“How do you live your Life”?

How do you live your life? Do you proactively make the most of your talents and seek out fulfilling experiences and relationships? Or is your focus on avoiding pain, confrontation and embarrassment—in other words, making yourself as small a target as possible so the world won’t shoot you down?

Putting yourself out there can be unsettling, but it feels worse to wonder what might have been.

Are you giving yourself the chance to be your best and to experience all that you can? Or are you living a miniature life? Here are five signs you’re living too small for your inherent bigness:

1. You wait to be asked …

… to speak in the meeting, to go to the movies, to join the conversation at a party, to share your opinion. You find difficult putting yourself forward; What if you speak up and say something stupid? What if you ask someone to the movies and they say no? Better to sit back and wait until someone begs you to join in. That way, if things go wrong, you can say, “Hey, it wasn’t my idea.”

The reality: If you wait to be asked, the invitation may never come. Yes, that might mean you sometimes avoid embarrassment, but it also means you are going to miss chances to grow, learn, and just have fun.

2. You’ll do anything to avoid confrontation.

No matter how big or legitimate your complaint, you can’t bring yourself to actually confront a person with your grievance. What if they get mad? What if they come up with some complaints about you in return? Instead, you live with the problem, and complain about your boss to your spouse, about your spouse to your friend, and about your friend to your sister, etc.

The reality: It can be hard to stand up for yourself, but doing so in a diplomatic way is more respectful to everyone involved than venting behind someone’s back. It’s also your best hope for bringing about real change. Give the person a chance to make things better or explain. You will both be better off for it.

3. You make room for the little stuff in your life before the big.

Life seems full of minutia—errands, chores, email, to-do lists. But despite all the busyness, it doesn’t seem to add up to much at the end of the day. You often feel as though you’re missing the big picture.

The reality: The oft-told story of the rocks in the jar applies here: If you put the little stuff in the jar first—the pebbles and the sand—you won’t have room for the rocks. But add the rocks first—the important things, such as family, health, faith and relationships—and the pebbles and the sand can be worked into the empty spaces. The point is not that there’s a way to squeeze everything into your life, but you should prioritize the things that really matter.

4. Criticism lays you low rather than helping you grow.

When discouraging words come your way, you see it as confirmation of what you suspected all along—I’m a loser. And it doesn’t even need to be words. A single disgusted look can make you wither. That’s why you wear a heavy coat of armor whenever you deal with people, whether at home, at work, or out in the world. You are eternally, exhaustingly, braced for attack.

The reality: People usually mean a lot less by their criticism than we hear. Pay attention to your reaction the next time you are at the receiving end of a negative comment. Does your pulse race, does your face go red, or are you hearing the outraged or anguished commentary in your head rather than really listening to what the person is saying? Try to stop yourself and listen as though you were taking notes for another person. Is the criticism valid? Is there something to learn from it? If so, great! You’ve had a positive experience, albeit a painful one. If not, say, “I see your point but I disagree, and here’s why.” Then move on.

5. You plan more than you produce.

You have ideas, maybe lots of them. You spend hours, weeks, months, even years thinking about them, planning them, and examining the pros and cons from all angles. But when push comes to shove, you find a million reasons not to do them. They probably won’t work anyway, you tell yourself. And what if you put your heart and soul into one of these projects and then it’s met with ridicule or, even worse, silence? Better to wait until everything is perfect.

The reality: Yes, it would hurt if your brainchild were met with indifference or derision, but what’s the alternative? Never taking a chance? Never seeing what you can really do? Stripping away the layers of creativity until all that’s left is an inoffensive shell? Perfection is an illusion, of course, and virtually every success story is preceded by a string of failures, sometimes spectacular. Be willing to have your own. Even if nothing turns out as you planned, you’ll learn plenty about what to do next time. At the very least, you’ll be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, “I gave it my best shot.”

“Casual Sex”

The phase between puberty and entry into marriage getting ever wider, as more “emerging adults” are turning to casual encounters as a way to express and satisfy their sexual needs. On one hand where Hookups are part of a popular cultural shift that has infiltrated the lives of emerging adults throughout the Westernised world, but on the other hand hookups pose a significant threat to the physical and psychological health of these young individuals.

In addition to the known risks of contracting STDs, developing unwanted pregnancies, or otherwise assaulted, people who engage in casual sex may suffer emotional consequences that persist long after the details of an encounter are a dim memory. In college life, where brief sexual liaisons are prevalent, unanticipated results can jeopardise a student’s career. In the workplace, the results can be just as disastrous, if not more so.

Despite our 21st-century reality, many of our social norms remain tied to 20th-century sensibilities. The old double standard still looks down on women, but either glorifies or fails to blame men who make a habit of having frequent, uncommitted sex. One common notion is there may be a biological basis to the greater acceptance of casual sex among men, but there’s no way to separate biology from sociocultural influences given that the two are so tightly intertwined—and will forever remain so.

Setting aside the issue of gender differences for the moment, what do we know about those unintended emotional consequences of short-term sexual liaisons?

There are plenty, For one, there’s the discomfort factor. Despite of western culture and living style which says hookups are okay, if not desirable, people may still feel that they’ve done something that violates their own internal standards. Feeling perhaps pressured to get involved because “everyone else is,” they may develop performance anxiety, ironically setting the stage for future sexual dysfunction. Other common reactions include regret, disappointment, confusion, embarrassment, guilt, and low self-esteem, although other individuals certainly report feeling proud, nervous, excited, and desirable or wanted. (Feelings tended to be more positive before and during a hookup, and more negative afterward.)

It’s difficult enough to conduct research on sexual behaviour. It’s even more challenging when the topic is sexual relationships outside the context of long-term relationships. Regret, faulty memory, and shame or embarrassment can taint or limit people’s self-reports—while, at the same time, others exaggerate their encounters in the opposite direction. But still, some Researchers examining the mental health associations of hookup sex report that people who were not depressed before showed more depressive symptoms and loneliness after engaging in casual sex. Another set of risk factors involve nonconsensual sex. Yes, approximately half the young women had a nonconsensual sexual encounter, where alcohol and other substances were more likely to be factors in nonconsensual sex. People who seek out casual-sex opportunities, particularly those who do so under the influence of alcohol or drugs, may be fighting off persistent feelings of loneliness, depression, and social anxiety that they hope to eradicate or reduce through brief encounters that grant them momentary closeness.

