Why You Shouldn't Date Someone Who Has Completely Different Future Plans Than You

Relationships. Even the ones that look and feel perfect on Instagram, are complicated and full of uncertainty.

Even when two people feel completely at home with each other, there is a very strong possibility that things might not work out. While the most common reasons for relationships not working out range from lack of intimacy, infidelity to wrong timing, there's one major reason that's rarely ever cited.

And that is wanting different things.

Both partners wanting different things could be as insignificant as disagreeing on what to eat for dinner or as significant as deciding whether you two want to get married.

In a long term relationship, when the honeymoon phase has blown over, you can tell if you and your partner have different plans for the future. And if that's the case, then it makes no sense to be dating them right now. Here, we talk about why you shouldn't date someone with different future plans than you.

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Love can't be the only reason why you guys try to make things work.

When the person you're dating wants completely different things than you want, then it makes no sense to stay with them out of love. Love isn't the only thing necessary in order to make a relationship work and last.

If you have your heart set on having children and buying that perfect house before you turn 30 but your partner wants to travel the world and live off the grid, then one of you will have to make a pretty big compromise.

But where will that compromise (or many like it) lead you? You are going to resent your partner for snatching your dream life. Another way of looking at it is that you don't want to be the one making compromises. This could mean you'll end up holding this fact over your partner's head for the rest of your lives.

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So what should you do if you love someone and you both have fundamentally different plans?

It's not necessary for the relationship to fail because you always have the option of talking things through. You can wait to see if some sort of compromise can be achieved. You can see if your futures align in some way, and, so, may be you're with the right person but the timing is wrong.

Coming back, if your future plans are drastically different--where one of you wants to settle down and your partner wants to go do their MBA in some fancy American university--and none of you are willing to compromise or wait for the other, or if your ideas of happiness don't even overlap a little, then it's probably wise to think about moving on.

You might want to think about going out there and finding someone whose future aligns beautifully with yours. Because no one deserves giving their all to a relationship only to end up resenting the person they dearly loved once.