Introduction
Intimate relationship is complicated, probably the most difficult and long-term endeavor we ever attempt. Think about it: we agree to live with, accept and love this other person every day, year after year for the whole of our lives! There are many ways it can go wrong and far fewer ways it can go right. When relationship flows smoothly, suffused with love and affection, it gives us a glimpse of heaven. When it gets dark, tangled and knotted, it’s a foretaste of hell.
If you are like me, you want workable ideas that come to mind when you need them most—like when you’re fighting or stuck in a rut. So the plan for this book is to make the suggested activities clear and realistic. They will not always be simple or easy, but that is to be expected given the subject matter.
In this book, I emphasize explicit attitudes and intentional behaviors, not feelings or reactions. Feelings are fickle; actions are actual. If you want your relationships to be different, then you need to do something different!
The core of the book resolves around three essential practices that create a harmonious, vibrant relationship: Sharing, Loving and Growing.
Sharing
Sharing our lives with another is the foundation of relationship. To flourish, our sharing has to be fair, balanced and openhanded in the allocation of tasks, chores and responsibilities. At a personal level, we commit to sharing our daily experiences, interests and activities. In order to create ever-deeper intimacy, we share sex, dreams, vulnerabilities and visions for the future.
True sharing is generous, appreciative and giving. It cannot be selfish, stingy or counting the cost. We share in order to express and expand our love for each other, to build a rich and stimulating life together.
Loving
Love is not simply an emotion, not just a pleasurable feeling; it is an all-embracing mindset, an enduring attitude that gives rise to particular kinds of actions. It matters less what we feel or say than who we are and what we do.
Saying I love you and being judgmental is not love. Having a warm fuzzy feeling during sex and only being concerned with our own pleasure is not love. A loving relationship creates a supportive atmosphere, a shared central core that sustains us and allows us to be who we are.
Love’s foundation is tolerance. It grows through accepting the other person—who they are and can become. Love blossoms with deep understanding of the true nature of our partner and an appreciation for their strengths and weaknesses. Love is like fertilizer: it helps both partners and the living relationship flourish and grow.
Growing
Growth is natural; stuckness is unnatural. If a relationship becomes stuck and stagnant, continually cycling around unresolved issues, it is not fully alive. Alternatively, when a couple commits to sharing and being more loving, the vicious circle of stuckness transforms into a spiral; expansive growth happens of its own accord.
Intimate relationships are challenging—the sandpaper that smoothes our sharp edges, the grit around which a pearl of luminescence forms. We need to recognize relationship as a living being with its own purpose and direction. Thus true relationship contains a mysterious potential to become a profoundly transformative journey.
When a person evolves and expresses their individuality more fully, they also become ever more deeply connected and compassionate. Through sharing and loving we grow closer to the one we love and also more truly ourselves.
How to Use this Book
Each section of Sharing, Loving and Growing contains a number of suggested activities intended to cultivate positive outcomes. Many of these involve both you and your partner, but some you can practice on your own. To start, it helps to skim the book and get a sense of how it is organized. Then approach the individual suggestions like a cookbook: you consult particular recipes and methods as they fit you and your relationship needs. All activities have a similar format:
- The Name of the activity
- The Reasons you might try it
- The Intention and explanation of that particular activity
- The Practice, including the most effective attitude
- The Options and adaptations you might try.
If, for instance you have concerns around chores or intimacy, then you consult activities from the Sharing section. To enhance and deepen your connection to each other, look through the Loving section. If your relation is generally secure but seems to have got stuck in a routine, try practices in the Growing section.
In general, it’s more useful to address sharing and loving before you work on growing, but feel free to experiment as you both feel inclined. Naturally, one partner may be more resistant to attempting a new attitude or behavior. If that’s so, try a few of the individual activities yourself. It helps for the most hesitant person to have first choice. Then take turns—a good way to practice sharing.
Things that help:
- Get on the same page and work on the relationship together
- Take time and create space to put the suggestions into practice
- Be considerate of each other’s style and pace: avoid pushing or resisting!
- Adjust the activities to your lifestyle and schedules
- Accept you won’t always get it right
- Keep it light—humor and laughter are great healers.
Things that don’t help:
- Trying to force each other to change
- Criticizing, stonewalling or attacking
- Getting bogged down in detail or trying too hard
- Attempting a suggestion when you are tired, grouchy or distracted
- Doing an exercise dutifully or by rote when your heart isn’t in it.
Enhancing and enriching your relationship is not meant to be drudgery. Take your time, discuss how this book can help you both, set aside time to experiment with the suggestions—and most of all enjoy doing the activities together. With some attention and effort, through sharing and loving your relationship will blossom and grow beyond anything you imagine.