Moreover, Psychological researches shows that People who engaged in more hookups had greater psychological distress, depression, distress, anxiety, lower levels of self-esteem, life-satisfaction, and happiness compared to those who had not have casual sex. In contrast to the notion that men are okay with casual sex but women are not, researchers did not find gender differences in the relationships between casual sex and either distress or well-being. For both men and women, true hookup sex—with a casual stranger rather than a romantic partner or “friend with benefits”—seemed to bode poorly for mental health and self-esteem.

Many findings suggest that even though gender norms, biology, or some combination of the two may lead men to be more likely to seek (or at least to report seeking) casual sex, there are similar connections as for women between hookups and mental health. Moreover, the fact that we defined casual sex in the way that we did (with a stranger within the past month), it is possible that we were tapping into a population at particularly high-risk due to high levels of impulsivity. At that level, mental-health factors may trump socialisation or biology to wipe out gender effects.

P.S: We need to pay more attention to hookups at all levels, from the young men and women who gravitate toward these relationships, to parents, to college administrators, and to mental-health professionals. If you’re someone who’s been involved in casual sex, then you should think about how your sexual behaviour might affect, and be affected by, your psychological well-being. We all seek gratifying and fulfilling intimate partnerships, and by knowing the benefits and risks of short-term encounters, you’ll increase your own chances of making these relationship goals come true.

“Habits of highly happy couples”

Human beings are all about relationships and what makes them work—or fail would help us to know what makes a connection move from good to great. Some tips seem to really help couples find happiness and satisfaction:

1. Express Admiration and Affection:

Many of us know to make up after a fight. But it has been suggested that we build a bank account of positive feelings if we do these “make up” actions before we have a conflict. We build this account balance when we express our love without anything spurring the expression. Such expressions can consist of an unexpected text, a small favor, or a note left near the sink. As the account builds, we tend to override our tendency to see our partner negatively when stress causes irritability, allowing us to use our reservoir of positive feelings to be forgiving. The idea is to look for ways to appreciate and feel fondness for your partner, and express those things—when times are good.

2. Make Room in Your Head for the Other Person:

Our lives are busier than ever. We face demands on the space in our heads every second from emails, texts and other alerts. Our children make demands on us, too, as they should, asking for the attention they deserve. But as we fill our minds with so many bits of information, we’re actually happiest when we reserve space in our heads for our partner. Satisfied couples fill this space with important information about their significant other, including everyday things like important dates, favorite foods and music etc. This is to say that keeping knowledge in your head adds to your private map of him or her which deeper things that mean something to our partners. Asking questions about how your partner thinks about things or feels about different parts of life tells them that you care and want to know about them. Couples who love we’ll keep these “love maps” of each other in the forefront of their minds:

3. Accept Influence from Each Other:

Many people define power in relationships as the control we have over each other, but another way to define power is the balance of influence each person has on the other. We all ask our partners to allow us to influence them. We ask for help with the laundry, caring about our feelings, or a moment of undivided attention. Happy relationships consist of not just these efforts to influence or to connect, but accepting those efforts. In other words, if we mostly say “OK” to a request for help (and, of course, then do it) or turn toward our partner when they need us, the interaction affects how we both feel positively. When we fight, there is a special case of the acceptance action—saying “yes” to an effort to repair the breakdown in the relationship. The best of the repair efforts start off with a soft emotional message that includes a word about how the “repairer” might have contributed to the argument. To say “yes,” we turn our feelings and attention to our partner and take ownership over our role in the argument. Repairing an argument is not so much about solving the problem at hand (some problems in relationship just defy being solved)—it’s about managing a fight to fix the distance arguments could cause. If we can avoid that distance, we can stay connected rather than isolated from one another.

4. Know Your Partner’s Inner World:

We live in our heads more than most of us realize. We learn to attach meaning to events or family rituals, to words and gestures. Those meanings create a symbolic world in our thinking—a world often unknown to our partner. Conflicts often stem more from reactions we both have to these meanings than the real situation outside our heads. Thriving relationships consists of each partner’s efforts to learn the other person’s meanings and symbols. Some of the most important parts of that inner world are the dreams we have for our life and relationships. Many of us fund it hard to express our dreams, so partners often show love by looking for disappointed hope underneath the argument. As we learn more about each other’s inner world, each of us begins to share the meanings and dreams. We grow to see the relationship serving each other’s dreams and hopes, and spend energy helping our partner fulfill their aspirations for life. A key to happiness in relationships is knowing each other’s meanings and symbols, finding the dreams within conflicts, and creating shared meanings.

Good Luck!

“How do you deal with relationship transgressions”?

Even the happiest and healthiest of relationships include the occasional offensive remark, annoying behavior, or slip in judgment. Whether your partner forgets your anniversary, instigates argument after argument, or even has an affair. You know that your partner’s bad behavior can prompt an immediate fallout from you. But as it turns out, how you remember it can reveal important insight into the health of your relationship. Because new evidence suggests that it may be how you think about these transgressions that matters most. To get at the heart of this new finding, we have to talk about perspective taking:

We all think about relationship transgressions. We go over events in our heads, again and again, reviewing both our reactions and our partner’s. If we caused the pain, we might kick ourselves about what we did and why; if we were the victim, we might ruminate, search our memories for clues, and try to sort out what happened. When you recall the event, do you see it from your own eyes (first-person perspective) or do you see yourself engaged in the interaction with your partner, almost from a bird’s eye view (third-person perspective)? The perspective through which you mentally recall your partner’s transgression can actually accentuate or reduce relational anxiety. And which would you guess is a healthier memory style—first-person or third-person?

