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Exercise 14: What’s Your Favorite Position?
Exercise 13: What’s Your Favorite Position?
Is It In His Kiss?
Many of you are asking ‘how to …’ questions so in this week’s article/blog I have selected ten of the most common ‘how to’s …’ to answer. These are just my thoughts so do go to the comments link and add your own.
- How Do I Know he/she Loves Me?
- How Can I please Him?
- How Do I know he means it?
- How can I make him happy?
- How do I know what women want most in a relationship?
- How do I prove I love her?
- How do I let her know I love her?
- How do I know it will last forever?
- How do I show him I love him?
- How do I know if I can trust her?
The song written by Rudy Clark in 1964, and made famous by Cher in 1991, titled ‘It’s In His Kiss’ may answer some of these questions. Here are the lyrics:
Does he love me?
I wanna know!
How can I tell if he loves me so?
(Is it in his eyes?)
Oh no! You need to see!
(Is it in his size?)
Oh no! You make-believe!
If you wanna know
If he loves you so
It’s in his kiss!
(That’s where it is!)(Oh yeah! Or is it in his face?)
no girls! It’s just his charms!
(In his warm embrace?)
no girls! That’s just his arms!
If you wanna know
If he loves you so
It’s in his kiss!
(That’s where it is!)
yeah!! It’s in his kiss!
(That’s where it is!)Oh, oh, oh, honey !
Squeeze him tight!
Find out what you wanna know!
promise love, and if it really is,
It’s there in his kiss! …
Is it really in his kiss, or in his eyes or face or arms? Or is it in none of these? Does this song really sum it all up or is there more to it.
Well, I think there is a whole lot more to it. And if you think the answers are to be found anywhere outside of the relationship, I think that you might also be looking in the wrong place.
So if the answers are not in their kiss, and not out there, where are they?
I’ll answer that question in a moment. Let me firstly say this: What these kinds of questions echo for me is that either you’re not asking the right questions or you just don’t trust yourself, or your intuition, enough to believe that what you’re hearing is the truth, or that they are actually lies.
Or maybe you’re just not asking any questions at all out of fear of what you’ll hear or worse, that you might get an outright rejection. Maybe this is because you’re not yet sure enough about your own love; either of the other or of yourself or do not have an absolute belief that you are worthy of love. What happens then instead is that you try to guess what’s really going on or hope that someone else may be able to help with the answers.
Maybe the issue here is really about trust: Trust of yourself to know the truth when you hear it and/or trust of the other to believe that what they are saying will answer your questions truthfully.
So where do you find the answer to these questions? Ask the person who really should be answering them. The truth really is there, and is plain to see when you open yourself to it. Be brave – ask the questions you really want to know the answers to and trust that he or she will answer you honestly. Then look into your own heart to determine if the response actually is the truth: If it is you’ll know it. If it’s not or you still are not sure maybe this person is not the one you should commit yourself to.
If, after getting the answers to your questions you feel sure about the answers then kiss him or her often and take the time to make it heartfelt. Show him or her through your kiss that you truly love them. The only question I have for you then is ‘how could they not love you forever?’
So until next time – Relate with Love
Exercise 6: What’s Your Favorite Position?
Should I Marry Or Just Live With …
I receive countless emails on the topic of getting married versus living with your partner with the possibility of one day getting married and all the apprehension that goes with that decision. So in this article/blog I’m going to address these questions as I understand them and welcome your comments as well.
I also receive many questions about arranged marriages, and the consequences of that on the couple, as well as about marriages that are not arranged and do not have the approval of family.
Here are a couple of scenarios:
1. Boy meets girl – they fall in love – they commit to each other and set up house either with a view to getting married or having just done so.
2. Families introduce the couple – they live with their own families until they get married often not even meeting, or if so briefly in the parents company, before their wedding day.
Researchers have looked into each of these scenarios, amongst others, to determine what situations give the best long-term outcomes for couples.
And here is what the research is indicating:
Generally over the long-term arranged marriages have the highest rate of success. That is not necessarily to say that these couples are the happiest but, due to the cultural structure of their communities, where women particularly often have less input into their life decisions, the permanence of these relationships is pretty much guaranteed.
Another indicator coming from the research is that marriages that have resulted from a courtship whereby the couple has lived separately until their wedding day also seem to have a higher success rate than couples who have lived together prior to becoming married.
The lowest long-term success rate comes from couples who live together before they marry or who live together without marrying at all or who have only known each other for a short period of time before marrying.
