Tag Archives: love

Leave The Kitchen Sink In The Kitchen When You Fight

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When you fight leave the kitchen sink in the kitchen. What that means is don’t just gratuitously throw in things that don’t belong in the current fight. Such as every complaint you’ve ever had since the history of time began something corroded and calcified from ten years ago, or the meanest below-the belt thing that you can possibly think of saying.

Kitchen-sink behavior isn’t profitable. It doesn’t do anything except fan the flames of contention and open an abyss of panic and pain for you partner. Once you’ve gotten the satisfaction of watching the kitchen sink fly by and crash into a wall, you may have a hard time cleaning up afterwards.

So no matter what you’re so furious about try to resist the temptation to let it all out or to let the devil take the hindmost. It’s important to stop and think before you let the other person have it. You might want to stop and ask yourself these questions.

 Do I really need to say this? This is, does this horrible, angry, vituperative, and character-blasting thing really need to be said?  Will it improve the immediate situation? Is there anything useful to be gained from saying extreme statements?  Such as your sex life is awful now and it has been for the past ten years? Will this or similar remarks speed up the other person’s growth and maturity or your own, or is saying it just the indulgence of revved-up emotions that want release?

  Do I really need to say that now?  The diatribe you wants to indulge in some very valuable points that really need to be expressed stop and think is this the time to make them? Will you set off a furor or engender a useful response?

Before you fire your verbal machine gun it’s important to investigate the maturity of your emotions output.  Just because you feel like saying something doesn’t mean it has to be said in the way or exactly the moment that you feel like saying it. Remember your relationship will last rather than erode or be destroyed it’s all in the words that you speak it’s up to you.

If You Swore To Love For Life Once Why Do It Again

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If you swore to love for life once why do it again? If you had to do it all over again would you could you? A promise is a promise right? If you swore to love for life once why do it again?

Your first response could be why not? What harm could it do? Is it the vow its self that is the question? Ah, there’s the rub.

You walked down the aisle together once and it was a great day; so great that it could never be repeated and the knot you tied that day became a gnarl of attachments: Kids, deeds, photo albums, possessions galore so how could you ever part?

Do you ever ask yourself if you had to do it all over again would you? That’s the question that begs answering when second or third wedding vows are on the horizon. If the answer is yes then sure say “I do, I do, I do.” If the answer is “I don’t know,” then don’t ignore this warning sign your feelings for each other will have changed over the years; that’s only natural. But would you describe those feelings as being love?

Even if you don’t hate each other do you love one another? I’m not saying that if you’re not at a point where you wouldn’t hesitate to renew your wedding vows that you should split apart. Only that maybe you shouldn’t ignore the state of your relationship. You and your partner might want to seek professional help about your relationship so that the next time you’re asked this question, you will both say yes.

A few years ago my Aunt and Uncle went on a Valentine’s Day Cruise along with eight hundred couples to renew their marriage vows.  When the eight hundred couples were asked if they planned on renewing their wedding vows in the future they all said, “Yes.”

 When the youngest couple in the group asked my aunt and uncle if renewing their wedding vows was their secret to their loving relationship?  They said, it makes for a very romantic day but they believed it’s what they do for each other the other 364 days that really renews those vows and keeps the relationship on solid ground. Then they were asked how many years had they been married? My Aunt and Uncle smiled and said, a short sixty years and that they renewed their wedding vows every twenty years.

My Aunt said that my Uncle held her hand and gazed into her eyes and said, he was looking forward to the next time. The other seven hundred and ninety-nine couples tenderly smiled at each other as they realized that when you love your partner renewing your wedding vows is a loving way to express one more time to them that they are the only one for you.

Stay Available To Mystery

Posted in Life, Love, Romace, Spiritual by

Love of the heart and soul is mysterious. It takes chances . It believes in miracles. It is breath, movement, magic, music, the evanescent moment, the blissful surprise. 

 To be available to the mystery means that you are open, expectant, waiting continually poised on tiptoe, ready to be illumined not locked in your own expectations of how you think it should happen.

