Keeping a Relationship

It's best to wait for the one you want than settle for the one available. Best to wait for the one you love than one who's around. Best to wait for the right one because life's too short to be wasted on just someone. "An African proverb states, "Before you get married, keep both eyes open, and after you marry, close one eye." Before you get involved and make a commitment to someone, don't let lust, desperation, immaturity, ignorance, pressure from others or a low self-esteem make you blind to warning signs. Keep your eyes open, and don't fool yourself that you can change someone or that what you see as faults aren't really that important. Once you decide to commit to someone, overtime, their flaws, vulnerabilities, pet peeves, and differences will become more obvious. If you love your mate and want the relationship to grow and evolve, you've got to learn how to close one eye and not let every little thing bother you. You and your mate have many different expectations, emotional needs, values, dreams, weaknesses, and strengths. You are two unique individual children of God who have decided to share a life together. Neither one of you are perfect, but are you perfect for each other? Do you bring out the best in each other? Do you compliment and compromise with each other, or do you compete, compare and control? What do you bring to the relationship? Do you bring past relationships, past hurt, past mistrust, past pain? You can't take someone to the altar to alter them. You can't make someone love you or make someone stay.
If you develop self-esteem, spiritual discernment, and "a life" you won't find yourself making someone else responsible for your happiness or responsible for your pain. Manipulation, control, jealousy, neediness, and selfishness are not the ingredients of a thriving, healthy, loving and lasting relationship. Seeking status, sex, and security are the wrong reasons to be in a relationship.

What keeps a relationship strong?
- communication
- intimacy
- a sense of humor
- sharing household tasks
- some getaway time without business or children
- daily exchanges (a meal, shared activity, a hug, a call, a touch, a note)
- sharing common goals and interests
- giving each other space to grow without feeling insecure
- giving each other a sense of belonging and assurances of
- asking God to be the center of your relationship

If these qualities are missing, the relationship will erode as resentment, withdrawal, abuse, neglect, dishonesty and pain replace the passion.

As long as we have memories, yesterday remains As long as we have hope, tomorrow awaits As long as we have friendship, today is beautiful."

Love is when you take away the feeling, the passion, and the romance in
a Relationship and find out that you still care for that person.

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"Love at First Sight" Thing

Do you believe in “love at first sight”? If someone’s going to ask me this kind question, I will definitely say “yes!” Why? Well, maybe because I am a hopeless romantic person and a romance novel addict. I do watch movies too, which happen to have that theme and I think it’s not bad if you fall in love for the first time you laid your eyes on a person. Why, if you have that what we call chemistry, why are you going to ignore it?

A recent study showed that the first few minutes (10 minutes below) of meeting someone has a huge influence on the course the relationship will ultimately take. Romantic relationships begin with people making judgments very quickly. Well, things do happen and if you believe in miracles then you probably believe in this saying too.

If you want to rev up your “first site” vibe and add a little spice to that few minutes, the following tips maybe can help:
1. Wear red or blue. For women who want to create an on-the-spot thrill, wearing red is the way to go. According to color experts, red is the most stimulating color you can wear. In fact, wearing or seeing red actually increases blood flow and mimics attraction.
If you’re a guy, your best bet is to go true blue. Beatrice Eiseman, Director of the Pantone Color Institute, says women are attracted to men wearing the color blue. She explains that guys who frequently wear blue are “stable, faithful and always there”. (aha, I will look for a guy wearing blue..lol)
2. Smile. Psychology and body language experts agree that smiling is one of the fastest and best ways to make you more attractive and approachable. It’s not necessary to look like you’re trying out for “Ms. Close Up Smile” but just your usual “I’m happy to be here and I’m having a fantastic time” face will do a trick. (So guys, just smile.. :))
3. Instant Chemistry. A study at the University of Chicago has shown that men associate the scents of cinnamon and vanilla with love. To kick-start your allure, women can wear a cinnamon-vanilla scented lotion or perfume. Wearing a cinnamon/vanilla blends increases the presence of pheromone-like substances and dramatically increases attraction. (i will start looking for this cinnamon/vanilla scents)

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Choosing your Relationship Battle