Here, What I am trying to say is that the effect of how you think about a partner’s transgression depends on your overall attachment orientation. An individual’s attachment orientation might be more secure (i.e., highly trusting of a partner’s love and one’s own self-worth) or more insecure (i.e., deeply concerned by a fear of potential abandonment and uncertain about one’s own self-worth).

Let’s sum up the many research findings to understand something incredibly important about how we think about relationship transgressions:

If you’re anxious and you offend your partner, avoid a bird’s-eye view:
When highly anxious people hurt their partners, if they remember the event from an observer’s perspective, they tend to report less relationship satisfaction than if they see the event from their own eyes.

The observer’s perspective is painful to anxious victims:
When you’re the victim, take account of your attachment tendencies before reflecting on the offense. Remembering a relational offense from a third-person perspective made anxious people highly distressed—but they were not nearly as distressed thinking about it from a first-person perspective.

A bird’s-eye view makes anxious victims question their relationship satisfaction:
Beyond general distress, anxious victims who see a partner’s offense within a broader context (i.e., from an observer’s perspective) report less relationship satisfaction. It doesn’t help anxious people to take a wider viewpoint: All signs suggest it hurts the relationship.

The bird’s-eye view is calming for secure victims:
Maybe this is because they feel so safe in their relationship, but taking the third-person perspective and seeing a relational offense in context makes more secure people less distressed about their relationship.

So what did you learn?

Attachment, particularly insecure attachments, can influence how people react to memories of relational transgressions. This influence takes place well after the transgression and occurs within a person’s mental imagery of the event. Remembering a conflict or transgression through an observer’s perspective is healthy for secure people but is not beneficial for anxious people or insecure people.

So here’s the tip:

if you’re chronically anxious in relationships and you have hurt your partner, or if your partner has offended you, try to think about those memories through the vantage point of your own shoes. Such efforts may be an easy way to improve your relationship quality.
Good Luck!

“Learn about the opposite sex”

Although, we are alike in so many ways, but when it comes to relationships and love, there’s no denying it: Men and women can seem to be complete opposites. What might surprise you however is just how many and how real these differences truly are. And yet, you can’t ignore these different ways of looking at love if you want to build a successful relationship.

I believe there some simple steps you need to know to take your relationship from Good to Great. Because becoming aware of the differences between you and your partner will lead to a stronger and happier relationship in the long run.

3 Things Men Need to Understand About Women in Relationships:

Conflict lingers:
Women are much more sensitive than men about conflict and problems that arise in relationships. When a woman has a disagreement, it lingers in her mind for two-to-three days. She replays it over and over. She wants to go over the disagreement the next day. By contrast, when men have a conflict with their partner, once it’s been discussed, it’s resolved. The fight doesn’t linger in their minds. They have already moved on to thinking about something else.

Don’t fix things:
Men need to understand that when women have a problem and they come to share that problem with you, they don’t need the problem solved. Men want to repair or fix issues when women raise them. Women just want you to listen, empathize, and say you understand.

Women connect through talk:
Women connect and feel close to others by talking and sharing personal information. Talking time is therapeutic to women. If you want a woman to feel close to you, she needs to open up to you and you to her. Most men feel connected by doing activities with others, but women feel close by simply talking.

3 Things Women Need to Understand About Men in Relationships:

They need affirmation from their partners:
Affirmation is the degree to which you are made to feel loved, cared for, and valued or special. Studies show that long-lasting relationships are those in which men feel affirmed. Women also need to feel cared for, but they have so many other people they can get affirmation from—sisters, friends, their mother, even neighbors and co-workers. Men, however, typically do not receive affirmation from anyone besides their partners.

Track what they do, not what they say:
Men are action-oriented. They have trouble verbalizing their love. They can learn to verbalize their feelings, but they are more likely to express their love by doing, rather than by saying—like picking up your cleaning, or sometimes making breakfast/coffee for you, helping in household cores. Romantic? Perhaps not by your standards, but to men it is what love is all about.

Talk can be a problem:
Men don’t like to be criticized. And when women bring up the need to change something in the relationship or just in them men interpret this as criticism. Women may have the best intentions at heart, but men hear that there’s trouble and that it’s their fault. The next time you are tempted to talk about your relationship, praise or acknowledge your partner’s strengths first. Then zing him with the discussion of necessary change.
Good Luck!

“Sexless Marriage”

Sex is not only physically pleasurable; it is also an avenue for intimacy and emotional and sometimes, mental and spiritual connection. It is a stress reliever when a relationships is strong, but it can be the cause of tremendous stress when a relationship is not. Really, being held hostage in sexless marriage is a sort of torture.

Affairs, those that occur in response to a sexless marriage somehow seem more understandable than those that occur in marriages where there is still passion and romance. Nonetheless, affairs can occur regardless of whether there is loving happening at home or not. Having reservations about jumping back into sex with a partner who has strayed is common—certainly there are cases in which a betrayed spouse simply cannot overcome the hurt feelings, fear of inadequacy, and lack of trust.

There are other causes that lead one or both spouses to lose the desire to be physically intimate with their mate. Hurt feelings that never healed may turn into resentment, and not having sex may be a way to “get back at” or feel a sense of power over the other. This drain a person of his or her energy to the point where there is no interest in sexual connection.

Whatever the reason, the end result is the same—zero sex. When couples find themselves in this spot, the choices are limited, couples therapy; suffering in silence; an extramarital affair; or divorce. More couples may be choosing open marriages, in which the spouses agree that being sexual with someone outside the marriage is okay. In addition it had been reported that “ethical non-monogamy” is practiced in as many as 21 percent of marriages, and postulates that the numbers of couples choosing this option would be even higher if it were as socially acceptable as divorce.
Today, divorce is a far more accepted option than having multiple sex partners. But for those who get along reasonably well, or are co-parenting young children, or who want to stay together for financial reasons, an open marriage may be a compromise.