In life and in love, this means living free, with your mind-set loose from its gears, not endlessly chattering inside, “But it has to be this way” or “I thought it was going to be that way.” Our own ideas, those tidy little constructions of the intellect and psyche, just to serve to limit our reality, shut down the possibilities, create a universe only as complex, and rarified as the busy minds that invent it.

 Indeed, if we’re too invested in the concepts of the mind, we will only recognize the things and allow into our lives all kinds of experiences that confirm what our minds have already seen.

When we set out to prove our presumptions, we can end up blocking our chances of falling toward the miraculous. That’s because being available to the mystery means being wiling to believe that something more or a different something we literally cannot imagine could be lying in wait for us.

 Indeed, when you surrender, you may step into an experience so huge and splendid and grand that, truly, you may feel as if you have stepped right out if this world. Yet miracles await us at every corner, in every dimension of our lives.

We fall in love: our children are born, we stand on a street in a foreign city, and meet the friend of a lifetime. Falling asleep, we dream, and in dreaming are given solutions to some of our perplexing problems. Whether in the unexpected and beautiful elevation of our daily lives as we ordinarily live them, or through the destined and magical introduction to a deeper life of the spirit, we are all being invited to come to the larger world, the bright light, the truer home.

Indeed, as we move through life we are continually presented with events and encounters that, in defying our expectations, quietly nudge us to change. The degree to which they can change us depends on whether our minds dismiss them, or whether we stay beautifully open, to receive what they are offering.

To be available to the mystery, therefore, is to be willing to be surprised. As a child discovers his face in the mirror; as a lover, undressing his or her lover for the first time, discovers the secrets of their love. To be open to the miraculous is at last to be bountifully blessed. It is to move with grace, as you sweetly conduct your life, from the mountains of the mind to the rivers of the heart.  ” Happy Valentines Day“

Love Is A Spiritual Enterpise

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A relationship is always far more than we imagine or expect it to be. It is more than a living arrangement, more than being together in a social circumstance, more than the bright-colored kite tail of romance; it is the coming together of two persons whose spirits connect with one another, beautifully and painfully, in the in the inexorable process of their individual becoming.

In this respect, relationships are like relentless grinding stones, polishing and refining us to the highest level of our radiance. It is this radiance that is the highest expression of love and why a relationship is a spiritual enterprise.

When we look at the person we love with the expectation that he or she will or should solve all our emotional problems or make all our worldly dreams come true, we reduce that person to be a pawn in our own self-serving plot, seeing the relationship as an experience of “What can I get?” or “What can I become?”

When we view a relationship from a different vantage point, one that acknowledges it as a spiritual incubator we start to see the person we love differently. We see him or her as separate from our hope, from our demands that he or she be a particular way now, for us. Rather, we recognize our partner as a spiritual accomplice that we hold in the spiritual light.

Holding your partner in the spiritual light is seeing the other as a soul in a constant state of becoming, encountering your partner in all the radiance of his or her own being and strivings to be. To hold the other in the spiritual light is to seek the pure spirit that lies behind the limitations of individual psychology and social circumstance, to apprehend the full essence of your partner, as he/she was since time began, as they will be for all time after.

To do this is to reach beyond the petty and even gigantic disappointments that you experience during your time together, to apprehend the divinity of this single unique and exquisite being who has been given to join you on the journey of your own becoming. To hold each other in the spiritual light is to see one another’s souls perfectly engaged in the process of love.

Finding Peace In Relationships

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In the tit-for-tat world of our psychological dramas, we tend to make life adversarial. We take sides. We look at intentions and effects such as she was late just so I’d feel bad; he said that just to hurt me. We seek redress for our insults and wounds; we keep score (you were late more often than I was; you flirted more than I did; you hurt me more than I hurt you; your meaner than I am; well, anyway, you were meaner more times.

It’s as if in trying to find peace in relationships, he thinks, she thinks, keeping score will win the day. Keeping score is like a trash can for misplaced emotions. If he or she looks at you as an enemy they’ll  show you all your crimes, and prove that you’re guilty, thinking they deserve you to make up for it by loving them more because you’ll feel so badly about how you’ve behaved.

