How to keep that love alive

Image by 👀 Mabel Amber, who will one day from Pixabay

C and I will have been married 25 years in March and together for 29 come the summer. Sometimes it can be difficult to feel the love. It’s always there, but sometimes the romance might be missing in favour of practicalities, or we simply co-exist in an easy-going fashion. We are always fully supportive of each other and back each other up when it matters.

March’s Psychologies Magazine (out in January, really?!!) has an article on keeping the love alive in which it suggests cultivating lasting love is a bit like nurturing plants in a greenhouse rather than leaving them to the frost. How you think about your relationship directly impacts your experience of it by shaping your feelings and influencing your actions.

Some couples have great chemistry and magnetism, know themselves really well and communicate brilliantly. Most couples, claims Cate Mackenzie, have some issues that need to be worked through. When you’re with a partner longer term you get to experience deeper growth and develop into a more authentic and well-rounded person as a result of being challenged and learning how to be in a relationship. Rather than thinking about how your partner should change in order to improve your relationship, Mackenzie suggests shifting the focus to yourself. Invest in your friendships, make time for fun and consider therapy if you think it will help. These can all help you become a friendlier person, which can lift a relationship. Take responsibility for you own needs and wants and journey into your own vulnerability and authenticity.

So followed the ten-question quiz to determine what you need to allow love to flourish. Although my answers were quite spread across the board, the majority of results (by two points) for me pointed to “Commitment”. The response was:

“It’s good to have clarity about what you expect from a relationship, but sometimes high standards become unrealistic expectations. In a healthy relationship, differences are valued and each partner grows by understanding the triggers for conflict between you. But that can be hard, and sometimes it’s easier to give up and look elsewhere for a ‘better fit’.

When small irritations spiral out of control, they can trigger an exhausting internal debate about whether or not the relationship is working. But sometimes, being hyper-aware of other people’s faults is a defence mechanism to avoid commitment. When we stop ourselves from feeling completely connected, we’re protecting ourselves against being hurt by rejection.

It might take your partner threatening to leave for you to feel certain about your feelings for them – which can be painful for both of you. If your partner’s ‘faults’ were there when you met, but didn’t put you off, your focus on them as the relationship progresses may be fuelled by commitment anxiety. Explore with compassionate curiosity what scares you about intimacy. Professional help from a therapist ca help you gain the perspective you need.”

I came from a four-year relationship where my opinion didn’t matter, I was constantly made to feel inferior and whilst it was ok for him to ‘bump into’ ex-girlfriends down the pub, if I so much mentioned another guy’s name, apparently, I was a tramp and on the pull. It took me four years to pluck up the courage to leave that relationship. I vowed at that point that no-one would ever treat me that way again.

I won’t pretend everything is perfect with my relationship with C, we have our moments albeit very rarely, but mostly, it’s secure, loving and equal. We both do what we want with our friends without the other getting jealous. We share a hobby which we can either do together or separately. We are fully supportive of the other’s actions. I certainly won’t be looking for a ‘better fit’ because I don’t believe there is one. I have it already, thank you.

I guess there is an element of protecting myself from getting hurt or rejected and sometime that does boil over in certain situations. I suspect there’s an element of both of us having been hurt in the past but we found each other and helped heal those wounds. I get less and less bothered by ‘faults’ and accept our relationship as it is.

I got a goodun and I plan on keeping him.

The power of love

Love is a choice that we get to create. Love has the power to heal, to bring more connection, bring people together where ideas can emerge, to make us healthier, happier and richer (in the wider sense). Sometimes it can be hard, other times it can be really easy.

Podcast fave Tonya Leigh described love as the most amazing emotion but we can withhold love from ourselves and other people. Love is always something we create from within, so why do we separate ourselves from this emotion?