Remember, The danger of withholding sex is that it births feelings of resentment that can accumulate over time. Touching, conversation, laughing and other ways of connecting dwindle as well. If not attended to, the risk of infidelity and divorce become a reality. Couples who avoid each other by going to bed at separate times, blame and argue over sex and make excuses for being uninterested are worsening the problem. I’ve heard couples say things like, “You no longer excite me” or “If you would be nicer, maybe I would be more interested.” The danger in these types of remarks is that they only blame and do not result in a way to resolve the issue. Blaming is criticism and criticism is the first step on that road to emotional distance.

P.S: Although, I will suggest don’t go sexless in you marriage but still I consider fidelity is more a function of honesty rather than strictly of sexual exclusivity. And I firmly believe that authenticity and respect are much more important qualities in a healthy marriage.

“Surprising Real Reason Why Do People Divorce”

“In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.”
-Robert Anderson

Society has a special place in its psyche for true love. We think of it as unconditional, intimate, and everlasting. Divorce, on the other hand, seems the antithesis of love—temporal, legalistic, and involving lots of paperwork. So would it surprise you to learn that the development of our Western notion of romantic love is what ultimately led to the development of divorce law?

The truth is this: Not only did the development of romantic love coincide with the development of available divorce, it was the trigger. This juicy part of societal history has been widely overlooked.

Let’s start from the beginning: From 0 A.D. to the 1600s—that is, 1,600 years—divorce was not available to married couples. The Catholic Church influenced and controlled marriages. With only a few exceptions, marriage was permanent, regardless of abuse, fault, irreconcilable differences, or anything else short of death. This permanent marriage was not based on ideas of romantic love, but on much more practical matters, such as reliably keeping land in the family, and keeping status stable.

Indeed, romantic love was not encouraged, and was even frowned upon, between married couples. Up to the 18thcentury, “it was generally held that passionate sexual love between spouses within marriage was not only independent, but positively sinful.”

If divorce was unavailable for 1,600 years, how did it become so widespread (relatively) recently? The Church became less influential, and the importance of family land became less crucial. But the more important—and interesting—factor is that Western concepts of romantic love began to arise in the 1800s.

Enlightenment thinkers in their salons, and romance novelists in their publications, began pushing married love as a credible idea. After women began reading these books and listening to these ideas, it began occurring to them that they should marry for love rather than convenience—a novel concept at the time.

However, once romantic love entered the equation, eternal marriage became psychologically inconsistent. Romantic feelings are emotional. And emotional feelings change over time. Therefore, a marriage built on romantic feelings could not be indissoluble. Because “human emotions need not remain eternally constant…divorce became practically possible.”

In sum, it is ironic that today, many of the people who advocate against easy divorce do so with the idea that they are defending romantic love—because it was the very emergence of romantic love that triggered the availability of divorce. Marriage based on other factors like religion, land, and family obligations were much more stable bases for marriage than emotional love.

So the next time you hear someone complaining about the frequency of divorce, blame it on love.

“Strengthen Your Relationship”

Relationships are always an important part of life. I mean all relationships by choice – friendship, love, marriage, live-in. Learn what makes them tick, why they sometimes go wrong, what one can do about it because they are precious. One of the biggest mistakes we can make in a relationship is not asking enough of the right questions. By asking the right questions, you can discover what your partner needs and wants from you and your time together. Here are a few to try:

“What can I help you with right now?”
If you find yourself with some time on your hands, why not offer those minutes to your mate as a loving gesture. Most of us have too much on our plates, and an extra pair of hands can make a big difference in getting things done. Plus, doing things together can be bonding.

“How can I show you I love you?”
Most couples are good at saying those three little words, but actions speak even louder. Perhaps your loved one will want a kiss or some help in the garden. Whatever his or her request, your offer to display your love will make your partner feel cherished.

“Is there one ‘little’ thing about me that you would like me to change?”
Yes, this can spark a serious (and tricky) conversation, but by emphasizing the word little, you can lighten it up significantly. Sometimes we unconsciously do things that make our partner uncomfortable, but it’s not quite annoying enough for them to tell us. By asking this question, you can stop a little annoyance from becoming a big issue.

“Is there someplace special that you would like to go?”
Ask if he or she would like to go with you and than you can make plans for a grander vacation if the mood (and budget) strikes you. It’s a great way to have something to look forward to, which fosters happiness.

“What is it about our life together that makes you happy?”
This question will cause your lover to think about all the things he or she enjoys about your relationship. Just talking about the joys will make the two of you feel closer and add more depth to your connection.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel more loved?”
This tender question may render your partner speechless, at least for a moment. But even if you have a great relationship, your mate can surely think of something that can make your love even stronger.

“What’s something you’d like to do together that we have never done before?”
This can open up some ideas to excite both of you. You can play around with different ideas until you come up with a couple that really captivate you. Remember, doing new things with your partner will make you feel closer.

P.S: When we get caught up in daily activities, even couples with excellent communication skills can forget to ask a partner what he or she needs or wants. If you can get better at asking the right questions, your relationship will be better for it.

“Happy Couples”

“Take my hand and we’ll make it – I swear.”
– Jon Bon Jovi

Happy couples have different habits than unhappy couples. A habit is a discrete behavior that you do automatically and that takes little effort to maintain. It takes 21 days of daily repetition of a new behavior to become a habit. So select one of the behaviors in the list above to do for 21 days and voila, it will become a habit and make you happier as a couple. And if you fall off the wagon, don’t despair, just apologize to your partner, ask for their forgiveness and recommit yourself to getting back in the habit. Now the point of concern is what does it take to be happy in a relationship? If you’re working to improve your marriage, here are the 10 habits of happy couples.

1. Go to bed at the same time:
Remember the beginning of your relationship, when you couldn’t wait to go to bed with each other to make love? Happy couples resist the temptation to go to bed at different times. They go to bed at the same time, even if one partner wakes up later to do things while their partner sleeps. And when their skin touches, it still causes each of them to tingle and — unless one or both are completely exhausted — to feel sexually excited.

