep your life and your love healthy and sustainable. We will tackle the relationship and family issues that come up while on this journey of raising children. We will arm you with the power of making decisions based on a good thought process. We give you new insights to learn how to avoid falling into the negative traps and bad behaviors that you may have fallen into before. You can then resolve these negative issues in a more mature way. We will show you how to put your partner first and how to work as a team along with your partner for the greater good. You will learn how to keep the relationship fresh and healthy, instead of stale and old hat boring.

The next chapter explores issues that put relationships in the conflicted zone. You may not be very happy in your relationship if you are conflicted. Do you stay or do you bail? We will go over the pros and the cons of saving it or leaving it. You will gain some insight as to why you may need to vacate a toxic situation. It is up to you to decide your own future. Nobody can make this kind of decision for you because you are the only one that knows what you are experiencing.

The next chapter tackles the break up, divorce or the ending of a relationship. This is a time when you will experience many emotions at the same time. You could feel hurt, angry, mad, sad, confused, relieved, free, happy, lost or in denial of the break up. We will help you to see that you are not alone. We will give you the tools to help you deal with many of the issues involved with breaking up and moving forward. We will help you deal with this trauma and how to dump your emotional baggage for good. You will learn that you must find closure and that you need to heal your wounds before you can move forward. You will then be able to move forward again and be able to find a healthy, happy and sustainable relationship. You can then use all the tools you have learned in this book to do it right the next time. This has now taken you step by step right back to the beginning of being Back on the market again. The insights that you have gained here will stay with you long after you have finished reading. If you are in a relationship already, we will give you the tools to keep it healthy and help you to understand the different phases that we go through in life.

This could actually help you save your relationship and make it healthy again.

We have added an extra chapter for our military friends, veterans and family members. We will bring insight on issues and problems that are unique to military, veterans and families way of life. We will give you tools and tips to keep a relationship strong and healthy even in the extreme long distance relationship.

CHAPTER ONE: ON THE MARKET

It can be frightening, exciting, frustrating and even fun to reenter the world of dating. You are headed into uncharted waters but you first need to learn how to float before you try to swim.

So you are back on the dating market and not sure how to deal with it? Join the crowd. Whether you are recently divorced, widowed, separated or just done, the dating scene has changed. Should you choose to reenter the market, you'll be getting out there in some choppy waters full of undertows and tidal waves. Yes, getting right back out there in the deep waters that are not always still. It can be a dangerous endeavor with sharks lurking right under the surface. This will be an awakening for you so put on your life jacket and hop into the shallow waters first. You need to learn how to float before you try to swim. Like many things in life, it can be a heaven or a hell and it is not particularly under our own control

If you are planning on using an Internet dating site, you will experience some frustration along your journey. There are all kinds of people in the world and some are not always honest. They can be flaky and negative or worse. They will waste your time and can seriously hurt you if you are not aware of them. You will find many good and honest people out there too. They are looking for the same things that you are and one of them out there just may end up being the love of your life. Much like investing, you will need some patience, humor and understanding to make it all viable. These are the tools that we are going to provide to you and show you how to use them to gain a positive outcome.

Internet dating sites can be ego degrading, disconnecting and downright depressing if you take them too seriously. Perhaps the better way to approach them would to keep it light, fun and avoid getting too caught up in the drama of it all. Keep one foot out until you find that special someone who resonates with you. I’ve spoken with a number of Internet daters who have made a lot of contacts but received very few responses. This is typical so keep your expectations realistic.

If you are bringing negative emotional baggage into a new relationship, it will work against you. If you are not ready to get out there i.e., you are still fragile then don’t go out there right away and take some more healing time. You want to be fully emotionally equipped, before you step back into this dangerous ocean. We will attempt to get you to look inward and to critically think your own assumptions or behavioral patterns. You can then proceed forward, in a healthy and prepared way. This applies to whether you are seeking a new relationship, in a current relationship, or exiting a bad relationship.

You will be able to spare yourself some mistakes that others have already made and be able to focus on a happy and healthy future. As you read through this book, you'll be able to clarify your own thoughts, realize why you are thinking that way and gain some new tools, for viewing the past, present and your future. Think of this book as your reference manual.