If we feel that love isn’t being given, we can create stories that lead to resentment and anger, and end up pushing the other person further away. Because of the way our minds are wired we can think that love is something that we have to chase, wanting the world to change in order for us to feel more love. But when we acknowledge we are the common denominator, it is down to us to stop blaming others for how we feel.

We love our children no matter what, but someone else could do something not nearly as bad as what our child does but we then withhold love from them. The only person that hurts is us. When we’re in a state of love we are happier, more creative, exciting and more loving, and as a result we attract more love in our life.

We can feel that we want our partner to do something different, say or do certain things, in order for us to feel loved. We get to do that for ourselves, we can buy the things we want, we can be who we want to be, and we should practice letting our partners be who they are.

If we have someone in our life who is difficult to love (doesn’t have to be a partner), they can be our greatest teachers. This doesn’t mean we should let people walk all over us, there’s room for tough love too. Boundaries are important for us and the other person and we may have to love them from afar. But don’t use that as an excuse not to feel love for that person. We shouldn’t let ourselves think thoughts that hurt ourselves about that person.

Withholding or feeling love is a choice we get to make, and depending on what’s happening on our life, we can be better at it than at other times. Choosing love feels good when we don’t use outside circumstances to shut us away from love.

If we don’t have love for ourselves and others we don’t have a love for life and we end up trying to manipulate the world and other people to make our outside world feel different in order for us to feel love.

Every day we should look for opportunities to love. Ask ourselves in difficult situations, “what would love do”? If we don’t love ourselves, we can’t love anyone else or our life. Think about where we are withholding love in our life and ask how does it serve you? We might try to convince ourselves that its protecting us and no one can hurt us, but its only hurting us when we withhold love. How does our future-self feel love when we’ve created the things we want in our lives? It’ll be challenging as we are more familiar with resentment, anger and fear, but love can become our familiar emotion if we choose to practice it.

The right place to look for love is within ourselves, love is created by the thoughts in our head. Notice what thoughts separate us from love and begin to reach for more love. The more we practice, the more we realise that withholding it from ourselves only ever hurt us. Giving love to ourselves helps us show up differently. We start to attract different relationships, the people around us start to change as we’re no longer resisting them.

If there’s someone we feel there’s no way we could love them, TL suggested loving ourselves first, be kind and gracious to ourselves, and over time they may be easier to love.

Love is a choice we get to make for ourselves, and is created by the thoughts in our head. It’s always available, it has no limits. Stop chasing love and be love.

Back to where it all began 29 years ago… almost to the day

C and I were asked to help #bellrinigng for a wedding at a church that currently doesn’t have a band of ringers. It’s been a while since we’ve rung there partly because of the pandemic and partly because there is no band or regular practice to support.

It seemed like it was going to be a very posh affair. We had told the vicar how much we would expect to get paid and he added a bit extra on and said that he didn’t think it would be a problem at all. When we arrived at the church there were guests gathering in morning suits and ladies in their posh frocks, high heels and hats. Apparently, the reception was being held in a marquee in someone’s garden, so presumable a rather large garden attached to a rather large house, and therefore money not a problem. The church was over garnished. There were flower arrangements at the end of every pew, huge greenery constructions and even whole trees brought in in pots. All seemed at bit over the top, but what do I know.

We, and the other ringers, went upstairs to do our bit. We rang before and after the service. During the service, there wasn’t really anywhere to go and too many steps to bother going all the way down and back up again, so we all sat in the ringing room chatting.

We reminisced about when everyone last rang there, and when the clock mechanism was brought upstairs, and who used to ring there in days gone by.

I occurred to me that C and I got together from ringing at this church when they had a newish band and several of us from elsewhere used to go over and support their practice on a Friday evening. At first, I used to get picked up in town by another ringer and after a few weeks we all concluded that I lived nearer to C, so he agreed to drop me off home after the pub.