2. Cultivate common interests:
After the passion settles down, it’s common to realize that you have few interests in common. But don’t minimize the importance of activities you can do together that you both enjoy. If common interests are not present, happy couples develop them. At the same time, be sure to cultivate interests of your own; this will make you more interesting to your mate and prevent you from appearing too dependent.

3. Walk hand-in-hand or side-by-side:
Rather than one partner lagging or dragging behind the other, happy couples walk comfortably hand-in-hand or side-by-side. They know it’s more important to be with their partner than to see the sights along the way.

4. Make trust and forgiveness your default mode:
If and when they have a disagreement or argument, and if they can’t resolve it, happy couples default to trusting and forgiving rather than distrusting and begrudging.

5. Focus more on what your partner does right than what he or she does wrong:
If you look for things your partner does wrong, you can always find something. If you look for what he or she does right, you can always find something, too. It all depends on what you want to look for. Happy couples accentuate the positive.

6. Hug each other as soon as you see each other after work:
Our skin has a memory of “good touch” (loved), “bad touch” (abused) and “no touch” (neglected). Couples who say hello with a hug keep their skin bathed in the “good touch,” which can inoculate your spirit against anonymity in the world.

7. Say “I love you” and “Have a good day” every morning:
This is a great way to buy some patience and tolerance as each partner sets out each day to battle traffic jams, long lines and other annoyances.

8. Say “Good night” every night, regardless of how you feel:
This tells your partner that, regardless of how upset you are with him or her, you still want to be in the relationship. It says that what you and your partner have is bigger than any single upsetting incident.

9. Do a “weather” check during the day
Call your partner at home or at work to see how his or her day is going. This is a great way to adjust expectations so that you’re more in sync when you connect after work. For instance, if your partner is having an awful day, it might be unreasonable to expect him or her to be enthusiastic about something good that happened to you.

10. Be proud to be seen with your partner:
Happy couples are pleased to be seen together and are often in some kind of affectionate contact — hand on hand or hand on shoulder or knee or back of neck. They are not showing off but rather just saying that they belong with each other.

P.S: If there was one key to happiness in love and life and possibly even success, it would be to go into each conversation you have with this commandment to yourself front and foremost in your mind, “Just Listen” and be more interested than interesting, more fascinated than fascinating and more adoring than adorable.

“Are you really in Love” ?

“I am catastrophically in love with you.”
–Cassandra Clare

Falling in love and building an attachment are a wonderful basis for a healthy relationship, but keep in mind that staying in a relationship (or, for that matter, choosing to start one) is often based on more than satisfaction and feeling good in another person’s presence. Relationship success needs staying power of mutual investment and commitment. If love is passion, security, and emotional comfort, commitment is the necessary decision made within one’s cultural and social contexts to be with that person. Love simply needs the buttressing of commitment to flourish into a stable and healthy partnership.

Now the question is “Are you really in love”. The answer can change so much about your life, from how you interact with a current or potential partner to how you view yourself to what goals you have for the future. Gain some insight by considering these research-based signs of love and attachment.

You’re addicted to this person:
Love changes the brain. In early-stage relationships, that euphoria that people feel appears as heightened neural activity in dopamine-rich areas of the brain—areas linked to the reward system—and in areas associated with the pursuit of rewards. There’s even some hint of activity in the anterior cingulate, the area of the brain linked to obsessive thinking, which is a classic experience when people are falling in love (Aron, Fisher, Mashek, Strong, & Brown, 2005). As a relationship progresses into a long-term partnership, thinking about the partner activates the reward centers as well as brain areas implicated in attachment, but less so obsessive thinking (Acevedo, Aron, Fisher, & Brown, 2011).

You really want your friends or family to like this person:
New evidence shows that people are often motivated to “marshal support” for someone they are dating (Patrick & Faw, 2014), which is consistent with the idea that the people in a person’s social circle often play an important role in the success of a relationship (Sprecher, 2011). Being attuned to how your family and friends might think about your partner or potential partner is a good sign that you are becoming increasingly attached to the person.

You celebrate this person’s triumphs (even when you yourself fail):
If you’ve fallen in love with someone, you probably have an atypical reaction when witnessing them excelling at something you don’t. Because romantic partners feel connected and can share the outcomes of each other’s successes, romantic partners will often feel pride and positive emotions when they see their partner succeed, even at something they themselves can’t do, rather than feeling negative and inferior (Lockwood & Pinkus, 2014).

You definitely like this person, and this person likes you:
Liking is different from love, but is often a prerequisite for falling in love. In a cross-cultural study, researchers showed that a critical factor recognized as directly preceding falling in love is reciprocal liking, when you both clearly like each other (Riela, Rodriguez, Aron, Xu, & Acevedo, 2010). In addition, an evaluation of the other person’s personality as highly desirable tends to be a precursor to falling in love.

You really miss this person when you’re apart:
In many ways, how much you miss a person reflects how interdependent your lives have become. If you are questioning whether you love someone, perhaps consider how much you miss him or her when you’re apart. Le and colleagues (2008) showed that how much people miss each other tends to correspond with how committed they feel to the relationship.

Your sense of self has grown through knowing this person:
When people fall in love, their whole sense of self changes. They take on new traits and characteristics, growing in the diversity of their self-concept through the influence of their new relationship partner (Aron, Paris, & Aron, 1995). In other words, the you before falling in love is different from the you after falling in love. Maybe you feel the difference, maybe others notice it, but the things you care about, your habits, how you spend you time—and or all of this is subject to the (hopefully positive) influence of a new romantic partner.

You get jealous—but not suspicious:
A certain amount of jealousy is actually healthy, not toxic. From an evolutionary perspective, jealousy is an adaptation that helps relationships stay intact by making its members sensitive to potential threats. People who are jealous tend to be more committed to relationships (Rydell, McConnell, & Bringle, 2004). Keep the jealousy in check, though: Reactive or emotional jealousy is the type that is predicted by positive relationship factors like dependency and trust—but people who engage in suspicious jealousy, which includes taking actions like secretly checking a partner’s cellphone, tends to be associated with relational anxiety, low self-esteem, and chronic insecurity (Rydell & Bringle, 2007).