In short, this book will get you to think and ponder the questions that you have never thought about before. The ultimate answers are already in your head. This book will help you find them and how to use them to your advantage. In the end, you will arrive at your own conclusions and be able to move forward with clear thinking patterns. This forward-looking mentality will help you hopefully increase the probability of success in your future endeavors.

ARE YOU STILL MARKETABLE?

The answer to this question depends on a number of variables. How well you have held your looks, how much weight you may have gained and your age will all play a role in your so-called marketability. Even your place of residence can vastly affect your chances of finding that special someone. In this article, we’ll explore some of the pitfalls as well as the opportunities that face anyone who is back on the market."

The looks factor has always played a role in attraction and opportunity. This is particularly true the younger you are. Given the fact that most men will date down in terms of age, younger women will probably have more choices. They can choose amongst men their own age or amongst older men. It may be a question of looks versus resources. As a general rule, younger men may not have a lot to offer women in terms of wealth but if they earn a living and have potential, it can compensate. On the other hand, if a women is dating a guy 5, 10 or 15 years older than she is, there are pretty good odds that the wealth effect will be greater.

To put this in perspective, the younger women have more choices, which may diminish as they age. The same probably holds true for guys. As women get older, the pool of men begins to diminish. Men just die earlier than women. Eventually it gets to a point where there just aren’t enough men to go around, for all the women. This crunch down eventually forces women into doing the cougar pressure thing, where they have to date age equivalent or date younger men. In essence, for women it changes from lots of choices in the younger years, to fewer choices in your older years. Here again, the same may hold true for men.

We have the 20 something women competing with the 30 something women for the 30 or 40 something men. You also have the 30 or 40 something men who are competing with the 20 something men, for the women. As these dynamic moves on up the road, it can get even more competitive. If most men have the tendency to date 5 to 10 years down in age, the women who are age equivalent are at a distinct disadvantage. This can propel both men and women into the midlife crises mode where they will begin to question their own marketability. At a certain age, probably most people do it i.e., evaluate how competitive they are on the dating market.

I will point out that women will have an open window of opportunity some where between 40 and 49. This is the best time for women besides in the 20 something age group, to start over if they choose to do so. When women have raised their children and they have no tie downs, this will work in their favor. They will not have to compete against the younger women because of the blended family factor. Women between 25 and 40 will usually still have kids at home and the older men usually, will not want to go there.

This may sound like a very shallow and vain way of looking at things and you are right. Unfortunately there are some shallow and vain people out there and this is what you will face while going back into the dating market. We don’t make the rules; we just tell it like it is. There are some people out there that don’t care about the perfect body and the model face. They are the ones who can understand the value of inner beauty and intelligence. If you are looking for a long-term relationship, this type is your best bet. Hopefully you will meet more of this type than the vain and shallow ones. My feeling has always been that if I am not valued for who I am as a whole, I don’t want that person in my life anyway.

As time progresses, we begin to take note of every pound we may gain, every hair that we lose or each new line on our face. We can experience the anxiety of getting older on a daily basis, if we let ourselves fall into the habit of doing that. Maybe the growing older gracefully theory is the better mode of operation that we should be choosing. After all, it is inevitable for everyone.If you can make peace with it then you will make peace with yourself.

In the end, perhaps we shouldn’t be quite so hard on our self-esteem and ourselves. Love and companionship while certainly desirable by many people, should not dictate how we feel about ourselves. Maybe we have to learn to love and accept ourselves before we can become capable of loving someone else. After all, isn’t marketability just a game of diminishing returns in the end anyway? We will leave this on a positive note and that is the theory of there is a Romeo out there for every Juliet. You just have to find them and we hope you find yours.

THE LOVE EQUATION

If we were to look at the dynamics of a romantic relationship and plug them into a math equation, we would realize that the equation has to stay in balance like any other equation. The inputs would include things like chemistry between two people, attractiveness, sense of humor, intelligence, communication and all the other things that are important to that relationship at that particular time. These