Learn how to tell what’s worth fighting for and what isn’t in a relationship.
1. Say No to Nagging
Picking at every little thing he does kills good communication. A partner may tend to “turn-off” and stop listening if you are constantly nagging him about little things. This means when there is more important thing to discuss, such as you always being the butt of his jokes at dinner parties, he may not listen.
Nagging is repetitive and generally one-sided, while a constructive discussion takes into consideration the feelings and thoughts of both parties. While you may not necessarily agree, there is more chance for a respectful outcome.
If you are constantly picking at little things, bigger issues in your relationship may take a back seat. The listener stops listening and will either block out the criticism or become angry and defensive so the interaction is hurtful.
2. Focus on the Big Issues
Experts say the major issues between couples tend to be about trust, finances, sex, child rearing and relatives. With good communication these issues can be worked through. It will take effort and guts on your part to bring them up, but if you want a happy and healthy relationship, there is no other choice than to dive in and get to the partner about one or two things, ask yourself if there are deeper issues fueling your frustration and if so, find a way to resolve them. On the other hand, as issue may seem trivial to him, but is a major thorn in your side. The key is to respect each other’s perspective on all issues and find a mutually satisfying way to resolve them.
3. Talk the talk
If you let the small stuff trump the bigger issues in your relationship, the bigger issues will eventually come back to haunt you. This means you need to talk about them. Buried resentments and disappointments wear away at the foundation of a relationship and after a period of time, a couple may give up and grow apart due to lack of understanding and closeness. Hearing the feelings of your partner and airing differences in a relationship are important to the health of the partnership. No two people are ever completely alike and need to be able to express what they feel and what they think.
4.Timing is everything
It’s all about timing when it comes to deciding to share annoyances with your partner. For example, it’s a good idea to save a talk about household issues, such as his lack of interest in dirty dishes, when he’s most likely to be receptive.
A bigger problem, such as the habit of interrupting you while you’re talking is something that can hamper successful communication and should be worked on early in a relationship. Don’t let the important issues fall by the wayside, flag them for discussion as soon as you feel hurt or upset so the issue doesn’t worsen.
source: women's journal

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Love Snippets

Show you care

Fragile. Handle with care.
That's the sign on everyone of our relationships. Our friends. Our romantic partners. Our work colleagues.
Relationships are fragile,as misunderstandings and bruised egos can easily break them. Just the lack of handling with care can signal to somebody that you do not care and call into question the value of the relationship.
Show you care. That's the top job in any relationship. Say it. Show it. Do it.

Love Power
Is there anything more powerful than your heart? When we love, we can move to defy terrors that would otherwise make us runaway. There is no force as powerful as love.
The best part is that we have infinite amounts of love to give and there is enough for everyone, as long as we choose to love.

Praise Loudly, Blame Softly
Whether you are a spouse or a supervisor, a friend or a colleague, praise is always most effective when shouted from the tops of the trees. A person likes to be praised, but even more, he likes others to know what impressive thing he has done. And he'll do more if he values the praise.
Regardless of your relationship with a person, blaming softly is more effective. If you raise the stakes by making a spectacle of a person's errors, you will only make him hate you and perhaps seek revenge.
And most likely you will not inspire him to correct the mistake and do better next time. A quiet word just might move him to avoid future errors...especially if he sees how loudly he might be praised if he gets it right.

source: woman's journal

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When to Trust Your Intuition and When to Doubt It?

Your brain is telling you he's hot and available, but your gut is urging you to run in the opposite direction. Which will it be? You can, in fact, trust your gut with the big choices, but your rational mind has its strengths as well. This handy guide shows exactly when your heart or your mind should have the upper hand.

You should go with your gut when you're:
**Making a Moral Decision
If you're good friends with a married couple and one of them is having an affair, do you tell the other spouse? "Moral judgments are a combination of intuitive gut reactions and reflection. Without your gut, you'd make arbitrary decisions", says Fiery Cushman, Ph.D., a researcher at Harvard University.
Strategy: When faced with a moral conundrum, weigh the practical facts but heed your inner monologue for the right decision.
**Second Guessing your Doctor
Doctors often overlook symptoms that don't fit with the usual model of a disease and often dismiss fears as paranoia, especially in healthy young men, says John Amory, M.D., an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington.
Strategy: You're the only person who can "listen" to your body. If it's telling you something lurking, Dr. Amory recommends finding a specialist outside your primary doctor's group. It just may save your life.
**Playing a Game
In a Michigan State University study, expert chess players performed as well in "blitz chess" (a 5-minute version of chess) as they did in the traditional game. The takeaway: Over analyzing won't improve your performance.
Strategy: On a test or in a game, the choice that feels right is often correct, says Paul Slovic, Ph.D., president of Decision Research, a nonprofit group that studies human judgment and risk analysis. "That feeling you have is your intuition checking up on your analytic thinking".

You should go with your brain when you're:
**Hiring a Job Candidate
If the potential hire is agreeable and funny, your instincts are wired to choose him over an aloof candidate who's more qualified, says David Myers, Ph.D., author of "Intuition".
Strategy: You can't completely avoid your impression bias, but you can control it with structured interviews. Set questions and scaled ratings are three times better at predicting on-the-job success than informal talks, according to a study in Psychological Bulletin.
**Investing
When it comes to money, your gut is often influenced by the herd mentally, says Myers. Take equity funds backed by sub prime loans. By definition,these are investments in borrowers who are poor risks, yet plenty of people raced to buy in-and now they're paying for it.
Strategy: Reason and analysis should guide most of your investing, leaving only a small window for hunches (economists agree some intuition is wise). But ignore the frenzied pack-and all things sub prime.
**Judging his Sincerity
You want to believe him when he says he'll never cheat on you again. But studies show that past performance is the best predictor of future behavior, despite what your gut is telling you.
Strategy: When a flaky friend asks for yet another loan or man says he's done playing the field, pack up and walk away. Your intuition to trust them in the past was faulty, so fight your gut and don't repeat the mistake, says Gary Klein,Ph.D., author of "The Power of Intuition".
Source: Woman's Journal

So what do you think? Trust your Gut or Use your Head?

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