I used to tell my better half that marriage has its four seasons. Spring - the beginnings of a new relationship, summer when things get hot, autumn when the initial excitement wears out and winter when heart's turned cold. Ideally, each of us is supposed to love our spouses endlessly and cannot imagine life without them. Even so, it is important to keep or to rekindle the flame of love burning bright. Loving our spouses can be quite a challenging process of commitment, renewal, nurturing and an effort to sustain what is fresh in the relationship.
Over the years, it is easy to let a marriage hit the wall and stagnate. Depression sets in and a new lease of life must be breathed into the relationship.
Realistically, we must realize that no marriage is perfect and each would go over bumps along the road. Marriage is not always fair, just, and beautiful. There could be times when we wanted to “throw in the towel” with our marriage. But in the end, it is our desire to save the relationship which is more important their desire to call it quits.
To have a successful marriage, we must also learn to fall in love with our spouses and if we truly want the marriage to work, we must make an effort to overcome the challenges to make it last a lifetime. Just as a car needs to be tuned up during a check-up, we need to do the same in marriage.
Perhaps routine or even our work commitments have distracted us from each other or the desire to have time together. Whatever it is, we all need to keep love alive and fall in love all over again.
First and foremost, remember always to tell your spouse how much you love them and why you do. Never, we repeat, never, make excuses for yourself by saying that you don't have to tell them you love them because they should know already. Never take your loved ones for granted. Start today.
Secondly, have fun with each other by dining out at your favorite restaurant or spend a night in a motel or take a vacation or prepare a meal at home. Do something that takes your relationship “beyond boring.” Do something together that makes your lives exciting and fun-filled. Marriages can fall into the pits but but it doesn’t have to be that way. Rediscover what makes you excited, what gives you a sense of adventure, and what makes your adrenalin flow! Successful marriages are not boring! Plan a passion starter today!
Thirdly, remember the importance of touch as a channel of love. Touch often and touch much. Hold hands when you walk. Feel the warmth. Feel the love. If you pass your spouse 100 times a day, touch them 100 times. By doing so, you are acknowledging their presence and you are telling them how much you love them. You cannot express love without the human touch so use the sense of touch to get closer to your spouse.
Fourthly,engage in a process to re-establish the communication links between you and your spouse. The communicative links between spouses are highly important and no love, no marriage, and no relationship can ever be sustained again without the re-establishment of the communicative ties that bind. Getting serious about communication in your relationship must be among your highest priorities.
All it takes is a little bit of love and kindness, tender loving care and loads of time, patience and effort to fall in love all over again - with our spouses. God bless you with a lifetime of happiness. Have a great day!
*My apologies to those who read this post between 6am to 10.30am and saw some of the typo errors in this post. I fell asleep while writing this post at about 3a.m. and was very sleepy when I was writing it. Alas, some errors slipped through the cracks when I was proofreading and it was only when I logged on and discovered these errors. Sorry!
2 comments to TIME TO FALL IN LOVE AGAIN - WITH YOUR SPOUSE
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Unknown What a beautiful comment, Walla! I am speechless, eyes brimming with tears...Very moving, very touching and so true.
Thanks for the brief respite with your witty comments that make me smile.
I really do not know how to respond to such brilliance. You have left me spellbound and shell-shocked and I am absolutely lost for words!!!
unplugged is plugged!!!
Thanks so much Walla! I really appreciate your thoughts and the time you took to share these with us.
Blessings to you and yours,
mws
walla One of the least appreciated blessings of all times is a good spouse.
For many men, a good wife completes the yin and yang of their lives. For many women, a good husband is the rapturous reason of their lives.
Therefore, logically speaking, the secret of a good marriage is to have r/r encircled in y/y.
However bureaucrats won't leave this geometry alone. They have insisted there be also ISO validation for a good marriage. Cursory glance of that standard reveals the usuals that run the gamut from Mills & Boons to the likes of Allan & Barbara Pease.
Yet more serious analysis will isolate some destabilizing factors of a marriage.
For instance, an errant gene has been identified, mostly in men but not entirely excluded from women as well. The higher the familiarity index, the greater the risk of its activation under the assault of escapism, stealth and excitement. But there is a saving grace. Even nature can be re-nurtured. The method is to rekindle a re-discovery of the spouse everyday. That method not having been fully elaborated at time of writing, the WHO and other notable organizations may thus be excused for the alarming outpouring of statistics that say the errant gene has reached pandemic proportions. A nobel prize awaits the discoverer of that method.
Then, there's the divergence factor. First there are two. Then more. The more shifts the center of focus from the two with each other. The greatest challenge is to find ways and means to maintain and upkeep the same level of intimacy of the two even when there are more. One way is to look at the more and see them reflect what they would not be but for the one beside. Love deepens but to a higher and more stately level.
Yet another factor is physical. In most cases, both start with hot glands. Blame that on a freak of nature to propagate populations even in these days of global warming. Or, maybe, because of it. As time marches, those glands get depleted from over-usage. Chemo-supplementation can help but even it needs a special catalyst to take full effect. Alas, as life would have it, the leap too often fails the quantum and the star falls instead of reaching its destined firmament. The identity of that special catalyst has yet to be ascertained using prevailing scientific and technological methods. Maybe it is not of this world. Another nobel trophy is being dusted up.
So what is left for the couples of today?
- To turn familiarity into strength and not weakness by rebranding it so as to recapture those halcyon days of pure intimacy;
- To help the more help the two to help the one, the family unit, which is the statistical unit of measure used by the Providences of all religions in Their respective determinations of all dispensations;
- To remould communication, intimacy and interaction by taking them to the next software release versions;
- To spend time alone and together in a quiet and non-distracting setting for even a few minutes of everyday, away from the grimes of life and the cacophony of the idiot box, and just feel out what Kahlil Gibran had coined as this "you-and-i" thing.
...the steady but enjoined heart beat of two human beings who have come together by some miracle on the shoulders of the seven billion on this puny planet to try and make a joint statement about life as presaged by the Higher Ones so as to leave good memories for those who would have to carry on after they are gone...
...the most natural emotion that is good and liberating, enervating and becalming, kindly and compassionate, reverberating and deepest-touching, thereby reinforcing the relationship as a crying testimony that there can be durably good things from nature in this world of sheer transience...