 Enemy, crimes, proof of guilt, make up and love them more. This sounds more like the beginnings of a murder mystery and not a loving relationship. Doesn’t it? Unfortunately ( and fortunately, he or she isn’t a corporation that can be sued (and required to make recompense) like a faulty product. People don’t “pay up” in love because they’re shamed or proven guilty. In fact, the stronger inclination is to get away from the heat and head for the hills. Justice doesn’t always prevail. People who keep score and get pay back are like murderers of love. Aren’t they? Taking an adversarial position will only make an adversary of your mate; and adversaries make war, not love.

That’s why, when conflict arises we need to look for common ground. In the midst of the fray, when we seek the kernel of truth that can bridge us to understanding, we can find our way back to union. We all have a dark side; we’ve all hurt one another more than we’d like to admit. But even our misdeeds merit an attempt at understanding, because the truth is that even dastardly acts are born in pain. That doesn’t excuse them, of course, but it’s important to remember that even the difficult, hard, hurtful things we do to each other spring from the woundedness within us.

When I can comprehend your suffering (and, therefore, the crooked behavior you perpetrated on me) and you can comprehend my pain (and, therefore, my wrongdoing to you), we can stand face to face in compassion, unravel the missteps we’ve made, and together start over from a different place.

So if, in your heart of hearts, you seek union, pleasure, companionship, support, and nourishment from your partner, don’t make an adversary out of him or her. Even in the hairiest fray, try curiosity and kindness. “Why were you late?” “Why were you so short with me?” Try it you may find out something surprising. ( I got back a frightening mammogram today”; “The guy right next to you in the gym keeled over and died”), something which instead of turning your partner into the enemy, fill your heart with compassion. Our relationships become sweeter, deeper and more gracious when we are loving and compassionate with our partners.

Language Can Create Reality

Posted in Chidren, Life, Love, relationships, Uncategorized by

Language is a very powerful instrument. What we utter is what we believe or expect, and if we say it enough, in time what we speak becomes true. What we say, and what we hear others say, has the power to sculp our experience, our view of ourselves.

 One form of emotional healing comes form the precise use of language, words you speak and words that are spoken to you. Because of this, an intimate relationship and the verbal exchange intrinsic to it have a greater capacity than almost anything else in the world to heal us of deep emotional wounds.

Words spoken to us by our loved ones truly have the capacity to heal our memories and deeply imprinted pains and to recreate our sense of ourselves and of the world. This means that the negative words that shape your early consciousness and/ or your perception of yourself. “Your Ugly”; You can’t have that; we’re too poor”; ” You never pay attention”; “Why can’t you keep your mouth shout”?  Can actually be revised, corrected, and dispelled through the careful use of language.

Brad had been endlessly yelled at for how he behaved at school, told what a mess he made of his school work, punished for being late, and criticized for getting Cs. No body had ever bothered to note his intuitive genius, the extraordinary function of his mind. Years of ravaged self-esteem began to be healed for Brad the day his sweetheart first told him he was intelligent.

You’re brilliant, she said. I just love the way your mind works. The minute she said that something inside me started to shift, he told me later. I began to believe I wasn’t stupid. The more she said it, the more I was able to believe her. The more she said it, the more I noticed that other people sometimes said similar things. In time, her words changed how I felt about myself entirely.” Brad considered himself a lucky man to marry a gal who really valued his mind and always had a kind word to say.

Brads story shows us that language does have the power to change reality. Therefore, treat  your words as the mighty instruments they are. Use them to heal, to bring into being, to remove, as if by magic, the terrible violations of childhood, to nurture, to cherish, to bless, to forgive, to create from your heart, true love.

Be An Artist Of Love

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Some days you may push love aside. Other times love may push you around. Just make certain in your heart and head that you are working in unison when creating your canvas of love.

