Lasting romance

In their heart no one ever grows older than seventeen

Cherish your love

“I love you with all my heart and I know I can not possess you. We build a life together and I know you are not mine the way my car belongs to me. I cherish all the happy and sad moments we spend together, the thicks and thins we go through side-by-side. Thank you for putting up with my flaws and shortcomings. Thank you for sharing your journey through life with me. I am grateful you choose me over other eligible singles who are smarter, stronger, prettier, wealthier, and saner than I am.”

Tenderness

Let us remain young children to each other in our relationship. We will continue to work, play, laugh, cry, eat, sleep, and do housekeeping together, and we make each other mad sometimes. We will not carry in our hearts anger, resentment, hatred, malice, blame, or shame toward one another. Let us keep our hearts young and tender to each other as we grow older, lest they grow old hardened with bitterness with the passing years.

Let us not grow apart, instead, let us grow together with new adventures, discoveries, and new challenges. We will go on learning from one another so that we will grow to treasure our differences.

Life is a river that flows toward the future with the steps of time. We are all little rafts carried forward by the current, along the way we see changing landscapes and sceneries, some are exquisite, others frightening. Everything changes with time, so are we and our relationship. We can not hold back time, or resist change, it is wise to nurture our relationship such that it will thrive with changes instead of withering away.

Lost and found

Once upon a time…

A husband began to sense that his wife was slowly drifting apart, and there were no real sign of trouble to address, or problems to solve. He bought a notebook, and made a habit of writing down one thing he loved about his wife each day for 365 days in a row. By the end of this time, he gift-wrapped the notebook and presented to his wife as a gift on her birthday. She took time to read it, then cried, and told him it was the best birthday present she has ever received. Their love for each other grew stronger eversince.

Once upon another time…

A man asked his wife for a divorce because he had grown unhappy and no longer felt the love he had had for her in the early years of their marriage. His wife asked him to carry her in his arms to the front door every morning he went to work. She promised to sign the divorce contract in two-week time. They rekindled their love for each other during this two weeks, and the husband tossed out his divorce plan.

Forgive me, I know better now

Strive to be anthropologists to learn to know one another with an open heart and an open mind without making judgements or comparisons with your values and beliefs. There is an old saying, “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” We can observe that the trash and the treasure are two perceptions of the same object that remains unchanged from one hand to another. We attach personal values to an object, event, or person arbitrarily and artificially that has nothing to do with the reality of their being. Shakespeare said it well, “Nothing is either good or bad, thinking make it so.” In practice, we are often inclined and encouraged by society’s standards to set out to change reality to conform to the collective values and beliefs. Our worth in the eyes of others is measured by this accomplishment. We rely on these values and beliefs as guidelines and guardrails to function in society and to navigate through life. With time and with almost everyone around practicing the same values and beliefs, they become our identity, we forget they are just made-up ideas: good or bad, right or wrong, sound or insane. Anyone who does not adhere to this common sense is, in our eyes, unattractive, irrational, unreasonable, stupid, or wrong.

The clashes between two different value and belief systems, and the habits and routines built upon them, are a common source of pains and struggles that wear a relationship thin and drive love away. Each person’s values and beliefs are the sum of their personal experiences in life. Each person has a unique experience of life, therefore, a unique set of values and beliefs that naturally lead to disagreements in every relationship. A poet once said, “The saddest thing in life is when love goes away.” It is a tragedy when one or both partners choose to hold on to their values while letting go of their relationship with one another.

What if we let go of our made-up values instead of our relationship?

Intimacy in a couple is a space that transcends the partners’ values and beliefs and the identities we build upon them. In intimacy, partners look deep into one another to see their partner’s nature in its raw nakedness like the way we look at a naked baby. We look at one another with an open heart, with complete attention while holding no thought in our mind.

In short, in couple relationships, our thinking and ideas often work to cause us pain and suffering, even when we are proven to be right beyond any doubt. Love lives in a higher dimension beyond right and wrong—each relationship is a unique masterpiece jointly created by the couple’s creativity and imagination.

For rainy days in Paradise

All couples fight where the intensity could range from silent treatment to thermonuclear that brings down the house literally. Fighting well is when issues are overcome and love re-emerges unscattered, unwavering. I learned recently from a podcast by the popular relationship therapist Esther Perel, an effective technique that helps to cool down the heat, and de-esclate conflicts in a fight: the couple would lie down next to each other and continue the conversation. Esther Perel explained that humans are physiologically unable to fight in a lie-down position. One more addition to your toolkit, I have thought of another technique that would help this arena (pun intended) — to establish in advance a rule of engagement which mandates the couple must hold hand throughout the heated debate, and not-to-let-go until they talk things out. As the couple navigates through the stormy water, this serves as a subtle reminder and reassuranc of their love, the bond of their lives, that they are not alone, they have each other’s back, and will overcome this temporary obstacle together for better, for worse. Caution: these two practices only work in “low to medium temperatures”, when the heat reaches a boiling point such as rage or violence, it would be wise to physically remove oneself from the premise.

Incomplete

This theme song, “Never enough,” from the musical film “The Greaterst Showman,” says it beautifully and movingly that even with great wealth and fame, life feels incomplete to anyone who does not carry love in their heart.

Recommendation: share this song with your Special One—I guarantee it will earn you bonus points in your S.O.’s heart.