Good Luck!

“Basic rules of relationships”

Human beings crave intimacy, need to love and be loved, and function best when they are. Yet people have much trouble maintaining relationships. Because men and women, have no idea what a healthy relationship even looks like that’s why I feel obligated to say something. From many sources and experience over the years, I have culled some basic rules of relationships. This is by no means an exhaustive list. But it’s a necessary list and life for sure will test you on them. Here we go;

Choose a partner wisely and well. We are attracted to people for all kinds of reasons. Evaluate a potential partner by looking at their character, personality, values, their generosity of spirit, the relationship between their words and actions, their relationships with others.

Know your partner’s beliefs about relationships. Different people have different and often conflicting ideas about relationships. You don’t want to fall in love with someone who expects dishonesty in relationships; they’ll create it where it doesn’t exist.

Don’t confuse sex with love. Especially in the beginning of a relationship, attraction and pleasure in sex are often mistaken for love.

Know your needs and speak up for them clearly. A relationship is not a guessing game. Many people fear stating their needs and, as a result, camouflage them. The result is disappointment at not getting what they want and anger at a partner for not having met their (unspoken) needs. Closeness cannot occur without honesty. Your partner is not a mind reader.

Respect. Inside and outside the relationship, act in ways so that your partner always maintains respect for you. Mutual respect is essential to a good and fair relationship.

View yourselves as a team, which means you are two unique individuals bringing different perspectives and strengths. That is the value of a team—your differences.

Know how to manage differences; it’s the key to success in a relationship. Learn how to handle the negative feelings that are the unavoidable byproduct of the differences between two people. Stonewalling or avoiding conflicts is not going to manage them.

If you don’t understand or like something your partner is doing, ask about it and why he or she is doing it. Talk and explore, don’t assume or accuse.

Solve problems as they arise. Don’t let resentments simmer. Most of what goes wrong in relationships can be traced to hurt feelings, leading partners to erect defenses against one another and to become strangers Or enemies.
Learn to negotiate. Most modern relationships no longer rely on roles cast by culture. Couples create their own roles, so that almost every act requires negotiation. It works best when good will prevails. Because people’s needs are fluid and change over time, and life’s demands change too, good relationships are negotiated and renegotiated all the time.

Listen, truly listen, to your partner’s concerns and complaints without judgment. Much of the time, just having someone listen is all we need for solving problems. Plus it opens the door to confiding. And empathy is crucial. Look at things from your partner’s perspective as well as your own.

Don’t take everything personally. Sometimes a lousy day is just a lousy day.

Work hard at maintaining closeness. Closeness doesn’t happen by itself. In its absence, people drift apart and are susceptible to affairs. A good relationship isn’t an end goal; it’s a lifelong process maintained through regular attention.

Take a long-range view. A marriage is an agreement to spend a future together. Check out your dreams with each other regularly to make sure you’re both on the same path.

Never underestimate the power of good grooming.

Sex is good. Pillow talk is better. Sex is easy, intimacy is difficult. It requires honesty, openness, self-disclosure, confiding concerns, fears, sadnesses as well as hopes and dreams.

Never go to sleep angry. Try a little tenderness.

Apologize. Anyone can make a mistake. Repair attempts are crucial—highly predictive of marital happiness. They can be clumsy or funny, even sarcastic—but willingness to make up after an argument is central to every long-term relationship.

Not every major problem requires solution by talkathon. Sometimes just doing something together—a hike, for example—calms and reconnects partners.

Some dependency is good, but complete dependency on a partner for all one’s needs is an invitation to resentment at the burden and unhappiness for both partners. We’re all dependent to a degree—This is true of men as well as women.

Maintain self-respect and self-esteem. It’s easier for someone to like you and to be around you when you like yourself. The more roles people fill, the more sources of self-esteem they have. Meaningful work—paid or volunteer—has long been one of the most important ways to build and exercise a sense of self.

Keep the relationship alive by bringing into it new interests from outside. The more passions in life that you have and share, the richer your partnership will be. It is unrealistic to expect one person to meet all of your needs in life.

Cooperate. Share responsibilities. Relationships work only when they are two-way streets, with much give and take.

Stay open to spontaneity. Fun and surprise are sexy.

Maintain your energy. Stay healthy.
Recognize that all relationships have their ups and downs and do not ride at a continuous high all the time. Working together through the hard times will make the relationship stronger.

Don’t just run away from a bad relationship; you’ll only repeat it with the next partner. Use it as a mirror to look at yourself, to understand what in you is creating the relationship. Change yourself before you change your partner.

Remember that love is not a limited commodity that you’re in of or out of. It’s a feeling that ebbs and flows depending on how you treat each other. If you interact in new ways, the feelings can come flowing back, often stronger than before.

“The road to resilience relationships”

“Through resilience, comes hope. Keep going.”
– Rita Said

Resilient relationships persevere, even in times of adversity. Life can offer couples all sorts of challenges like—distance, conflict, infidelity, child or parent-related hardships, sickness and sometimes unimaginable number of possibilities that can wear down a relationship.

Now the question is how resilient is your relationship? And how
can we foster resilience in our relationships? Consider the following questions to help gauge your own relationship’s resilience:

Is destiny the anchor to your relationship?
It may seem romantic to think that destiny brought you together and that it will keep you together, but such beliefs may be obstacles to relationship resilience. When negative events happen in their relationships, people with strong destiny beliefs disengage more, withholding ways to support the relationship. Better to foster growth beliefs—the idea that relationships grow by working through tough times together. Growth beliefs predict active coping, planning, positivity, and focus during difficult times.

Do you give your partner the benefit of the doubt?
No relationship or person is perfect, but if you can come to see your partner’s quirky imperfections as positives, you may have the stuff that makes for a resilient relationship. Couples who view each other in idealized ways are happier and tend to have less conflict and more relationship stability.