My hunch is that there is a common denominator here that is to do with commitment. This commitment however could be self-directed or other directed. In the case of an arranged marriage there may be a commitment based on lack of perceived choice. While on the other end of the continuum, the couple who live together without making a long-term commitment, may actually not have given enough thought to the decision and consequently may feel more able to step away from the relationship if things get too hard.
This is a huge generalisation based on a set of figures which of course is just that; numbers not real people.
I look forward to your stories to tell me of outcomes that are contrary to the research results, for good and for bad, and maybe we can conduct our own research to see what structure relationships take that have the best outcome.
There is another set of figures being published too that says that second marriages have a higher failure rate than first marriages. This is often blamed on the additional stress of there now being children in the relationship or that someone has not learned their lessons from the first relationship and thereby just gets into the same negative place again.
And in terms of going against statistical norms I will be the first to hold up my hand. I met my current partner just as I was ready to end my previous relationship. I don’t mind saying that while we have never married we have now been together for twenty plus years and each year just gets better and better.
So what does all this tell us? Simply this: there is no best way to choose a partner or to choose a type of relationship or even a best time to marry. This might also mean then that there is no optimum time to know each other before committing to a relationship nor a best age to do this.
The most important thing is that you love each other and respect each other and treat each other as if you are the most valuable thing in the world. This presupposes that each of you is at peace within yourself. Sometimes this means making it more about your partner than about you. If you can do this then whatever arrangement you have will work.
A Word of Warning
A really important thing to remember is that relationships can be fragile and need regular nurturing and care. Don’t ever treat another person as someone to own or to have control over or to force into a relationship without their want. This is not respectful or favourable to being loved.
So until next time – Relate with Love
How to Make an Affair Work for You
One of the most hurtful events of a relationship is when someone is discovered having an affair.
Generally one of three things happens when someone discovers that their spouse has been cheating on them.
1. The affair is ignored. This may mean that the affair continues but nothing changes in the relationship. This is often because the party being cheated on just doesn’t want to ‘rock the boat’ for fear of what might come of it.
2. Sometimes one or other of the couple decides that they can no longer be in the relationship and so the relationship ends.
3. Ideally the affair stops. The old relationship discontinues and a new relationship begins.
Whether the relationship ends or not, some serious losses will be experienced. Losses can be physical or symbolic and may include:
• Loss of trust
• Loss of security
• Loss of hope/dreams
• Loss of faith
• Loss of intimacy and affection
• Loss of self-esteem
Sometimes it is these losses, over and above the affair, that pulls the couple apart and sounds the death knell for continuing the relationship.
If the third option is the case the challenge then is for the non-offending spouse to overcome these losses and find trust again for the other person. This is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome.
The Way Forward
The way forward then is to take the time with your spouse to talk about all these issues and to realign them with a new way of being. More than anything for a relationship to make it through there needs to be forgiveness: forgiveness of each spouse of themselves and of each other for the part they played in the affair.
And yes, as hard it sounds, even the non-offending spouse might need to look at their part in causing the affair. In saying this I don’t mean to imply that the offending party should be absolved of what they have done. They must take full responsibility for the hurt they’ve caused but, as I’ve said before, the reason this affair has happened is because there was something amiss in the relationship to start with. For this both spouses need to assume responsibility.
To help you both along the way it might be useful to start a journal. Express all your thoughts and feelings in this journal; the good, the bad and the downright ugly. And besides making the time to talk about what happened there might also need to be some new, if only temporary, rules put into place regarding letting each other know where you are and what you’re doing and how long that will be. This can be the only way forward if trust is going to be re-established.
And by the way the spouse who decides the ultimate outcome of the affair will be the non-offending spouse not the one who cheated. Your role is to just grin and bear it, as this is the consequence of having erred. If there is enough love and a renewed commitment and trust you will find a way to reconnect. For both of you don’t be in a hurry. It will take as long as it takes.
Sometimes all this might seem too hard to do on your own and you might need some professional help. Take that help even if you don’t yet know what you should do now that the affair has been exposed. Counselling will help you find your way through the mess to then be able to make a clear decision to either leave the relationship or to recommit. It’s only as you come to make this decision that you can start to move forward.
So until next time – Relate with Love
How to Tell If Your Spouse is Cheating – 3 Tell-Tale Signs to Look For
Cheating happens in so many ways. When we first think about what cheating is we tend to think about spouses having sex outside of the relationship but it happens in many other ways as well. With this in mind be aware also that what is defined as cheating to one person might not be for someone else.
A recent magazine asked readers to define an extra-marital affair, with this result:
· 21% thinking about an involvement
· 21% dinner and drinks
· 24% kissing and petting
· 26% sexual intercourse
· 8% not sure
And some people even define it as chatting on the internet or phone messaging with people of the opposite sex or using porn without the partner’s consent or inclusion.
