LOVE THAT LASTS - 10 TIPS FOR BUILDING A LASTING RELATIONSHIP
Papa may be no expert in love or relationships, but I’ve certainly learned a few things worth sharing.
For the record, I’ve been in a lot of horrible relationships… or at least those that ended horribly. I am no stranger to emotional pain and heartache, and I’d rather not go through any of that again. Most likely, you can relate.
Though I have been through a lot of pain in past relationships and had them end… poorly, these days I have been very happily married to @mama-pepper for over nine years now and in a faithful relationship with her for over ten years. We are even able to remain fantastically in love in a blossoming and growing relationship with one another though our family has been rapidly growing. Trust me, we love our @little-peppers dearly, but children can add another level of difficulty to a relationship. We even had our first three in less than a three year period.
Anyway, what I am about to share are things that I believe can seriously help in a relationship. I’ve learned a lot the hard way, so if I can spare you some pain and suffering in your love life, I’d be more than happy to attempt to help.
1 – “LESS FISH”
Yeah, I’ll start off peculiar. Honestly, there is a huge difference between selfishness and selflessness. To put it short, the more that you spend your time and energy concerned about yourself, the less time you can be concerned about another.
If you are your greatest love in life, your spouse never will be. I know that we all have hobbies and activities that we like to enjoy, but if these are more important to us than other people, even our spouses, then the relationship will most likely suffer. If you really enjoy a certain activity to the point that it affects your relationship, then you love your hobby more than the person that you are in a relationship with.
I think that a misunderstanding of investment comes into play here. Fulfilling your desire to entertain yourself may bring you immediate satisfaction, but to have a person devoted to you and in love for you for the rest of your life can bring you a lifetime of satisfaction. I’ve given up things in my life for @mama-pepper, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
2 – ORIGINALITY
Ultimately, everyone is an individual and an original being. There is no one completely like you anywhere in the earth. When someone “falls in love” with you, there was probably something specific about you that attracted them to you. You should use this to your advantage.
Though we may not all be as creative or romantic as some others, you still have your own version of
It may help to have a clue about exactly what it is about you that the other person finds attractive. If it is your humor, then use that. If the person enjoys your conversation but hates your sense of humor, maybe it’s a good time to give up the jokes. We are all very multifaceted, so try to downplay your lesser qualities and characteristics and focus on developing what the other person enjoys most, until it just becomes part of a more refined version of you.
Ultimately, you are two different individuals attempting to bond together in one relationship. There is something special and original about each of you, and you appreciate that about the other person and let them appreciate it about you.
3 – STEAL IDEAS
Trust me, I do not encourage others to steal, but when it comes to relationships, I would seriously recommend stealing ideas form others who have loved in the past. Honestly, chocolates and flowers have zero originality these days, but they can still work. Thousands of lovers have gone for moonlit walks on the beach before you ever even met your love, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a wonderful time or a romantic evening if you do the same.
I can be pretty original and creative, and a few times I have thought up some amazing ways to express my love for my wife. There have been times when others have heard about these things and made comments like, “Well thanks for making the rest of us look bad!” I kindly pointed out that I only did those things for my wife, and their spouse may not even be aware of it. Since I wasn’t going to be doing the same for their spouse, they were free to steal my idea.
These days, we don’t need much creativity. There is a whole world of creative individuals sharing all sorts of wonderful ideas every day. If you struggle to come up with ideas of just want help brainstorming, do a quick search online or head to the library. There should be plenty of ideas to steal that will may you look like one romantic hero in the eyes of your lover.
4 – INVEST
Like many things, relationships are an investment. To have a relationship grow and develop, you need to interact. A relationship is more than just two bodies, it is two souls, and so physical interaction isn’t the main building block of a relationship.
For these souls to interact, a conversation must happen. The thoughts of the mind and the dreams of the heart cannot be expressed without a transfer of information. Conversation requires two things, time and talking. (I use “talking” here to express sharing information, though verbally speaking the words is not necessary, nor is it always possible.)
You will need to invest time to have conversation. As a relationship begins, there seems to be a great desire to spend time with the other person, so this may be very easy at first. However, over time the newness of the relationship fades and it is easy to get carried away with other things in life. The relationship will suffer if you are not making effort to invest time in your love. Some people even spell love T-I-M-E.
5 – INVESTIGATE
In the time and conversation that you invest in a relationship, your goal should be to truly get to know the other individual. Not all information is necessary to share, and different people have different levels of comfort, but there are certainly things that you should be able to learn about the person that you are in the relationship with.
The moment that you meet another person, it happens in the present. There is an entire past that the person lived up until that point. I am not advocating that you hire a private investigator to run a full background check on your lover, but I think that you have a job to investigate the person.
Simply put, to gain a level of trust and honesty, you should be the one trying to get to know them more. Using a third party to ask questions or do “research” is not wise in a lot of situations. When I use the term “investigate” here, I mean that you should be asking thought-provoking questions to peer deeper into the soul of the other person.
Not all questions need to be answered, but the more that you share back and forth, the more that you know and understand one another. The more questions that are asked, the more you can draw out of each other. If you really care about someone, make the effort to know them better.
6 – TWO EARS, ONE MOUTH
The most overlooked problem in most conversations is the lack of truly listening to the person speaking. Even when the “listener” is being quiet, too often they are just thinking about what they want to say rather than listening to what the other person is sharing.
I have found that there are times when @mama-pepper just wants to talk to me. In these moments, she just wants me to listen. Sometimes, she is not even sharing so that I can offer up a solution, she just wants to share.
