Friday Night Video: ~ Kem - I Can't Stop Loving You ~

Fireproof

This is a MUST SEE movie for anyone who desires to save their marriage/relationship!

Fall in Love All Over Again by Taking Off Your Awesomeness Blinders

   

Have you ever looked at your partner and thought “who the hell is this person?, this is not the same person I fell in love with?”    

Maybe you’ve noticed your partner is often selfish, cold, mean and disrespectful to you?    

When you first met, your partner was independent, self-assured, had strong opinions and frequently did loving, nice things for you.    

The Honeymoon Phase and Love Drug Blinders

During the honeymoon phase, everything our partners do is Awesome.  During this phase we are wearing what I call the “Love Drug Blinders”.  We exaggerate the awesomeness of our partners at first and wear blinders to our partners “flaws” and their choices or preferences that we’d normally hate.    

After the initial honeymoon phase of a relationship, we often become desensitized and used to all the loving, nice things our partners do for us. It’s the same as when you first wear a watch and you notice it constantly, but a couple days later you forget where you put it only to realize it’s on your wrist.    

Once challenges and differences of opinion start to surface, your Love Drug Blinders usually come off and you may start to notice a lot of things about your partner you don’t like.    

This is actually a good thing because during the honeymoon phase your “Love Drug Blinders” may lead you to overlook too many things. If you wore Love Drug Blinders forever you’d never be able to deal with normal relationship challenges.    

So now the Love Drug Blinders are off and you’re able to see things you like and dislike about your partner. This is a great position to be in.    

When Relationship Problems Attack

When challenges and problems build and start to overwhelm your relationship, you once again put your blinders on. This time your blinders prevent you from seeing anything loving or nice your partner does and keeps you focused on the things you dislike.    

I call them Awesomeness Blinders    

Awesomeness Blinders are terrible for your relationship. Not only do they get you to forget all the awesome things about your partner, but they also probably get you to view your partner’s previously desirable qualities as bad.    

With your Awesomeness Blinders on, your partner’s initial independence is now selfishness. Strong opinions are now meanness and disrespect. His or her self-assurance is now “know it all-ness”.    

Awesomeness Blinders will ruin any chances you have to fall in love all over again with your partner.    

You might think to yourself, “But my partner really did change into an unlovable monster!”    

Maybe you’re right and your relationship is one in a million. Even if that’s true, you’re still missing your partner’s awesomeness because everyone has some.    

Most likely your partner hasn’t changed very much and it is only your view of your partner that’s changed. Maybe you are both wearing your awesomeness blinders and are overwhelmed with the problems in your relationship. We rarely act loving when overwhelmed with problems.    

If you genuinely want to fall in love all over again with your partner, it is time to take your Awesomeness Blinders off!    

How to Fall in love all over again

I believe that we are sorely missing the awesomeness of our loved ones. I’m on a mission to start a movement where we all celebrate each other’s awesomeness.    

Celebrating the awesomeness of those closest to you is the most powerful and easiest way to skyrocket the success of your relationships.    

Neil Pasricha wrote a book called “The Book of Awesome” and has a website1000awesomethings.com. If you are looking for real life examples of what I’m talking about, check out his website. He will get you to smile and appreciate even the smallest of life’s awesome moments.    

Here are a couple of Neil’s examples of life’s awesomeness:    

• Fixing electronics by smacking them
• Watching the Price is Right when you’re home sick
• Hitting a bunch of green lights in a row
• Waking up and realizing it’s Saturday

     

There is no place where we forget the sheer awesomeness of life more than in our intimate relationships. No matter what has happened in your intimate relationship you can celebrate the awesomeness of your partner.    

How to Celebrate Your Partner’s Awesomeness & fall in love all over again:    

1. Take some “Me Time” once a week for 5 minutes.    

2. Sit in a place free of distraction and close your eyes.    

3. Focus on taking deep breaths in and out.    

4. No matter what challenges you’ve faced during the week, think about the tiniest awesome things your partner did this week.    

5. Think about the smallest of your partner’s awesome qualities and choices, throughout the week and overall.    

6. Imagine your partner doing these awesome things and displaying his or her awesome qualities. Genuinely see, hear and feel what you feel while experiencing your partner’s awesomeness.    

