i was sitting in the back of the church meeting yesterday when a couple (who have been married for less than three years) arrived and she came and sat in front of me and he stood at the back of the room to the one side… it was obvious to me that they were having some kind of negative vibe – she was obviously stressed and every now and then would look across at him [...]
If you are married: Tell her you love her. Tell her often. Don't ever get bored or tired or let it become a cliche (or a quiche cos that would be weird) and so mean it every time. But say the words. Don't assume she knows. Tell her again. If you are dating: Don't tell her you love her, til you really mean it. And that might mean different things to different people but love [...]
if you are married or going out: forget the myth that love is a feeling - if love is purely a feeling your relationship is doomed - run, run and keep running - cos feelings are context-linked, situation-dependent and none of us can stay on top of all of our contexts and situations - bad stuff happens, we hurt each other (hopefully by mistake) and the feeling is not always there... that's when choice come [...]
There is another verse in the Bible that says, “Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry” and since most of us have no real effect on stopping the sun from its nightly perceived movement away from us, i guess that means it makes a lot more sense for us to concentrate on the ‘stop being angry’ part... and it’s linked to the not keeping a record of wrongs. And so one [...]
in a nutshell if you refer to your woman (whether it be girlfriend or fiance or wife) as a 'ball and chain' or any similiar type negative reference you are probably in need of an attitude shift... or maybe a slap to the head (and i am more than happy to assist with either!) as tbVal pointed out to me today it is often the very people who should be campaigning for the opposite who [...]
i’m not a big fan of commercialised Christmas vibes and in particular Christmas carols – woergh – kinda hate them with a passion... my wife, TBV, is a big fan of Christmas and Christmas-related stuff though (although she says carols aren’t huge for her either!) and i realised the other day that in my adamant ‘we will fight carols on the beaches, we will fight them on the shores, we will never surrender’ and ‘i [...]
Hollywood (and the greater media) pretty much says (intimates) that love is a feeling and that the expression of that feeling is sex, and also pretty much once the feeling goes love has gone and you should walk away (and get a divorce). Which is why we have such a huge divorce rate where one out of three (or is it two now) marriages end in divorce. But there is another, better way... A way [...]
this part added by my wife, TBV: Step away from the emotion of the moment. I really struggle to think clearly, reason well, and see things from Brett’s point of view, when I am caught up in the emotion of the immediate argument. I may be hurting, angry, frustrated, sad, feeling sorry for myself, or incredibly teary. I often cannot think straight at all and this results in me “blanking out” – literally shutting out [...]
I don’t think tbV and i are there yet, in fact i know we’re not. It’s definitely a work in progress and there is definitely progress because we are working on it. We argue a lot better (in terms of nicer, friendlier, love-lier) than we used to when we were going out, but we can do even better. But there are definitely some principles we can share from what we do take care to do. [...]
This one goes out to those of you who have girlfriends or wives (and if you’ve been paying attention and using your brains all along this series you will realise that most of what i say would fit into a ‘how to love your man better’ series or be applied to family and friends and work colleagues to differing extents so i hope no-one has been put off by the titles – i am specifically [...]