Being quiet and listening to another can be difficult, even if you love the one talking. However, I believe that it is necessary. If you are going to learn about another person, you should listen to what they say. If you love them and they just want someone to talk to, shouldn’t you be willing to fulfill that need? After all, you don’t want them to look for others to fulfill their needs, do you?
In the art of listening, I would also highly recommend that you face the one talking and make eye contact too. This doesn’t work if you are cuddling on a couch, walking, or watching a sunset together, but in normal conversation, it can speak volumes.
It lets your love know that you are listening, that they are important to you, and that they have your undivided attention. To do otherwise can look distracted and selfish.
7 – HONESTY
Honestly, honesty is huge. Relationships built on lies eventually take more lies to maintain. Without honesty, trust is hard to come by. Once I had something in my past that I had never been honest about. However, I felt that it would be best to share with @mama-pepper, so that I could at least be honest with her. When I finally mustered the courage to share, she shared a similar story from her past.
Honesty can inspire honesty.
Obviously not every detail from your past is necessary to share, but as you interact, I’d recommend being honest. If a question comes up that you are not comfortable answering, then be honest about your lack of comfort.
Also, you should be able to confide in your significant other. If you are struggling with something, it may be better to let them know so that they can help you through it. Suffering or struggling alone is not wise when you have someone who could help you right there. If they truly love and care for you, they would most likely welcome the opportunity to help and be glad that you shared honestly. This has proven to be true in my marriage.
If you have an honest relationship, it is much easier to trust one another, and trust can be huge in a lasting relationship.
8 – TEMPTATION
If one relationship is to last, often it is necessary to prevent other relationships from starting. If you are promiscuous, it may be very hard to have a lasting relationship. Lust is not the same as love, and the more you lust for others, the harder it is to love the one you are with. An “open” relationship may sound like a good idea or a fun time, but there are several reasons to consider otherwise.
For one, there is only so much of each of us to go around, plus STDs are real. Also, jealousy is very hard to avoid in any relationship, and other men or other women will almost always stir up some sort of jealousy. It is very hard to build a lasting relationship when you cannot focus on that particular relationship.
Therefore, I’d recommend avoiding temptation. Far too often a new relationship will destroy an older relationship, so if a lasting life of love is what you are looking for, avoid temptations. It is harder to give in to temptations when you are making effort to avoid them.
Don’t look lustfully at others, don’t watch pornography, and even avoid being alone with others if you think you may be tempted. Desire and lust can be hard to have victory over, so you may want to plan ahead of time to try to avoid situations that encourage them.
Focus on the one that you are with, so that you can stay with them.
9 – PRE-MARRIAGE COUNSELLING
I know that this may be a foreign idea to many, but it sure helped us a lot. If you are planning to get married, I would strongly recommend it. If not, it may still be very worth your while.
Marriage counselling often happens when two people who used to be madly in love begin to have a lot of issues and desperately need intervention. Often, at this point, they are in danger of having their relationship destroyed and want help trying to repair the damage and make it through this difficult time.
Pre-marriage counselling is when two people who are in love are planning on entering a lasting relationship and commitment together. The purpose is to sort through a lot of potential issues ahead of time, before they become relationship-threatening problems.
I just think it is wiser to start avoiding the issues when you are still in love and the problems haven’t manifested themselves yet.
10 - A SOLID, MUTUAL FOUNDATION
This is probably overlooked more often than not, but I believe that it is the only reason that @mama-pepper and I still have a marriage. Ultimately, a marriage or relationship is a commitment, and there needs to be boundaries or guidelines.
When we come up with our own ideas, they change as we change. If we can find a higher set of guidelines to follow that do not change, then we will be setting ourselves up for success, as long as both people in the relationship adhere to them.
For us, we try to obey God’s plan for marriage. This means that divorce is not an option. This is wise for many reasons. For one, if we learn how to work through issues with one another, then we have that knowledge to apply next time there is an issue. If we quit when the going got tough, we would never learn certain life skills. In the next relationship, things would get tough again, with someone completely different, and we would have to quit again. I think that this is why some people wind up with many exes.
Because we serve a God of love, reconciliation, and forgiveness, we can apply that to our relationship and because of that we still have a relationship. Not only does He set the example, He helps us to follow His example too.
Everyone certainly has the freedom to choose how to have a relationship or who to have that relationship with. For years I had done the same. Personally, we just choose to devote ourselves to following God’s plan rather than our own, and we believe that there is much wisdom in doing so.
Ultimately, it is our individual commitment to Him that grants us success in our commitment to one another.
CONCLUSION
In the end, there is no “fool-proof” way to guarantee success in a relationship. Just having two individuals involved can be enough to make it extremely difficult, but so many other variables exist as well.
What I have shared are some of my personal thoughts on the subject, so take them for what they are worth.
In the end, I wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day and hope that your relationship lasts, whether you are in it already or not.
FULL STEEM AHEAD!
FOLLOW
The concrete relationship...awesome
Thank you!
I so appreciate what you've written here. I believe this extends beyond romantic love and into all of the important connections in our lives. People we care about deserve our time, investment, creativity, ect... Thank you for your words!
Thank you for the excellent comment!
Very wise words. I have been with my hubby for 32 years married 25 years , its a commitment we are both in for the long run.
Excellent to hear... keep it up so we don't catch up!
Thank you. To be honest we have both said there's nothing now that could split us we are to comfortable with each other and really couldn't handle all the hassle of divorcing. We have been through to much to get here
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