After a few weeks of this I invited him in for a coffee. A few weeks after that we decided to get something to eat on the way home and stopped off at a Chinese for a meal, where I saw one of my work managers at that time. Then in the July I invited him in for coffee, we chatted, we chatted and before you knew it it was 4am. We went for a walk around the block to freshen ourselves up, then at 6am after lots more chat, he left as he had to get home, finish packing, then head to Worcestershire for a ringing holiday. Before he left, we had our first smooch.

He rang me every night whilst on the ringing holiday and sent me a postcard every day. He also bought me a present from every day of the trip, so when he got home, I had a lot of silly little things as gifts.

That was 29 years ago. High Easter has a lot to answer for but thank you.

How I used something destructive to find something good

I was reading an article on a LinkedIn site I follow which had quotes from successful business people about the best advice they’d ever received. One quote from Allison Dunn, president and CEO of Deliberate Directions stated a mentor once told her “The only person in your whole life you get to choose is your spouse—everyone else is given to us: parents, siblings, schoolmates, co-workers, neighbours, even your children—so choose wisely”.

In my early twenties I was in a long term relationship and lived with a guy who was earning roughly twice as much as me, he’d done his three year stint in the army and was pursuing a career in accountancy. We’d hooked up at my 18^th birthday party where he was the barman at the venue the party was held at. We moved in together in to a tiny one room bedsit with a shared bathroom and kitchen. From there we moved to a flat of our own and we got engaged and had even booked the church for our wedding.

Then he suddenly decided to move to another county. One where he had lived before and had always wanted to go back to. We hadn’t discussed it at all. He just announced it. I asked what I was supposed to do and he replied I could come too if I wanted to. I was young and naïve so duly followed, now requiring an hour long commute at either end of the working day.

I spend two years trudging back and forth and during that time we bumped into his ex-girlfriends in pubs and he banged on and on about “when I was in the army…” He told me I didn’t know anything about anything and would never amount to much and if I went out with my own friends of an evening, clearly I was on the pull.

Eventually, I woke up and decided that I’d had enough. I got up really early one Saturday morning and decided to move back to my parents. I packed up my stuff in silence. He didn’t even question what I was doing. When I came to leave he told me that I didn’t have to but when I asked if there was any point in me staying he said probably not.

Despite that failed relationship I learned a lot about how I would be in any future relationship. I would have my own ground rules about what I would do, when and with whom. Any other partner would have to meet me on equal footing. I was never going to be disrespected again.

Fast forward and I got together with C. The first thing I did was to set out my ground rules and tell him that I would never ask his permission to do anything. I might ask his advice and I might consult with him but if I wanted, or didn’t want to, do anything I didn’t need his permission.

C and I are very similar in that we don’t really do conflict. We bumble along quite merrily. We are comfortable in our independence but also as a couple. We have things that we can do together and things we do separately. We generally make decisions together and are totally united with the way we brought up R, and how we support her now. I have become the wicked step-mother to his other children which has had some interesting challenges, particularly when they were younger. I think we have a good relationship.

C makes me feel safe, valued and respected. He totally blew me away by his response to something last year that I really didn’t expect he would go to that extreme for me. He might not like some of the things I say and do but never chastises me about it. But then I don’t always like somethings he does or says. We have similar outlooks on life and neither of us can be bothered to argue. I can honestly say that we have never had a fight or serious argument. It takes too much energy.

He supports me in all my endeavours. After he retired early a couple of years ago, he has taken on the role of domestic goddess. Dinner is ready when I get home from work, and he’s a damn good cook. The washing is done (ok, I still do the ironing), the cleaning is done. The food shopping is done. He doesn’t get frustrated with all the meetings I’m at in the evenings, or at least never says anything. He doesn’t complain when I’ve bought more clothes than I need (with my own money). He supports my family shenanigans. I am sure there are things about me that frustrate him but he never mentions them.

We have been married for over 24 years now and together 28. I think we’ve got the measure of each other and as we transition into our dotage, I’m sure there will be new challenges ahead. However, I am confident that we can continue to face them together.

I chose wisely.