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Making Love Last
Would you like to know the secrets of making love last? If you answer yes to this question, you may find the following very interesting.
Despite our incredible technological advances, our scientific knowledge and our material abundance, the one area that still provides the biggest challenge to so many of us is our Relationship with Love.
If we don’t have a partner we strive to find one who fits our criteria. If we have a partner we strive to sustain our relationships so that neither of us gets bored or complacent.
Challenge
From beginning to end, relationships are one challenge after another as we try to discover the skills we need for lasting love.
The first great truth is that all great relationships require work.
Contrary to popular belief it’s not love alone that makes a relationship work, it's how you are able to handle the conflicts and disagreements between you that will predict the sustainability of your partnership.
Research shows that the likelihood of relationship breakdown and divorce can be predicted by the way couples handle conflicts.
Language of Love
So the key is to learn constructive ways to handle the differences between you that can lead to relationship breakdown. We need to learn the ‘Language of Love’ and when to use it.
What I find really amazing is that we can learn foreign languages at school and even how to ‘talk’ to computers, but when it comes to our personal relationships we are not taught how know how to talk or listen to each other to get the results we desire.
The key to Lasting Love is knowing how to honestly communicate what you want your partner to know, without blame or judgement. I know that’s a pretty tall order when you are angry and upset. But that’s exactly the time when your relationships is at it biggest risk.
You’re just not listening!
Let's take Sam and Zoë. They met 3 years ago and have lived together for the past 6 months. At first it was fun.
They loved being together at the end of the day and the independence of their own home. In the past month though Sam had started to do less and less in the home and Zoë was gradually taking over most of the domestic chores.
Resentment
Her resentment was beginning to build and she was feeling overburdened and unsupported. Arguments had started about who worked the hardest and words like ‘nagging wife’ and ‘couch potato’ had started to creep in to their vocabulary. There was trouble brewing in paradise.
What about Ella and Joe? Both of them have been in relationships before. Ella had been married and Joe was in a long-term partnership. Once again, all started well.
Lately Ella has been quiet and withdrawn and Joe doesn’t know what the matter is. He doesn’t want to pressurise her because he knows her ‘ex’ was controlling and pushy. They lapse into silence. They can spend many hours saying almost nothing. Their relationship is uncertain.
Then there’s Nicole and Dan. Dan adores Nicole. Whenever Nicole has a ‘problem’, Dan suggests everything he can think of to solve it for her to make her feel better.
Isn’t that caring of him? Nicole doesn’t think so.
She says that Dan does not ‘really listen’ to her.
Dan says of course he listens, otherwise how could he come up with suggestions for helping her. That makes Nicole even more frustrated. And so it goes on.
Communication
Unless you have the specific communication skills necessary to articulate your ‘rules’ in relationship, these kinds of mis-communications will always lead to frustration and conflict.
The skill of listening so your partner will talk and talking so you partner can listen is not a difficult one. However, it is one that requires practise, and there are guidelines for when to use the methods.
At our Relationship SOS workshop, I will reveal the miracle communication skills needed to make love last. You’ll learn exactly how to speak so your partner will listen and listen so your partner will speak. How useful would that be?
Are you making love last?
Just to give you a taste of what we will be covering, I’d like to pose some questions to you:
- Do you want to be right, or do you want to be in relationship?
If you want to be right, that probably means you will stand your ground and hold on to your point of view.
It’s very important that your love mate gets exactly what you are saying and concedes that he/she is wrong. However, how does that stance benefit your relationship?
When relationships become competitive and one person has to win whilst another loses, my suspicion is that there is an underlying truth that is not being expressed. Something to think about!
- Do you have to concede that you are wrong?
No you certainly don’t. But you do have to know exactly how to express yourself in a non-blameful or judgemental way that will make your partners ears fall off and stop listening to you.
- What should you allow in relationship?
Is it ok if the bathroom is in a mess when you want to use it and does that have the same importance for you as squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle?
You need to decide what’s an appropriate reaction to what happens in your relationship. If you fly off the handle over every single thing that annoys you in exactly the same way, tone and volume, your believability quota decreases. Once again, your partner will stop listening.
We all have rules in relationship, but the key is to have as few as possible.
Think about what frustrates you the most and tell your love what impact their behaviour has on you. If you do it properly, your love will realise how important this is to you and try their best to change.
- Who does what in the relationship?
How do you create equality in relationship and what does equality mean to you any way? There is a way to do this so that you can create a win-win situation for both of you.
Take a moment to think about how you do this right now. Do you have equality in your relationship? If so what does that look like and what happens that lets you know its equal?
- What did you learn from you parents about being in relationship?
What did you see when you were growing up? Many of us have uncomfortable, even painful memories of what relationship looked like to us as children.
Some of us have joyous, wonderful memories of growing up in our families. The question is, does what you experienced when you were a child replicate itself in your relationships as an adult?
Beliefs
Take a close look and notice what beliefs and rules dictate your relationships maybe as much as 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years later. Do you run your relationships in alignment with your own rules and values or are they still run on the same tracks you saw as a very young child.
Grown up relationships require grown up thinking. You can't run an adult relationship with childish beliefs. Something else to think about!
Relationship SOS is beneficial to anyone who is looking for a relationship is in a relationship or is deciding whether to stay or leave a relationship. Come and learn the truth about Relationships.
Find out what makes it work for you, what it makes it work for your partner and what can make it last forever. Relationship SOS reveals the Secrets of Successful Relationships, so that you can make Valentines Day last throughout the year.
