Mixed Emotions

My sunny days aren’t always sunny—there’s a cloud overhead. 

My joyful days aren’t always joyous—there a sadness that’s felt.

My loving days aren’t always loving—there is anger in my heart. 

My easy days aren’t always easy—life makes them hard. 

My beautiful days aren’t always beautiful—there is ugliness that’s real.  

My healthy days aren’t always healthy—there’s a sickness I feel. 

My stable days aren’t always stable—there’s turmoil within. 

My perfect days aren’t always perfect—there are flaws that come in.

But through the clouds, the sadness, anger and difficulty; through the ugliness, sickness, turmoil and flaws, there is still hope, still care and still adoration for you. 

The clouds last for a moment and then disperse to reveal the beautiful sunlight.  The sadness is fleeting and uncovers the deep affection and joy. The anger is momentary, but unearths the passion and love. Life is sometimes hard, but enables appreciation of the ease. The ugliness is temporary and builds the beauty that is permanent. The sickness comes on quickly and also leaves quickly to facilitate the health. The turmoil is inevitable and makes the stable days fresh. The flaws are expected, but make the perfection a goal!

The negativity that may come in from time to time only makes me more appreciative of the care, respect and admiration that are a constant cord running through the core of our relationship. 

“…Sometimes you have to go through the pain to experience the joy…”

The Language of Love

What is your language of love? How do you communicate love to your partner? 

My boyfriend and I are trying to figure out the answer to that question right now. I’ve always thought I liked to receive love through words of affirmation—I like to hear "I love you" and like to hear sweet things. However, because of the nature of our relationship, love is only being expressed through words and I’m now feeling as if I want to receive love in other ways as well. 

Conversely, my boyfriend likes to receive love through physical touch, so when we are unable to be around each other, he doesn’t feel as loved. So in order to receive the love he needs, he puts more emphasis on words of affirmation.  Then, when we are able to be around each other, he seemingly overcompensates on the physical touch in an attempt to make up for the weeks of no touch he has received. 

So in the beginning of our relationship, we were giving and receiving love in the same language—words of affirmation.  However, as the weeks and months have gone on, I’m no longer as satisfied with just words and also am yearning for the quality time. I need to know I am a priority in his life—not just because he says it, but because he shows it. Therefore, since this language shift has occurred, I find that there is more tension between the two of us because he wants me to continue to express my love through words and expressions, and I want him to express his love through giving of time. I want him to schedule time in the evenings for us to talk on the phone, I want him to randomly come visit me one weekend and I want him to find things that we can do over the phone to better connect with each other. I know that he cares and loves me, but I just need it demonstrated outside of the traditional way.

The languages of love are simple to understand, but complicated to execute.  But when couples are communicating love and affection in the same way, it does elevate the status and meaning of the relationship and better allows a couple to grow together rather than apart.

So what is your language of love?

Putting the Spark Back Into Your Relationship

What’s the key to keeping the spark in a relationship? When the honeymoon phase is over, how do you ensure the passion remains?

When relationships transform from leisure into work, a shift occurs within the dynamics of the couple’s interactions where they start to become complacent and bored. They are not turned on as easily as before—they fall into the “danger zone” called status quo.

When you are in the “danger zone,” the way your man touches you or tries to tickle you, is annoying instead of cute. When you’re in the “danger zone,” the random, erratic way your man breathes when he sleeps is irritating instead of endearing. When you are in the “danger zone,” the cute little things you used to do to get your man’s attention just seem like overkill now.

The “danger zone” is ridden with eroding relationships, dissatisfied couples and jaded individuals. The “danger zone” is a place of forced acceptance of your reality.

When I come in contact with couples in the dreaded zone, I am saddened. I am saddened because here are two individuals who were once in love, but have let life get in the way of like. They have fallen into the trap of thinking lack of affection, lack of communication, lack of passion, lack of spontaneity and lack of intimacy are just the natural evolutions of relationships. But, really, those things are present in a relationship that has been taken for granted. When couples begin to assume the other will always be around or assume they don’t have to do anything extra anymore since they are married, or assume that the passion doesn’t need to be there as long as the love is there; that’s when they may begin assuming the title of “ex.” 

Couples need to start working toward a healthy relationship to enhance the love instead of letting an unhealthy relationship erode the love. 

Reflections of You

It’s days like this that I want to be near you. It’s days like this that I want to be close to you, in your arms, holding you close. It’s days like this that I can hardly bear our current situation and wish we lived near each other. Days like this…

Days like today—cold, rainy, dreary, quiet—are days that you want to cuddle up to the one you love; cuddled up, under a blank, the only sounds being the pitter patters of your heartbeats and of the rain hitting the ground.

Days like this make you start thinking, wondering about the world. Something about the outside world being grayed out makes you become very introspective. Our world has so many distractions, so many stimuli that the senses are attracted to; but when those outside distractions are masked by rainfall and gray skies, it allows the mind to turn inward. 

So today—I’m deep in thought. I'm thinking about my life and what makes me the happiest. I’m thinking about love and what makes it work. I’m thinking about loss and what makes people recover. 

I’m thinking about my boyfriend and how he and I can love fully and completely with no boundaries or limitations. Days like today make me want to live my “happily ever after” with him right now. 

I look outside and it looks as if the earth is mourning. The sky is gray, the trees are drooping, the ground is soggy, the birds are hiding. The way the raindrops hit the window and run down the glass show me that the world is also longing for something. Days like today make me feel sorrowful.

I look outside; no children are playing, no people are walking, barely any cars on the road. There are no birds dancing in the sky, no insects scooting along the ground, no butterflies fluttering in the air. Days like today make me feel lonely.