How do you define cheating? And how do you know if your spouse is doing it?
Here are three tell-tale signs to look out for:
- When your spouse suddenly takes extra special care in their dress or personal appearance or suddenly adopts a whole new style in clothing or hair.
- When your spouse suddenly starts staying back at work late into the night saying they are doing extra work.
- When your spouse spends longer hours on the computer and/or phone and doesn’t want you to ask questions about or see what s/he is doing.
NB Be mindful that there may be perfectly legitimate reasons for all of these behaviors so be careful jumping to conclusions.
And by the way cheating is not necessarily a death knell for the relationship.
There are many reasons people cheat. The most important one though is that something is not working in the relationship that really needs looking at. This does not necessarily mean that you do not love each other anymore. What it means is that someone in the relationship is just not getting some of there needs met. This might be sexually or in friendship or in satisfying a need for some excitement in their lives.
Here is the short answer to overcoming an affair.
If you have caught your partner out there is obviously some decisions to be made regarding whether you should abandon the relationship or whether you can both recover from this error. That will be decided by many things the most important of which is your capacity to forgive your partner, and maybe even yourself, for allowing the affair to happen.
If you are the one having the affair, by the way, it’s sometimes wiser to not tell but to recommit and make amends as best you can. While it is said that honesty must be at the base of all relationships there are some things that may be best left unsaid. On deciding you have made a mistake, the most important thing is to acknowledge that to yourself and to do whatever needs to be done to get this relationship back on track. If you then decide to tell your partner have a good reason for doing so which is not based on your need to free yourself of guilt.
If you are in a relationship where you think there might be cheating talk about it. This may not be best introduced with a question about whether the other person is actually having an affair, but from the perspective of sharing your thoughts and values on the topic so your partner has an opportunity to respond. In this way they are not left with any doubt as to what you think and feel about the possibility of s/he having an affair. It just may give him/her a chance to change their behavior without having to put your whole relationship on the line. Remember s/he may not have the same definition of cheating as you do.
I will address this in more detail in my next blog post.
So until next time – Relate with Love
What To Do When They Love Their Ex More Than You?
When I was 17 years old I met and fell in love with a man who became my prince. I thought it would last forever. We were soul mates and we shared everything together. This lasted for about eighteen months when we had our first big blow up. This also happened at a time when I needed to make some decisions about my future studies and where I wanted to live. The wants of each of us became devastatingly incompatible and we parted company.
Thoughts of him stayed with me for a long while as I then continued on with my life and fell in love with someone else who ultimately became my husband. Even now, nearly forty years later, I remember my first love with fondness and know that, despite what we had, it could never have been more than a high school fling though a great one at that.
Really there is nothing that will ever be the same as a first love. The feelings in your body and mind are intense coming from a place of innocence and naiveté. It’s like the first time you do anything exciting, like going on a roller coaster ride for the first time. It’s exhilarating and scary and irresistibly draws you into making you want to experience the ride again and again until you’re exhausted.
Of course this feeling cannot last as you must come back to reality. This sometimes happens with a resounding thud as you come to understand that you are actually not well-matched or your wants from life is not the same. Sometimes you just come to realize that you don’t really like this person anyway or they really don’t like you.
Then it’s all over! You are left to pick up the pieces of your life and move on. The reality is though that most often this happens for one or other of you first. The result being that while one of you has decided to move on the other hasn’t got to that stage yet.
This is where the other of you is left with some unanswered questions and consequently what we call in the industry ‘unfinished business’. This most often comprises the need to grieve the loss as well as to get some answers to the most obvious question ‘is this about you or me?’
For anyone going through this distress generally the first reaction is to try to avoid it. And how do you do that? You quickly distract yourselves with a new love. Often the outcome of this is, once the initial attraction has somewhat waned, to feel once again the sadness of the previous loss. This may be recognized by you, or your partner, as a belief that there is still love for that person, the Ex.
So how do you get past this? If you’re the one feeling like you can’t get over a lost love you need to remind yourself of the reality of the situation and focus on what is now possible for your future.
If you’re the one with a partner struggling with this know that this is their struggle and they are the one who needs to do the work. This is not about who you are or what you do. There is consequently not a lot you can do in this case except to be as supportive and as loving as you can be. This will then be his/her reminder of what s/he really does have to be thankful for in his/her life now.
If both of these options seem like too big it might be time to seek some counselling with someone who can work with each of you separately or with the two of you together to find a resolution.
So until next time – Relate with Love
Relationship Remedy 