People often focus on the romance of a relationship (or lack thereof) but don’t focus on the relationship itself. This misses the point entirely: With a quality relationship, romance will follow, but not necessarily the other way around!
The cycle often begins for couples when they arrange elaborate dates, elaborate holiday plans, elaborate date anniversaries, and even elaborate wedding plans that focus on one day of idealized romance. This cycle is not healthy in the long run!
Days like: Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Birthdays, etc, are only as ‘special’ as you make them. You can use them as a way to gauge how much your partner cares about you, but remember they are only a very *small* sample of all of the other days in the year! It’s really most important that you happily live your life with each other everyday –that is the important thing – not just one or two days out of the year.
If you’re serious, focus instead on what the next 50 years will be like with this same person. Show that you care for your partner by doing nice things for them throughout the year. Don’t become obsessed with what society says you must go buy: the latest and greatest gadget or bouquet of flowers is not necessary to show your loved one that you care. Something as simple as doing something unexpected for your partner that frees up their time will be much more appreciated than a box of chocolates. Focusing on how to improve your relationship on a daily basis is the best gift you can give yourselves throughout the year.
Always treat partner with respect and kindness. Find out what your partner’s expectations are and what they consider to be respectful and kind. This is paramount! Remember, *they* not *you* are the judge of this!
Be open and honest in communication. Have realistic expectations of yourself, your partner, and your relationship. Life is not a romance novel and it should not be treated as such. Why would you want your life to have such sappy plot-lines anyway???
Be vocal about your needs. Remember, your partner cannot read your mind. Reduce any passive aggressive behavior and become an effective communicator. This can help avoid a lot of misunderstanding down the road.
Do not be threatened by partner setting some goals that don’t involve you. Remember, not every member of a team will have the same talents and responsibiliites.
Set relationship goals, consciously, in both the short term and long term. Think about how they can be met, and discuss progress on them from time to time.
Always remember that your life partner deserves the best you have to give. This is the person you have *chosen* to spend the largest portion of your life with – no other person in your life has been given that much thought or consideration. Make sure your partner knows just how important they are to you!
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Some people believe they attract partners to learn from them about themselves. Every human being learns from every other. To evolve to grasp unconditional love means learning to love the self and others equally. It implies learning to move understand and dissolve other emotions. Sense love. All else is meant for learning.
Hi Liara,
I agree that we all do learn from each other… Being in close contact with another only makes the mirror clearer; sometimes we don’t like what we see, but it is a good way of discovering more of ourselves through our own desires.
Unconditional love is rare, and I think the ability to love *anyone* as equal to the self is an important step, or even evaluate love as a quantifiable property. You mentioned that other emotions should ‘dissolve’, and I think this is an interesting choice of words. Perhaps love is the basis of all emotions, and these other emotions manifest when seen through the filter of Ego….
What is unconditional love and how do we know that it exists? Why is it considered a postive thing to love unconditionally? Is love not conditional by its very nature? Isn’t unconditional love conditional? Unconditional love would seem to require a certain individual that meets X requirements for you to love them and they would have to continue to meet those conditions in order for the love to continue which means that unconditional love IS conditional. Thoughts?
Unconditional love is the ability to view every being as equal and worthy of compassion and affection. To evolve to where you sense the truth is felt means you have moved beyond words and lables. Every experience a human registers in mind that evokes negative energy enables him to gauge where his soul still has learning to do in this regard.
Human beings create ego-based ideas of love. Humans assign a ‘human’ understanding of the notion of “condition.” Any perception of love that is narcissistic (vain) or self-serving is not unconditional. To evolve to realize positive and negative views are judgments humans invent is a step to moving beyond them.
To consult a dictionary for explanations of “conditional”, you find human interpretations of this term grounded in doubt and fear.
To move beyond human (ego-based) views, you peel away layers of conditioned beliefs, emotional values and judgments to arrive at a baseline state. This absolute is unconditional love. It is the state of a soul at birth before external influences obscure the truth and shape perception. It is the state of energy vibration before people tell you what is right and wrong and you adopt what you are told because you believe this is required for survival. You sense unconditional love when you feel it again. The experience defies words and human explanation. Every soul evolves back in this direction. You do so in the physical and beyond.
Hi Liara,
Thanks for replying! …and you made some really interesting points here… Moving beyond words and labels is not such an easy thing! Because language is a natural human ability, relying on other representations of others and the larger world around us could be challenging. Any thoughts on sequential steps or exercises that could enable individuals to move toward a state of unconditional love? Just wondering…
Excellent post, Brian!
Love is all that matters and I have learnt a lot from Marianne Williamson’s book – A Return To Love – where she talks fear simply being a lack of love.
One way of reconnecting to love is to remember and visualise one particularly poignant loving moment from your past. Strongly anchor that in your mind and any time you wish to feel more loving, go back to that special moment of love and you will be feeling stong LOVE once again
Thank you, Arvind, much appreciated…
I don’t believe I’ve read the book you mentioned, but will have to take a look at it at some point…That fear can be a lack of love is an interesting point of view. The strategy your mentioned also reminds me of emotional priming–a concept that research psychologists use, but I don’t think I’ve considered it in this way before. Thank you again for sharing it!
Cheers,
Brian