It’s days like today that I want to be near the man I love, so he can calm my pensive mind, dry my weeping eyes, and console my lonely heart. 

Days like today…make me want you!

Marriage: What Are We Waiting For?

I was talking with my grandparents last night, and we were discussing how it seems the current trend is to get married at much older ages than back in their time.  They were saying that men need to step up to the plate and stop waiting for the perfect time to get married because that “perfect” time will never come.  There are always going to be money constraints, there are always going to be problems at your job, there are always going to be issues with your family—so if you are waiting for those things to go away or get better, you will be waiting for a while.

Now this perspective is coming from two people who were married at very young ages, 19 and 21, respectively. My grandma didn’t have anything to bring to the table and my grandfather didn’t expect her to. My grandma also wasn’t looking for my grandfather to be rich; she was just looking for someone with stability. They were each looking for someone who would be a good man of the house and mother for the children—and they found that in each other.

Today, that just doesn’t seem like enough—it doesn’t seem like enough to be a wonderful mom, you also must have money or interests of your own. It doesn’t seem like enough to be the bread winner; you must also be a caring and supportive friend. Where we’ve evolved as a society, seems to be toward the “better,” but it begs the question: why are people still getting divorced so much if people are waiting for the perfect relationships? Maybe we are looking for the wrong things? Is our constant striving for perfection hindering our need to be or feel settled? 

Maybe waiting for perfection to get married or getting divorced because you don’t have perfection is a negative consequence of the current societal trend.  Our current society tells us that we can have the world, we can do it all and we cannot settle for anything else that excellence. All these things are wonderful attitudes to have, but they may be giving us a warped perspective of what a good relationship should be. 

Should we continue to wait for the perfect situation before we get married or should we do like my grandparents did and not strive for perfection, but strive for permanence?

The Power of Love

Love truly is powerful—it can make you do things that are seemingly out of character for you. Love can transform your mood or perspective on life. Love can encourage you, motivate you and persuade you. Love can put a rosy outlook on a bad situation. 

Love can do many things…but what Love cannot do is take away the little things that annoy you. Love can mask those little things for awhile, try to pretend like those little annoyances do not exist; but it cannot eliminate them completely.  And unfortunately, the one you love the most ends up being the one that can get you to that “annoyed” state the quickest. 

My boyfriend’s ANNOYING QUALITY OF THE WEEK is that he refuses to get a new cell phone charger. A couple months back, he misplaced his phone charger and has been using his car charger to charge his phone battery. Normally, I wouldn’t get upset over such a minor detail because at least he still has a method by which to charge his phone (i.e. the car); HOWEVER, it’s not that simple because his lack of a wall charger is impacting our relationship. It all came to a head one night when I thought he must be dead:

I’m sitting at home Wednesday evening watching TV when I get a text from my boyfriend saying he is on his way home and will call me within the hour. One hour goes by—no call. Thirty more minutes, still nothing. I don’t worry about it because I just figured it was taking him a bit longer than he expected to get home. Two hours now have gone by and I decide to text him: “Where are you”?  No response. Texts, calls, more texts—no response. At this point, 2 hours and 37 minutes go by and I’m thinking the worse.  Did something happen? Did he get in an accident? I hope he is okay. God, please let him by okay. Somewhere in the midst of worrying I fall asleep on the couch and am awaken at 3 in the morning by a phone call. My boyfriend is on the other line apologizing. I’m sorry, blah blah blah. I accidentally let my phone on the charger in my car and fell asleep.

So…all this time I’m thinking something awful has happened to him and he was just charging his phone! I was SUPER annoyed…and still am a little bit…

Clearly I still love him and my feelings for him have not changed. BUT my love for him was not able to overcome the extreme level of annoyance I had in that instance. 

Love is powerful—but not powerful enough!

Realizing Purpose Before Letting "The One" Slip Away

It’s funny how people pop into your life—some are just supposed to be around for a moment; either to teach you a lesson or inspire you. Others stay around for a lifetime, constantly teaching you, inspiring you, motivating you, and energizing you.

…The difficulty is discerning those people who were meant for a moment in time versus those who were meant for the entire journey…

When my boyfriend and I first broke up, I spent many weeks and months trying to convince myself that he and I weren’t “supposed” to be together and that my fantasies of “happily ever after” with him must have been a mistake, a lapse in judgment. I did not have much ammunition to use to attempt to convince myself of this truth except for the fact (or the reality I should say) that we were not together anymore. If we were no longer dating, how could he possibly be “the one” for me? 

As I was trying to persuade myself that he was not the man for me, that there were other men more compatible, that I would find another love, conflicting feelings and thoughts were creeping in telling me otherwise:

I feel guilty—guilty for even looking at another man. Why? We aren’t together anymore, yet I still have that feeling of being taken. My heart is taken. I could find 50 other guys attractive, but at the end of the day, I only see one man. One man that if he wanted to get back together, wanted to start over again, I would come running. I would, without hesitation, go running back to this man because I still love him!

It was those feelings that kept resurfacing during the 1 ½ years that we were broken up that told me that our ending hadn’t been written yet. We were still in the first act and the breakup just represented an obstacle on our journey toward resolving our personal problems. 

During the time we’ve known each other, we have been best friends. We have very similar interests; while at the same time, have differing personality traits. These seemingly “conflicting” traits actually serve as fuel to propel us toward being the best versions of ourselves—where I lack, he shines and vice versa. It’s these things that assure me he is a “lifer”—he serves a purpose for my life. A moment in time wouldn’t be enough time for him to educate and encourage me to the extent to which I know he is capable of doing.  

I truly thank God that we were able to realize our purpose in each other’s lives before we inadvertently cut off a blessing that was meant for a lifetime!