If you had to ask me what is one of the key principles in loving your woman well (whether it be wife or girlfriend) i would say to you, “I don’t remember.”

No i mean that’s the answer… intentional amnesia

In the Bible, Paul writes ‘Love does not keep a record of wrongs’ and that is a solid principle to employ in your relationship with your loved one – it also works for friends and family but in terms of that special woman in your life it is not even an option or a would-be-nice – it is an absolute.

If Val does something to hurt me and i respond with a line like “you always…” or “you never” it screams to her that i have not forgiven her for times in the past when she has hurt me and i have said that i have forgiven her. No, instead i am keeping a mental record of all her past transgressions and making another mark in that same column.

Choose to forget. And forget doesn’t mean not having the mental capacity to remember because it’s not like we can affect that so much, but rather it means not holding that thing against the other person. So when Val hurts me i need to treat it as if it is the first time she has hurt me in that way and not bring back all the other similar-themed times where it happened in the past.

[what makes this all a lot easier is your starting point which can be difficult to return to in the moment of anger or frustration… but my starting point with Val is knowing that she would never intentionally choose to hurt me as i would never intentionally choose to hurt her – sometimes it is done by mistake, sometimes it is caused by selfishness or pride or laziness or tiredness or context-affected emotion or whatever. But if i can take a step back from the incident or words uttered and go back to the starting point of ‘Valerie-Claire Anderson loves me and would never intentionally choose to hurt me” then it becomes so much easier to get over what may often be my pride or reaction in response and let go of whatever the incident was.]

Which is why if you had to ask me what is one of the key principles in loving your woman well, i would say to you, “I don’t remember.”

[for the next part in the ‘How to Love your woman better’ series – Choosing this day – click here.]

[To return to the start of this series, click here]