How much self-control do you have?
When your partner does something that really annoys you, can you resist an impulsive response, or do you fly off the handle? Self-control is the ability to regulate one’s own reactions in these types of situations, forgoing the backlash in favor of a pro-relationship response. People who have high self-control are better able to resist impulsivity and constructively respond to potentially destructive partner behavior.

Are you grateful for the little things?
In resilient relationships, partners are oriented towards each other, appreciating each others’ efforts to be responsive and doing their best to be responsive themselves. This creates a wonderfully positive cycle of behaviors that help maintain a relationship ( like positivity, reassurance), and partner gratitude, which then encourages those behaviors that help relationships thrive.

Do you work continuously to maintain your relationship?
Resilient couples are flexible. They work to accommodate change by engaging in behaviors that help sustain the relationship. For example, resilient couples share tasks, offer positivity, and reassure their partners. Such behaviors are not one-time acts, but a pattern of work that can pay off with a healthy partnership.

Resilience in times of serious difficulty can come in many forms. The above questions highlight an important but limited set of individual traits such as self-control and growth beliefs, and partner dynamics such as gratitude that foster resilience. Commitment, investment, and on-going work promote relationship health, but no one recipe works for all couples, especially given the many diverse types and severities of stressors that we can encounter in our relationships.

“Rebound Relationships”

“A human band-aid is a rebound. Their function is to cover a wound to help the wounded get over and forget about it.”
– Anonymous

A rebound relationship simply is one that occurs shortly after the break-up of a significant love relationship. People usually break up for a reason, and so the chances of getting back together with an ex depend on whether the issues that led to the breakup have been resolved. Researches on on-again/off-again couples—those that break up and get back together multiple times—indicates that some of the most common reasons for getting back together with an ex include things like improved communication (getting along better, working through issues together), or improvements with the self or partner (being more understanding or supportive, working on flaws that bothered the partner).

Now the question is – How long do rebound relationships last? I guess the answer really depends on two factors: How good the rebound relationship is; and how attached the person is to their ex.

After break up, when a person starts dating someone new, their success in having found another appealing person to date can help them feel better about their romantic prospects.This can make people feel less dependent on their exes for meeting their emotional needs—a key step to getting over past relationships. Moreover, if the rebound relationship is with a rewarding, high-quality partner, then that partner can gradually replace the ex in their lives. Rebound relationships can often help people stop missing their exes. But if however, the new relationship is not particularly rewarding, then the rebound relationship can backfire.
Unrewarding rebound relationships can actually lead people to feel more attached to their ex-partners, rather than less. This association appears to go the other way as well—if, for some reason, a person is having a difficult time letting go of their ex, they’re not going to be able to invest in a new relationship as fully, making that relationship less rewarding. Basically, our emotional and attachment needs are hydraulic: The more we rely on one individual to meet these needs ( an ex-partner), the less we tend to rely on another individual to meet these same needs ( a new partner).

In terms of how rebounds might play a role, again, it really depends on how rewarding those rebound relationships are. New rewarding dating experiences can help to lower attachment to an ex-partner, making it less likely that the person will want to get back with their ex. On the other hand, bad dates can indeed motivate people to go back to their exes. It seems that after people break up, unrewarding dating experiences can make them feel like their other dating options aren’t as good as they thought, making their exes more appealing by comparison.

In addition, Exciting new dating prospects can trump past worn-out relationships and help people get over their exes so they can better focus on their new, more compatible partners. On the other hand, when people fail to connect with new partners, it can make them long powerfully for the familiarity of an ex, particularly if they found the ex to be deeply rewarding in the past. Under these circumstances, people sometimes do decide to give their old flame another go—assuming the ex is also willing, of course.

If you’re the ex in this situation, what does all this mean for you?
If you find yourself “on the rebound” from one relationship (having just broken up) and are jumping into a new one, you must consider and act on important points. Like, you must judge your new partner as a whole person, not in contrast to your ex. Tell your new partner that your old relationship is over and mean it. Emphasize that the breakup is final, you believe it is for the best, and you are ready to move on. Be respectful and discreet when talking about your ex. Realize that you will have a tendency to dive in faster than usual, while she/he will have the tendency to hold back more than usual. Use the time you have by yourself to take personal responsibility for your part in the dissolution of your past relationship, and work toward developing qualities and skills that will help you to be a better partner. And finally, if needed, Get feedback from people you trust.

“Just Friends or Something More” ?

“Just friends” Yeah, that phrase kills me every time. Many people think that if an attraction between a man and a woman doesn’t lead to courtship or sex, then it’s a thwarted or delusional love. But the reality is that in today’s world, different kinds of attraction can, and do, develop between men and women. Psychology on the basis of hundreds of interview transcripts and surveys of men and women reflecting on their closest other-sex friend, has found that there are 4 ways attraction is experienced. These can both overlap and change with time and just because you have one type of attraction for your friend doesn’t mean he or she has the same type of attraction for you.

The 4 types of attraction are:
1. Friendship attraction
2. Romantic attraction
3. Subjective physical/sexual attraction
4. Objective physical/sexual attraction.

“Friendship attraction” is not romantic or sexual in nature, but is the kind of attraction you feel when drawn to someone because you like that person and enjoy being with him or her. It’s the type of attraction that most heterosexuals presumably feel for their same-sex friends. This was by far the most common type of attraction between cross-sex friends and this friendship attraction mostly increases over time.

Next is “Romantic attraction”. It’s important not to confuse this with physical or sexual attraction. While the two can go together, it’s certainly possible to find someone physically attractive but have no desire to be in a romantic relationship with them. Romantic attraction is about the desire to alter the friendship into a couple relationship. As, very few people feel romantic attraction for their friends and that’s why, Interestingly, almost half of such friends says that they used to feel more romantic attraction, at an earlier stage in the friendship, than they do now.

“Subjective physical/sexual attraction” refers to feeling drawn to the other person physically, and perhaps wanting to make sex a part of the relationship. Not all, but there are some people who feel this form of attraction for their friends, but this feeling can change over time, and is more likely to decrease.