Since you “fall” in love, many people treat love as if it were some strange best over which they have no control. But you have more say over your emotions than you think.

Put a sad movie in your DVD player and you’ll cry. Listen or dance to your favorite song on your iPod and your spirits will pick up. You can have a similar effect on the setting of your love dial. While love can be overwhelming at times, or so subtle you can’t tell it’s there, that doesn’t absolve you from honing your skills as a lover. The best lovers have the most control, not least. Even if you’re head over heels in love, you should keep some control, or you risk driving away the person you adore. There are times to go overboard and other times to bank that excess love.

And at the other extreme, if your schedule is crammed twenty-fours a  day, you can’t forget that you have a partner who has needs that must be met. Sure, there are days when you can take out a loan that you promise to pay back in interest, but you can also overextend that type of credit and wind up bankrupt.

 A painter mixes colors to come up with various shades. You must do the same because even love can be boring if it becomes too monotone. So some days, even if you’re not feeling overly romantic, tune up the heat. Shout “I love you” across the room. Put a little more oomph into that hug. Not only will your partner appreciate your use of the brighter colors in your palette, but will probably change your mood as well. You don’t need special skills to learn to be an artist of love. You just need to always be aware that you are a lover at heart.

Some Times Love Hurts…

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It’s been said that love should never be associated with the word “hurt”, but it often is. It can hurt so much that it can break someone’s heart.

Heartbreak is not always avoidable but it may be repairable. 

 Sometimes fate deals us a lousy hand. The person we love is forced to move away, someone steals your love’s heart from you, or their death cuts your heart into a million pieces. Avoidable heart breaks are the most tragic. You’re already together, but something is trying to pull you apart. It starts with a wound real or perceived. An apology would cause the wound to heal, but pride or stubbornness or stupidity keeps the apology locked inside.

One wound might not be serious, but when added to a series of others, the consequences can be fatal. So the two of you become haters and the love is shattered. While the leftover cracks might not make gluing together the many pieces of a shattered mirror worthwhile, love is. Other wise people may spend the rest of their lives stepping on those shard of their love all around their life. Each shard is labeled with a “What if?” and each is capable of causing endless pain. They can be dulled by the years, swept away by a new love, or used for endless episodes of self-pity. One solution is to look into the future and realize that love needs to be put above all else. Petty emotions have to be put aside to protect the bond of love.

When someone suffers a heart attack, it’s obvious that every second counts and that the patient needs immediate attention. It’s not as obvious to many people who the same is true for a broken heart. Too often people wait until it’s too late to get help to repair their relationships. Remember every second counts when repairing a wound and the loss of love might be the price.

Play Your Song

Posted in Life, Love, relationships, Romace, Songs, Women by

Remember your song? The one the band played at your wedding? Or on the car radio blasting on your way to the beach? or the violinist who serenaded you with at your favorite Italian restaurant?

Of all the sounds that fill the air piercing through the cacophony of life, this tune provides the two of you with the most joyous noise of all. 

 If love requires occasional quiet to prosper it can also thrive surrounded by some joyous noise. Don’t allow your song to disappear use it to communicate the love you have for each other maybe even play it everyday. Perhaps you could use it to wake up to every morning or listen to it right before you go to bed or use it as the background sound on your voicemail. Sometimes you can whistle it while you’re preparing dinner.

Others may share your song but when you set the music playing for that moment it’s all yours, not just for one of you but for both of you. The song can help tie you closer together and the more you play it the tighter the ties will be. 

 While the music is to be heard it can also be written on a romantic note card and displayed in a place to surprise your lover. There’s a women in New York who makes romantic cards just for lovers with the words to their song in it.  Whether it’s on a romantic card or in another form like stationary, you can show your love for your song by displaying it on note cards in many places where sounds are out-of-place. If you can’t do any of that send them a text with the first lines of your love song to them or make it your ring tones on your phones.

If you have children you might have to wait a few years to get started on connecting through your love songs but there is a lot of fun kid songs to choose. 

Regardless if you have kids or not play music, dance, and sing as a way of saying ” I Love You.”

