COMMUNICATE FROM THE HEART
You can foster a loving atmosphere with heartfelt communication. Thank your partner for the little things. Say well done. Commiserate, but don’t try to blame or ‘fix’ if they have a hard day at work. Be respectful, of their time, effort, attention. Sure, it may not be the best breakfast you’ve ever had, but if they tried to be romantic by serving it to you in bed, great.
Don’t take things for granted either. Of course we all love to get presents for birthdays or Christmas, but don’t get so fixated on that new pair or earrings of great pair or sneakers that you totally miss the fact that your partner made breakfast in bed, or detailed your car until it was showroom new.
Remember than any gift you give, is a conscious choice to be loving, to think of you, and to put you first instead of spending the money on themselves. It is not owed to you and is not as important as a loving atmosphere between you and your partner. Christmas or your birthday is only one day. You need to be loving for all 365 in the year. And for all the days of your marriage if you get married, not just your wedding day in front of all your friends and family.
There is a particularly awful cereal commercial on the TV lately, in which a hapless guy who strongly resembles the human equivalent of an Old English Sheepdog, tries to engage his wife in a conversation about the new cereal she is eating.
She looks more like she is drinking vinegar, tunred down mouth, narrowed eyes, because he seems to be implying she needs to lose weight, when all he is doing is reading from the box.
Of course, the more he reasds from the box, the more pissy she gets, until the pooint where communication breaks down totally.
To her demand, “What else does the box say.” The guy sheepishly gives up. “Shut up, Steve.”
To which the guy gets a smug satsfied sarcastic smile and no doubt crawls away to lick his wounds, while she goes back to chewing the cereal with such tight-lipped miserable fury you would think she was eating overcooked liver, not a delightful new health cereal.
This woman is clearly not communicating from the heart. In fact, she is acting like she has no heart, no compassion for her supposed love one at all.
ROMANCE AND SARCASM ARE NOT REALLY COMPATABLE Are you going around in your life treating your partner in that manner? Think of the origin of the word sarcasm. It means to rend or tear flesh. Are you ripping your partner to pieces if he opens his mouth over the least little thing? He’s a guy, for Heaven’s sake. He is never going to be as eloquent as your favorite movie or TV stars on screen. Those guys are scripted. This is real life.
You can all relate to the miserable feeling you had if you ever said something unskillful or embarrassing in public. Why put your partner through that tortuous feeling when you could be fostering romance instead.
Maybe the woman in the ad was a bad morning person, but really, if your spouse or partner is willing to take an interest in anything new that you do, go with it! And vice versa. I know a lot of women who hate golf, but go because they get to spend time with their man, and get to go out into some fairly pretty natural settings. And to the 19th hole afterwards. All of this can be time for communicating and keeping your energy in tune and in synch with one another. To stifle communication like the woman in the ad is to stifle the free interplay and flow of love.
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
All of us would like to be loved unconditionally. But are we willing to offer unconditional love to others? REALLY?
I will love you even if:
You forget my birthday
You don’t take me out to dinner
You forget to take out the trash
You leave the toilet seat up
You squeeze the toothpaste in the middle fo the tube
You run up huge credit card debts
You are unfaithful to our relationship
Until you can say “I will love you no matter what you do or say,” it is not unconditional love.
Think about three situations where you could have expressed your love for your partner better. Then think of three instances where they could have been more loving towards you. Do they have anything in common? If so, what can you do to choose love instead of anger?
LOVE IS AN ACTIVE CHOICE
Staying in a relationship is an active choice we make every day. We may have many different reasons for staying in the relationship, but the primary reason for being a couple is to love and cherish each other.
So, we can choose. Do we act in a positive and loving manner, praising, being warm and affectionate?
Or are we negative, critical, always finding fault, freezing out our partner if they displease us? Do we hold a grudge, or come up with a worse-case scenario?
Are we expecting our partner to be a mind-reader and punishing them when they aren’t? Are we offering them the same unconditional love that we crave, that we wish for ourselves? Or are we always judging them and finding them lacking in some spoken or unspoken way: if only he would… Or yes, he’s good but not good enough…
Again, this is all in the eye of the beholder. But wouldn’t you rather be happy and wrong, than right and alone? If you cling you your wants, needs and beliefs as RIGHT, you’ll most likely be left with them and only them. The love in your relationship will evaporate if you don’t work to keep the romance between you alive.
Read more in: Keeping the Romance in Your Relationship Part 6
