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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
so in exactly one week's time i will have been married to the beautiful Val for exactly one year - and what a year it's been! as i say often to people - 'marriage is highly recommended... to the right person!' and the 'to the right person' bit is the key - not cos i believe in any kind of God-brings-this-person-and-that-person-together necessarily or that i believe that there is only one 'the one' as opposed [...]