Love

Posted in Books, Brides, Dreams, Life, Love, Quotes, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Women by

Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment.  Love is also a virtue representing all of human kindness,compassion, and affection; and the unselfish loyal, and benevolent concern for the good of another.  Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase,”God is Love” or Agape in the canonical gospels. Love may also be described as actions towards others (or oneself) based on compassion, or as actions towards others based on affection.

In English, love refers to many different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure, “I loved that meal” to Love at first sight such as in “Romeo and Juliet”  Shakespeare’s most popular archetypal stories of young teenage lovers.

Then there is the love at first glance kind of love as described in the novel “Les Miserables”, by Victor Hugo,  between the characters Marius Pontmercy a student and Cosette falling in love after glancing into each others eyes for the first time and by the end of the novel married each other.

Then there’s interpersonal attraction I love my partner. “Love” may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of a spouse, to the emotional closeness of family love or the platonic love that defines friendship. 

In romantic relationships, “falling in Love” is mainly a Western tradition. It is used to describe the process of moving from a feeling of neutrality towards a person to one of love. The use of the  term “fall” implies that the process is in some way inevitable, uncontrollable, risky, irreversible, or that it puts the lover in a state of vulnerability, in the same way the word “Fall” is used in the phase “To Fall Ill” or “To Fall Into A Trap.”  The term is generally used to describe an (eventual) love that is strong, although not necessarily permanent.  Before we fall in love, we can see the other person as a bare branch; as we fall, we coat him or her with jeweled attractions about 80 percent of our own making.

There are many contributing factors when we ask ourselves Who and why that person?  A few factors that contribute strongly to falling in love include proximity, similarity, reciprocity, and attractiveness. Similarity would seem especially important: some would even claim that when we fall in love we fall into narcissistic identification. 

 Psychology research has shown two basis for love at first sight. The first is that the attractiveness of a person can be very quickly determined, with the average time in one study being 0.13 second. The second is that the first few minutes of a relationship have shown to be predictive of the relationship’s future success, more so than what two people have in common or whether they like each other. Family therapists maintain that the reason we’re attracted to someone at this very deep level is that basically they are like us in a psychological sense. Others suggest that the very act of falling in love set in motion old patterns of how we love.

Love at first sight is a common trope in Western literature, in which a person, character, or speaker feels romantic attraction for a stranger.The name Romeo, in popular culture, has become nearly synonymous with “Lover.” Romeo and Juliet, does indeed experience a love of such purity and passion, that he kills himself when he believes that the object of his love, Juliet died.  The power of Romeo’s love however, often obscures a clear vision of Romeo’s character, which is far more complex. Even Romeo’s relation to love is not so simple. Mean while Juliet’s first meeting with Romeo propels her full-force toward adulthood. All of this started with a glance. I wonder how many of us “love” at first glance? I wonder…

When Eyes Meet

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I love to read stories about how people met and fell in love. Most love stories start by telling us about the first time the characters eyes met.

The stories start with a glance. When a man and womans eyes meet from across the room or like in some of the 1940’s movies when man mets woman in a train station. Soon they communicate with words and then with their bodies but it was their eyes that made first contact. Eye contact is vital in every relationship isn’t it?  When spoken into space the words “I love you” lose half their meaning maybe even all of it. It’s when you say those words while looking into your partner’s eyes that they mean the most.

Our eyes can express feelings that words can’t. When your eyes say ” I missed you,” I adore you,” I’m angry with you,” or ” I trust you” your spouse knows how you really feel with or without words. And when you use your eyes with our words, they add an emphasis that can’t be missed.

So try to spend some time each day looking into each other’s eyes. You’ll be expressing yourselves in a way that words can’t duplicate. Tip: If your spouse can’t look into your eyes, there’s another type of message being communicated. Don’t ignore such a sign but try to get to the bottom of it. The earlier you spot trouble in a relationship and make repairs, the easier it will be. The story of life is quicker than a blink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye. ~ Jimi Hendrix

A Change Of Scenery

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A change of scenery works wonders. Whether your home  has one room or twenty your home is your castle. But the more hours we spend inside our castle the more claustrophobic it can become as the walls grow ever closer they begin to squeeze out all the love.