7. Increase the Time you spend celebrating your partner’s awesomeness slowly, until you can do it for a couple of minutes each day.

5 Tips to Save your Marriage

How to Fall in Love with your Spouse All Over Again?

Falling in love is easy when you have just met a wonderful person. It is when you have been married to the same person for a few years, or even months for that matter, that you begin to wonder how you ended up being stuck to this man or woman. Here are a few ways to get out of the marital rut and fall in love with your spouse all over again.

1. Start afresh.
   If you really want to revive the feelings of romance with your spouse, it is necessary for you to let go of the emotional baggage that you may have accumulated over all this time. Try and forgive the hurtful things you may have said and done to each other and if that is not altogether possible, at least make an attempt to put them behind you. Part of the reason why it was so easy to fall in love the first time you met was because neither of you came to the relationship with any issues or complaints about each other. Even if you cannot go back to being complete strangers now, as much as possible try to start on a clean slate.
   
2. Stop keeping scores.
   It is hard to fall in love with your spouse all over again if you continue to measure their worth as against what they have and have not done for you. This is not to say that you should keep giving more to the marriage as compared to your spouse but only that a marital relationship is not an algebraic equation where both sides need to balance each other out perfectly. Some days you give a little more and on others, so does your spouse. But if you really wish your relationship to be like the first time, your love has to be unconditional which is hard if you keep making entries on the marital scorecard all the time.
   
   
3. Do the things you used to.
   Try to remember all that you enjoyed about each other during the heady days of your early love and see if you can bring back those aspects into your life. If it was your carefree and social nature which first attracted your spouse to you, make an attempt to enjoy life more so that once again you are fun to be around. On the other hand, if it was your wide-ranging intellect that caught your spouse’s attention, brush up your reading and invite him/her to accompany you to literary workshops or seminars. Or if it was a mutual interest like pottery-making or windsurfing that brought your together, revive those activities so that you two can get a chance to rekindle your attraction for one another.
   
4. Take a break.
   Once couples settle into a routine, it becomes increasingly difficult to get out of the rut. Juggling commitments at work, home and as parents, spouses may find it impossible to spare the time and energy to go back to being a romantic two-some. Here the only thing to do is to take a break. If you are lucky enough to have someone to look after the kids, try to take off for a few days for a quiet beach or a skiing resort. If not, even a weekend away from work and home responsibilities may work wonders for your romantic life. The whole point is to let other commitments take the backseat for a while and bond with each other so that you can fall in love all over again with the person you married.
   
5. Go back to the basics.
   When you were first dating each other, remember how you instinctively treated your partner with kindness, consideration and respect. It was only with time that you let angry words and negative gestures creep into your marital life. If you can accord a basic courtesy and kindness to a complete stranger, why not your spouse? So, bring back all these aspects into your relationship and watch how it turns over a new leaf.
   
6. Flirt with your spouse.
   If you are to fall in love with your partner all over again you need to see him/her as a member of the opposite sex and not simply someone you share an apartment or the kids with. Begin by making an effort to look attractive or at least well-groomed. Then go on to play the flirting game using your eyes, smile and various gestures like the casual brush of your hand against his thighs or her waist. Do something special for your partner like surprising your wife with a candlelight dinner at home or getting tickets for a game playing his favorite football team. In other words, court your spouse like you did in the past and you will find the same warm fuzzy feeling rising from somewhere inside you.
   
7. Keep talking.
   Having an effective means of communication is crucial to the survival of every marriage. Remember how you shared every feeling, hope and anxiety with your partner in the early days of your relationship. And even if you had fights, you could resolve them only because you kept the lines of communication open. So instead of remaining passive to things as they are, take responsibility to make changes. Be willing to initiate conversations and if need be set aside a certain time each day to have discussions with your spouse. Only when you are able to verbally exchange what is in your hearts, will you be able to love your spouse all over again.
   
8. Have patience.
   No matter how committed you are to make your marriage work, it cannot go back to being exactly as it was when you first met each other. This is because of the simple reason that then you were strangers and without any kind of presumptions about each other. Now on the other hand you have known one another intimately for a while, warts and all. So give love some time to grow back again and when it does, it will be all the more beautiful having stood the test of experience. 

~ SUNDAY INSPIRATION ~

“Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.”
~ Dalai Lama