MARRIAGE ADVICE I WISH I WOULD HAVE HAD:
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
Friday, 4 April 2014
DO YOU HAVE PROBLEM OF CONTROL?
An analyst describe Mesut Özil's style of play as follows "he come in and out of play not CONTROLING the play but influencing and shaping the matter the game is played." In relationship can we get more people taking the style of Mesut's play?
I would have post this a long time but other pressing need made me to shelve it until this morning when an intelligent pretty girl asked me a sincere question: my guy ask me to quit internet and has refuse to pick my calls and respond to my text messages. The question here is that of control. Hey, its not only guys that do this. My younger sister informed me of two people she knew in her school that 'control' their guys.
Hmmm the problem of control emanate from fear: if I am the one that controls it shows I fear something. Fear is the root of usurping the right of another person because we are afraid if they have their right we may loose them. But succeeding in this makes one a tyrant, because to maintain control FORCE must be used
What are you afraid of? A common saying is that love relationship is like a butterfly, if you hold it too tight it will die and if too lightly it will fly away even though hurt. Controlling people is same as dominating them... And domination is equal to witchcraft. Why do people want to dominate?
Actually, people that dominate don't know that what they are doing is domination. But may be protecting their interest or safeguarding the relationship. But anything that force is involve always break or marred. Trust is a big issue here and freedom must not be denied because of trust.
Your partner is your mate not subordinate; he/she is not n meant to be controlled... But respected and love. Controlling is abnormal. If you cant do without dominating people seek help.
Never succumb to any act of domination in any relationship. It wont get better but get worse. When you demanded to prove yourself over and over again you need to reexamine the relationship.
Your views are most welcome...
WE USED TO LOVE EACHOTHER: RECLAIMING THE SPARK IN YOUR MARRIAGE
Here’s my point: Falling in love is automatic. Staying in love isn’t.
Falling in love happens without any deliberate intention or action on your part. It just happens to you! Like being hit over the head while you’re minding your own business. Falling in love is the infancy of relationship. It’s fun and passionate and all-round awesome, but it’s not meant to last forever. That’s not to say you can’t create a relationship that stays fun, passionate and all-round awesome. You absolutely can, but this time, in stark contrast to when you first fell in love, you have to create it to be so. So back to the question of “How do you sustain it?” It’s not that difficult to do; but unfortunately, it’s not self-evident and it’s almost impossible to explain in writing (without writing 500 pages and even then, it’s tricky)
Here’s the basis of it:
1. Know what you truly want (typically not what you think you think you want)
2. Learn how to RESOLVE the small and big conflicts that show up in daily life. If you don’t, they pile up and inevitably kill off your love and sex.
3. Interact with yourself and your partner as your Fullest Potential (our term for the best version of you).
4. Don’t stop having sex if you are Married and physical affection. It’s not like you have to keep up the three-times-a-day schedule of the first two months, but you can’t let it wither away, either. It’s too important for that.
5. Keep up the “Acts of Love” you did automatically in the beginning.
For now, the simplest one to begin with is the last point above— remember what you used to do for each other when you first met. What
“Acts of Love” did you do, perhaps without even thinking? Simple stuff. Go out to dinner. Talk for hours. Listen with keen interest. Leave love notes around the house. Make meals. Light candles. Whatever your favorite Acts of Love from the beginning, if you do them again, they’ll begin to recreate the feelings of love, warmth and attraction that accompanied them in the past.
Written by Christian Pederson
Your views are most welcome...
Thursday, 3 April 2014
HE KNOWS THE RIGHT WORD TO SAY...
I’m rarely (if ever) affected by talk radio, but the other morning I was moved to tears by a piece on my local NPR station (WAMC/Northeast Public Radio). The story, narrated by the author, was about one woman’s experience growing up in the wake of a tragically unstable mother’s ever-shifting mood storms and her father’s ability to communicate — or rather translate — the chaos of the situation to both her and her young, fearful siblings. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of this story was not the subject matter, not the fact that the events took place in the Valium- clouded, gender-role stereotyped 1950s, but the overall message: a father’s role as communicator.
