“The more connections you and your lover make, not just between your bodies, but between your minds, your hearts, and your souls, the more you will strengthen the fabric of your relationship, and the more real moments you will experience together.” Barbara De Angelis
What is the secret to healthy and long lasting relationships? What is LOVE, does it really exists? Can love last forever, and if so, why are there so many relationships that fail? Why are there so many unhappy and needy people that go from one “failed” relationship to another? Is there a shortage of love in the world? How many couples do you know that they are still in love by the time their hair turns gray?
The people who are in healthy couples who manage to keep their love flourishing have some lessons to teach us.
1. SEEK TO GIVE MORE THAN YOU SEEK TO GET
When they enter in a relationship, they do so because they want to share the best of them with the other person, and their main focus is to make the other person happy.
“Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something. They’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.” Anthony Robbins
2. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR PERSONAL HAPPINESS
These people are already happy on their own and because of that their love will last until the end of days. They don’t look for “salvation” when entering a new relationship, but rather they look for ways to make the other person happy, understanding that “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to their own. “ Robert Heinlein
3. AWARENESS
Awareness of the fact that there will be ups and downs, good days and bad days, and that in order for their LOVE to last, they need to invest time and effort in it. You can’t take your hand off the steering wheel and expect to end up in paradise.
4. COMMITMENT
They are committed to: “have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part” and if something gets “broken”, they don’t throw it away (and a lot of times is the other person who you want to “throw” away), they fix it.
5. HOW TO LOVE WITHOUT BEING NEEDY
And even though it may sound quite frightening, it’s not, for you want to be in a relationship with somebody who is aware of the fact that they are already whole and complete and they don’t need another human being in order for them to feel this way. Can you imagine all the pressure you put on your partner the moment you say that it’s their job to make you happy, and it’s their job to complete you?
“It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them.” Anthony Storr
6. RESPECT AND ACCEPTANCE
Respect and acceptance of the differences that exist between them, without trying to constantly change the other person, allowing them to be as they are.
“When men and women are able to respect and accept their differences then love has a chance to blossom.” John Gray
7. COMMUNICATION AND TRUST
Trust in the other person and in what they can achieve together as a couple and a very healthy way of communicating with one another.
“The fundamental glue that holds any relationship together is trust.” Brian Tracy
8. APPRECIATION
Appreciation of the differences and similarities that exist between them, appreciation of the work each and every one of them does and appreciation of who and what they are.
9. TEAMWORK
You know how a lot of couples, after their honeymoon stage they start to act like they are enemies? A lot of people do that, but not these people, for they understand that they are moving in the same direction and that they have the same goals and interests, and that they are part of the same team, and because of that, their love flourishes from one day to another.
“I’m here not because I am supposed to be here, or because I’m trapped here, but because I’d rather be with you than anywhere else in the world.” Richard Bach
10. SPACE
They understand the importance of having space in their relationship for they know that:“Space is a unifying field of awareness in which you meet the other person without the separative barriers created by conceptual thinking. And now the other person is no longer “other.” In that space, you are joined together as one awareness, one consciousness.” Echkart Tolle
11. SELF IMPROVEMENT AND SELF GROWTH
The people who are in strong, healthy and long lasting relationships are aware of the fact that: “When you struggle with your partner, you are struggling with yourself. Every fault you see in them touches a denied weakness in yourself.” Deepak Chopra
They take time to work on their own person, they take time to better themselves because they know that by doing so, by bettering themselves, their relationship will also improve.
12. FOCUS ON THE GOOD TRAITS OF THE OTHER PERSON INSTEAD OF THE BAD TRAITS
Focus on the good traits of the other person and not on the negative ones. They don’t focus on what the other person is not or on what they think might be missing from their relationship. These people are mature enough to understand that,“Problems in relationship occur because each person is concentrating on what is missing in the other person.” Wayne Dyer
13. NON-INTERFERENCE
They allow the other person to be as he/ she wants to be, without trying to control them, without trying to tell them what to think, what to believe and what to feel.
