Building Blocks for a Successful Relationship from Meeting to Marriage

Posted on by helpingsoul

I came up with an eight step system for individuals looking for a long and lasting relationship.  After much personal experience, observation and research, I have discovered these steps provide a greater chance for a lifelong partner versus just a one night stand.  These steps are not ingrained in stone and there are certainly rare and wonderful cases where a one night stand can turn into a successful marriage.  However to increase your chances, I have determined these steps provide the proper criteria and mind set for marriage.

Building Blocks for a Successful Relationship from Meeting to Marriage

First Three to Six Months

1.  Meet

  • Encounter at work, school, gym, grocery store, running/ walking club, art/ writing class, workshop, or any personal interest group.

2.  Establish a Friendship

  • Treat each other as buddies.  No pressure for sex and truly get to know the person without expectations for the future or external demands.  In this type of relationship, you are permitted to be yourself and learn each other’s character, values and beliefs.

3.  Set Boundaries and Stand-up for your principles and viewpoint

  • Be willing to end the relationship if they aren’t met.   You may be surprised how the relationship turns for the better after someone takes a stance if there is something special brewing between the two of you.

Six to Nine Months

4.  Continue to build boundaries; working on polite yet assertive communication.

5.  Respect

  • Respect naturally forms if there is admiration and deference toward each other.  Appreciate signs of mutual respect such as thoughtfulness, consideration, politeness and respect of privacy.  Small considerate actions mean the most.

Nine Months to a Year

6.  Love is revealed

  • Revel in your love, tender affection and romantic desires and longing for each other.

Year to Two Years

7.  Persevere the relationship

  • Steadily persist in consistent thoughtful actions toward each other despite problems or difficulties if they exist.

8.  Marriage

  • Make a 100% Commitment.  Be willing to work and give the relationship hundred percent; through thick and thin; the good and the bad times. During difficult times, look for the positives and enjoy your spouse more each day. You may be pleasantly surprised how your spouse responds; naturally reacting nicer.  An amazing transformation will eventually occur, illuminating happier times together.
  • There is a remarkable difference between a commitment of 99% and 100%. At 100%, you are seeing your problems all the way through to their solutions. At 99% we can still find a way to take the path of least resistance…and usually do.

Love

Posted on by helpingsoul

loveWhat is love and how do we know if we feel it for someone else?  I finally broke down and said “I love you too” to my partner, but felt unsure.  Do I really love him?  As I walked today I thought about love and how it is formed with images in your head of tiny experiences and visions in your head.  The more often, frequent, consistency of happy images and visions that remain in your mind formulate a lasting likeness and eventually love prevails.  Or it can be a train wreck and hits you on top of the head unknowingly as the case between music man and I.

Love is a feeling of intense attraction that can be one of the most amazing in the entire world. It starts with lust, attraction and then a commitment.  The emotions associated with love are blissful, and there are times when they can really hurt. In the end, love is something most of us, if not all of us, will encounter. While there are many different ways to define love and there are many different ways to love someone (or even yourself), here is a general guide to loving from WikiHow.

Steps

  1. Say it. When you say the words, “I love you” with conviction, meaning and action.  They should carry with them the desire to show someone that you love them, not what you simply want to feel. When you say it, make sure you really mean it and are willing to do anything for that special person.
  2. Empathize. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Rather than impose your own expectations or attempt to control them, to understand how they feel, where they come from, and who they are. Realize how they could also love you back just as well.
  3. Love unconditionally. If you cannot love another person without attaching stipulations, then it is not love at all, but deep-seated opportunism (one who makes the most of an advantage, often unmindful of others). If your interest is not in the other person as such, but rather in how that person can enhance your experience of life, then it is not unconditional. If you have no intention of improving that person’s life, or allowing that person to be themselves and accepting them as they are, and not who you want them to be, then you are not striving to love them unconditionally.
  4. Expect nothing in return. That doesn’t mean you should allow someone to mistreat or undervalue you. It means that giving love does not guarantee receiving love.  Try loving just for the sake of love. Realize that someone may have a different way of showing his or her love for you; do not expect to be loved back in exactly the same way.
  5. Realize it can be lost. If you realize that you can lose the one you love, then you have a greater appreciation of what you have.  Think of how lucky you are to have someone to love. Don’t make an idol of the person you love. This will place them under undue pressure and will likely result in you losing them.
  6. Never stop loving. Even if you have been hurt before you should not stop giving love.