At that very moment, my childhood flashed before my eyes; I was aching. As individuals, my mother and father are amazing, caring humans, and I love them with all my heart. They gave us the love and support that we needed, but working as a team — as parents — they were unsuccessful and they know this. (I hope they can forgive me for these words; I know this might be tough for them to hear.) I grew up in a chaotic, unpredictable environment. My sister and I were often misguided as young children because my parents were perpetually fighting. As a result, I took on the role of chief communicator, often consoling my sister or breaking up an argument between my folks — that’s a big responsibility when you’re only 10.
I often longed to visit friends’ homes so that I could witness what it was like to see a “normal” family interact. One where Dad comes home from work and takes the kids under his arm, rustles their hair and asks how their day was, and then proceeds to talk about his, filled with happy details about his interactions with others, or maybe how he “saved the day” at the office (Because that’s what Dads do, right? They save they day).
These were fantasies I once had, and ones I was able to revisit just the other morning as I listened to the gripping tale on the radio. I kept thinking how lucky this woman was to have had her father’s words to comfort and inform her. My stomach began to twist in knots and I started to sweat; trauma has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it. Just then, I had an awakening: My husband is that father; he saves the day, every day. How remarkable.
Our story: My husband and I are great friends and have respect for each another. Our philosophies are aligned as far as family is concerned. Neither gender is dominant in our household. We split our roles down the middle. With the exception of my responsibility of carrying, giving birth and nursing my daughter, we operate as a team – 150 percent. We’re college-educated parents; both of us have professional careers, yet our backgrounds couldn’t be more different. I come from a “disrupted” home and he from a “functional” one – meaning one where his father and mother are still married and have assumed more “traditional” gender roles. Father is stoic and silent and mother is sweet and compassionate. My husband embodies both his mother’s compassion and father’s strength. His words are always steady, supportive and reassuring, even on the most stressful of days, and for this I am eternally grateful.
Sometimes it seems as if I was destined to meet him so that he could relieve me of my seemingly lifelong duties as chief communicator. It was a long, hard road, and man, did I need that break. Women are so often looked at as the therapists, sounding boards, conflict resolvers of the family. I’m here to say, it doesn’t need to be this way. It’s important for men to acknowledge this side of themselves, get in touch with it, for the sake of your family.
Fathers, sometimes saving the day can be as simple as asking how your child’s day was. Take a minute to engage with your child, your wife, your partner over a simple, meaningful question. In my experience, words will often speak louder than actions. My plea to you is: Use them.
Your views are most welcome...
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
SHOULD I STAY OR GO: HOW YOU CAN KNOW
Should I stay or should I go now?
Should I stay or should I go now?
If I go there will be trouble An’ if I stay it will be double
So come on and let me know —Should I Stay Or Should I Go
- The Clash
New relationships are the best, right? We all know that special thrill. We meet someone fun and attractive, everything is fresh and exciting, and we experience the joy of discovery as we learn intimate details about another person and start to feel safe sharing our own. Companionship sure beats loneliness, and we feel fortunate and blessed to have found someone who finally understands us. And then there’s the magical bliss of infatuation, the sprinkle of sparkly fairy dust that dispels all doubt and makes us feel as if we’re perfect for each other. And then … reality bites. He steals a glance at the blonde one table over. She orders a third drink. He snores. She falls asleep without brushing her teeth. He gargles religiously for five minutes every morning. She leaves a tampon in the toilet. He confesses he didn’t really like Bridget Jones’s Diary. She confesses she doesn’t really like Thai food. He admits he was only pretending to like cats. She starts to “upgrade” his wardrobe. And so on. The progression from la-la land to love it or leave it is normal as a relationship grows and evolves, and with a core foundation of shared values and interests, sexual chemistry, solid communication skills, and dedicated commitment to making it work, many couples survive the drop-off of the booster rocket at the end of the honeymoon period and launch into the difficult but immensely rewarding orbit of building a long- term, loving relationship. Understanding what happens in our subconscious when the dream state wears off is key to making a sound and healthy decision about staying or leaving.
As time goes by—one month, three months, six months—a strange thing happens. We begin to feel, on the one hand, more confident and comfortable and less afraid of being ourselves around our partners. Yet at the same time, having invested a quarter or half a year of our lives in being with another person, we begin to worry about the what ifs, especially the big one: What if we’re wasting our time on someone who isn’t “the one”? And how do we know if this one is the one? This confusing dichotomy of increased confidence in and comfort with our partnership bond accompanied by decreased certainty of our partner’s rightness occurs naturally as we move closer to shifting from a short- term, easily escapable relationship, to a long-term, committed, often legally-sanctioned and possibly life- long partnership with another person. Just as we start to let our guard down, our protective instinct kicks in to ensure we’re getting in bed—literally and figuratively—with a partner who is safe and will treat us well over the long term.
