You must tend to love and hold it in the highest regard, which means removing emotional scar tissue built up over time to get to the heart again. Part one of a two part series designed to bring you back together.
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Couples who have been together for a while, and new partners wondering how to make it last, love has revolutions that must be completed. There will come a time when you must go deep as one determined unit, past transgressions and inadvertent wounds to rediscover the magic and essence of your individual couplehood. Part one of a two part series, designed to share practices you can both implement, Anthony Brown speaks from experience of what has worked for his partnership.
Destroy & Rebuild Foundations
In relationships, we must be aware not everything old is compatible with the new. Things that have worked for us in our past, may not work in our future or present relationships. Your partnership is much like a house built from the ground up. If you want that house to last, it requires a strong foundation. Lots of people build their homes using the blueprints of old, outdated foundations, then they move in and everything slowly falls apart. The house is eventually destroyed, but the foundation laid remains until they decide to build a new one.
The entire process of destroying and rebuilding foundations starts with constructing your personal foundation. Prepare yourself with patience and understanding, identify what it is that you are searching for and practice articulating your needs to whomever it is you decide to be involved with. You must also have the ability to recognize when a person isn’t on the same page as you and then make the proper adjustments as necessary, which may mean limiting interactions, or calls. You should also strive for learning to convey the reason for your adjustment. It is crucial that after you make any form of adjustment that you remain firm in your decision.
Make sure you build your foundation with constructive qualities and beliefs. A constructive foundation embodies what you need, which allows you to express your needs to potential partners without forcing them to compromise their own values. Because they keep their sense of self, it permits them to give to you confidently and comfortably. Nobody enjoys feeling as if they are being taken from, drained, or compromised, so be sure to make it easy for people to want to give to you.
It isn’t difficult for a person to recognize another person who has a solid foundation, that’s because you will project an outward expression of an embodied stronghold. Your confidence, mannerisms, and ability to communicate will manifest themselves more effectively because of your strengthened foundation. Only those who have built strong foundations have the ability to withstand the weathering of a real relationship so, build on to yourself before attempting to construct with another person.
Diminishing Misconceptions
Many of us enter into our relationships believing in certain concepts of love that could potentially damage the welfare of our relationships. These misconceptions place expectations on our partners that they may or may not have the capacity to deliver, and when they fail to meet those expectations we resent our partners and blame love. As we grow in our relationships, misconceptions such as “love is a two-way street” or “love doesn’t hurt” should be ruled null and void because they don’t apply in a real relationship.
Love in it’s most simplistic definition is “charity.” Charity is a gift from one party to another without any payment or gift anticipated in return. When we define love as “charity” it never becomes a two-way street, in fact, love is often a one way street with a stop light. It’s necessary to regulate just how much love you are giving out because giving too much of yourself can cause you to either forget about your own needs or may cause you to be taken advantage of. When love is working the way it was designed to work, that’s where the two-way street manifests, two people giving freely of themselves. It is not you give me some then I’ll give some back. Similar to a highway, sometimes one side has traffic and the other side is flowing. Love fluctuates.
Another misconception is that “love doesn’t hurt.” Love hurts for the better. The very idea of love forces us to break bad habits, do things we normally don’t do, and above all, it forces us to be vulnerable. There will always be moments when love hurts because nothing good comes without hard work and the willingness to take a potentially painful risk. Love is an action meant to be performed over and over again; some of us get it right the first or second time around, but others have to learn the painful lessons it takes to become intimate with love and learn how to apply what we’ve learned to the necessary areas.
Maintaining Consistency
Lack of consistency is one of the top reasons why relationships fail. This is the reason why our partners may say, “He doesn’t do the things he used to do”, or “She’s not the same person I remember.” Consistency is vital to our relationships’ success. Consistency, by one definition, means “an agreement or harmony of parts or features to one another or a whole.” So ask yourself, what are we agreeing on? and where is our harmony that is necessary for a successful relationship?
Four Key Practices
Love in Communication: Hone communicating your feelings regardless of fear or doubt. Do this knowing it means progress and understanding when you are being communicated to as well.
Love in relations: Show love in this area not just sexually, but find what makes each of you feel appreciated. When you do this neither you or your partner will feel burdened when giving.
Love in confrontation: Even when you’re disagreeing, show love. Never use hurtful information against each other because you erode your partner’s sense of trust that they can’t be intimate with you. Find a way to argue productively towards a solution or just listen to what’s being said.
Believing in the Existence of Love: The biggest and most powerful lie we can tell ourselves is that love doesn’t exist or it doesn’t work. Find a way to destroy the barriers keeping you from loving and love selflessly and abundantly, and you’ll rarely be unsatisfied.
Human beings instinctively seek the most comfortable and pleasurable circumstances, elements that are naturally consistent within our personalities. With a combination of life experience and external influence, we develop an internal persona which influences our perspectives, decisions and attractions. We then let this persona develop our idea of love, which serves to become an item of our basic instinct: the yearning to be satiated.
People continuously change within relationships, however, love does not change. In order to have a sense of consistency, we must embody a synonymous definition of love. As we hold on to our definition, our personalities will mature, but the actions we took at the beginning of our relationship will never go away because they will grow as we do.
Our agreement to love another produces a harmony between two hearts and minds; it allows us to apply every variable of love to each other consistently. This doesn’t mean there won’t be issues within the relationship, (every relationship has them), but it does mean issues will be solved with love, that troubles should be resolved productively. Maintain your consistency by upholding your agreement to love and fight against your selfish instincts. Love is a living thing, which thrives as you provide for its care. The more you place your relationship into love, the more love places itself into you.
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