 A breath of fresh air not only replenish’s your lungs but will inspire romance. If people even lovers are forced together long enough yawns begin to fill the air, tempers fray and love disappears. When the walls start their inward march and cabin fever set in there’s a simply prescription to restore your life and your love its a change of scenery.

It can be as simply as a walk around the block or as breathtaking as a trip around the world or anything in between. The important thing is to have a look at some new surroundings that will inspire you. It also won’t hurt if this trip involves a little exercise. When we get our physical heart pumping the good chemical reaction activity triggers will give a boost to your emotional heart. So even if you have to drive to reach your eventual destination, let your feet help you explore the area.

A Tip:If its pouring outside or there’s a blizzard raging take out some photos of one of your favorite vacations and use them to inspire the two of you. Then all you have to do is open the windows even a crack to add some freshly oxygenated air to complete you’re at home voyage. Bon Voyage!

Dare To Do Things Differently

Posted in Love, relationships, Romace, Spiritual, Uncategorized by

As we go through life, there are danger signs everywhere: red lights and stop signs,speed bumps and blinking lights, and circles with a red line piercing our hearts.

When it comes to relationships, visible warning signs are few and far between. Sometimes the greatest perils come tiptoeing in sight unseen, and one of the most lethal of these sneaky assassins of ardor is boredom.

Before it drains the power of your love, sweep that gray fog of boredom aside by adding energy. In the same way the warming rays of the sun dissipate a fog, energy can pierce the grayness of your love. All you have to do is: converse, move, run, jump, ski, walk, go. It doesn’t matter where or how. All that matters is that you do something. The more you do, the further away you’ll push boredom, and the stronger your love and friendship will be. Beware, too, that sometimes boredom wears a disguise. It’s called routine. Routines are very necessary in life, especially when there’s so much to do, but they have a serious side effect, which is boredom.

The key to using routines wisely is to break them regularly instead of doing the expected, do the unexpected. If you always eat dinner at five, then one night a week, eat at eight or nine or ten. Every once in a while use your fingers instead of your fork and knife. If the thought creeps into your head to throw a grape at your love then do it!

 If you pass by him or her and they are washing their hands at the sink pull their pants down to their knees.  (Not in front of the kids). Sleep on the other side of the bed once in a while. Slip a $20 to a homeless person. Wear something unexpected to bed. Drive the long way home. It doesn’t matter what it is that you do that’s different it only matters that you do different things regularly.

The Song In Dreams By Roy Orbison

Posted in Dreams, Life, Love, relationships, Songs, Women by

 A dream is an especially difficult thing to describe and dreams aren’t concrete until they come to pass.

 Before then they are like clouds and when both of us look at a cloud you may see one thing while I see another. And the picture you see in one moment may quickly change when the first wind comes along.

 As time goes by-a day, a week, or a year-you may not even remember what you saw. That’s why they say one way to make you dream more concrete is to write it down the second it comes to you because it can flee as fast as it comes. When it comes to giving voice and life to their dreams most people need some help.

Roy Orbison is an American singer-songwriter and he is well-known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads.

The Words To Roy Orbison’s song “In Dreams” for the ones we love and are gone.

In Dreams a candy colored clown they call the Sandman. Tiptoes to my room every night just to sprinkle star-dust and to whisper: ” Go to sleep, everything is alright” I close my eyes then I drift away into the magic night. I softly say oh, smile and pray Like dreamers do. Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you, in dreams…I walk with you. In dreams…I talk to you.

In dreams your mine all the time we’re together In dreams… In dreams. But just before the dawn I awake and find you gone. I can’t help it …I can’t help it. If I cry. I remember that you said goodbye to end all these things and I’ll be happy in my dreams. Only in dreams in beautiful dreams I love to dream especially when I have a beautiful dream about someone I love. Don’t you?