The confounding push-pull of these conflicting feelings leads to those seemingly random outbursts of emotion, crying jags, scary statements such as “I don’t know if I love you,” and the need for a “break” or “time off to sort things out” before moving forward. At the same time, partners experience an unsettling set of fears that spur irrational behavior. There is the fear of fucking up, of ruining the relationship and losing a loving companion. There is the fear that we don’t deserve to be loved, that we will be dumped as soon as this is discovered, so we might as well end it ourselves to avoid being dumped. Finally, there is the fear of losing “the one,” the person who is meant for us, and living an unfulfilled life with substitutes because we stupidly lost “the real thing.”
These fears result in the following unhealthy behaviors:
self-imposed pressure to agree with our partner and conform to his or her ways of doing things;
a tendency to accommodate and compromise;
avoidance of confrontation even when our principles are at stake;
and reluctance to draw boundaries for fear of upsetting, alienating, or driving our partner away.
While these behaviors seem rational in the short term, as they smooth out early rough spots in the relationship, they are unwise for the long term, as they gouge deep potholes that partners will need to navigate around down the road to avoid damaging the relationship. In this confusing mess, the questions arise: Is he or she the one for me? Is it meant to be? Can we make it work? How do I know?
Fear of making a mistake also results in testing, which can take the form of obnoxious or disrespectful behavior to see how a partner reacts or manifest as requests for proofs of love and commitment. Isn’t love grand? Perhaps the most memorable marriage test appears in the movie Diner, when Baltimore Colts fan Eddie, played by Steve Guttenberg, administers a 140-question football test to his fiancée Elyse to determine if she is marriage material. Even though she fails by two points, he still walks down the aisle with her. In retrospect, couples who have been together for a long time often say, “We just knew,” but hindsight has a way of shrouding what really happened in a haze of false memory, revisionist history, and wishful thinking. Few people remember exactly how they knew or what they were thinking at the time. And everyone offers a different tidbit of advice.
While it’s nearly impossible to be objective about love— after all, we’re dealing with feelings here—it’s crucial to be aware of the factors that influence our decisions. It’s also helpful to have a simple, yes or no, blue or red litmus test (as opposed to a 140-question sports quiz) we can use to determine whether our relationship is destined for long-term happiness or headed for heartbreak. Here are 10 tests that don’t work, and one that does.
1. He always tells me he loves me. (Saying it doesn’t make it so.)
2. She says she accepts me exactly the way I am. (She may actually want some changes—we all do.)
3. We always make up in the bedroom. (Sex doesn’t engender intimacy; intimacy engenders sex and and you are not even suppose to be doing that now.)
4. We never fight. (All couples have disagreements.)
5. He’s nice to my parents. (It could be an act.)
6. She’s good to my kids. (It could be an act.)
7. We never run out of things to talk about. (You may not be communicating about the important stuff.)
8. He/she always puts my needs first. (No one is a saint; there may be resentment building.)
9. We like all the same things—books, movies, foods, activities, places to go. (Life will get boring if neither one of you ever pursues an independent interest or takes the other out of their comfort zone.)
10. He/she says we’re soul-mates and I’m the one. (If this is true, it never needs convincing.)
Here is the one test that does work.
How does your partner treat you
when you’re wrong?
When it turns out you’re mistaken or
had the wrong idea about
something, does your partner jump
on you, go for the jugular, pound the
point home, spike the ball in the end
zone, gloat in victory, take joy in
your defeat, self-congratulate on
superior intellect, and act smug
about being right?
Or does your partner act respectfully
towards you, give your points fair
consideration, try to help you see
where your judgment might be
inaccurate or flawed, show
forgiveness and understanding, treat
your discussion as a learning
experience instead of a conquest,
and employ communication skills
not to weaken you but to strengthen
the relationship?
To me, this is the ultimate test. Because inevitably, we will all be wrong. And when we are, we do not want to be made to feel small, stupid, ignorant, and worthless. We don’t want to feel that our standing has been diminished by “losing.” We don’t want to feel squashed or stomped on. We simply want to be treated fairly and with … respect.
Written by Thomas G. Fiffer
Your views are most welcome...
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