The last form of attraction is the one most interesting – “Objective physical/sexual attraction”. It refers to thinking that one’s friend is physically attractive in general terms (I can see why others would find him attractive), but not feeling the attraction yourself.

Now decide Where Do You Stand?
Friendship attraction is by far the most common type of attraction, followed by objective physical/sexual attraction; subjective physical/sexual attraction; and, finally, the least reported—romantic attraction which, even when it did occur, tended to decrease over time.

P.S: The next time you notice a man and woman together, challenge yourself to remember that men and women can connect in a variety of ways, and one of them—an extremely common one—is plain and simple friendship.

“Shout out loud when it comes to Sex”

Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex.
– Havelock Ellis

What many couples forget is how deeply sex ripples out to the farthest reaches of their love. The most intimate way two people can give their love to each other is through “sex”—and when it goes wrong, it disrupts the entire relationship. Every couple has less sex as time goes on, and that’s not always a problem in itself. But if one partner longs for sex and the other doesn’t want it, that’s the most dire of relationship emergencies and requires immediate and zealous attention. Sex produces physical bonding that’s unique, special, and important. In relationships, sex isn’t just the icing on the cake; It is the cake.

Many people assume that if a woman rarely wants sex, it means there’s something wrong with her libido and that she needs medical treatment. But libido is a lot more complex than that, and overlaps with every sphere of human experience, including vascular health, mental health, nutrition, body image, stress level, and the quality of your relationship generally. Low sexual desire in women is rarely the result of physiological causes. In most cases, the problem stems from how she feels about herself, her partner, and her relationship. So when a woman has low sexual desire, the first thing to do is to assess the relationship itself, and how it can be improved.

It has been accepted by many that emotional intimacy is only the best thing and guarantees a good sex life. But not, because for many couples, emotional intimacy makes them feel like they’re best friends but doesn’t feed their desire. It means for many people, a far greater turn-on than emotional intimacy is “feeling desired”; “Feeling desired is a prelude to feeling desire. The solution is to give sometimes yourself permission to be playful, to take risks, to be less emotionally intimate and more sexy. The secret is to forget about doing what you think is normal, and instead embrace whatever it is that makes you feel fun and young and kinky. Remember, Sex is the purest form of self-expression.

There is another notion regarding sex is If your partner wants sex but you don’t, you can express your love in other ways. We tend to think that people should be able to choose whether they want sex in a relationship—and we assume that if one partner doesn’t want sex, the other partner should accept it and remain monogamous without complaint. “This is impractical, unfair, and unworkable, and often leads to infidelity. When people get married, they naturally have to come to compromises in many aspects of their lives—where to live, whether to have kids, and whose career to focus on. But they often neglect to talk about what their sexual relationship is going to be like, how often they’re going to have sex, and how high the quality of their sex will be. That’s an oversight because sex is the tie that binds and to think that only one person should be in charge of that decision is very short-sighted. People have different “love languages. For some people, touch makes them feel loved; for others it’s meaningful conversations, or how much time you spend together. But if you’re married to someone whose love language is touch, you can buy them expensive gifts or take them on vacations or say I love you until endless times, but it won’t matter because it won’t mean love. Because In good relationships, partners try to figure out each other’s love language and speak it even if it’s different from their own. Good relationships are built on mutual care-taking simply.

Here comes the other poor sex life reason that couples should deal with emotional problems before sexual problems. When a couple has emotional problems like – anger, resentment, a lack of communication in addition to a poor sex life, most people assume they’ll need to fix the emotional problems first. But for many people, the opposite is true. If you start analyzing the sexual relationship of a couple, you get to know everything else and vice versa because sex is the window into everything else about the relationship. Addressing emotional problems first can often work. But if a couple tries to fix those problems and comes up empty, dealing with the sexual problems first may be the solution. Just improve your physical relationship, whether you are in a mood or not. Because when couples start touching again, they feel closer to each other, which puts them more emotionally on the same page and makes it easier to resolve other differences.

“Imperfect yet so Perfect”

“You come to love not by finding the perfect person , but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”
— Sam Keen

I reject the belief that there is only one person in the world for us, and that unless we find that person, we are doomed to a lonely life of romantic misery. In fact, what I believe is just the opposite: There are actually a lot of people with whom we could experience a highly satisfying, deeply fulfilling relationship. When we limit our search to that “perfect” someone, we foster a mentality of perpetual “relation shopping.” Moreover, we’re very likely to give up too easily on what could be the perfect “imperfect” relationship. And this process of picking and choosing potential partners puts people at risk of objectifying those with whom they’re supposedly seeking intimacy and closeness. There is a danger of being too quick to discard or shuffle through possible matches, creating a cycle of perpetual searching and chronic dissatisfaction.

For centuries we’ve been fed fairy tales, telling us that love should be easy, or else it is not love. Anyone who has ever been in love probably knows that what looks good on paper isn’t necessarily what makes people happy in the long run. And it’s even more confusing that what people are initially attracted to isn’t always healthy long-term. Here we need to let these realities motivate us rather than to demoralize us; motivate us to be even more open and willing to really get to know a person before we write them off.

It’s so very obvious whether it’s during the first week of dating, or the fifth year of marriage, all relationships will inevitably hit rough patches. And this often send people running from the situation rather than staying around to try to work it. Initial stages of a relationship often leave the brain flooded with “happy” molecules- you can say a chemical reaction that heightens both emotional and physical attraction. And once these molecules subside, problems surface, leading to conflict and, sometimes, even break-ups. Even though those initial “sparks” may lessen in intensity, new studies in neuroscience show that couples can stay in love long-term, with their brains firing some 20 years later in the same way as when they first met. The lesson from these findings is that long-lasting relationships won’t be free of speed bumps, but when we anticipate imperfection and find healthy ways to hang in there, we can keep our passion, excitement, and love alive.

Love makes life more meaningful, and therefore, more fragile and frightening to lose. And that’s why more people, to varying degrees, are afraid of intimacy, even if this fear is unconscious. What I am trying to point out here is whether it’s about infatuation, truest-love notion or a search for perfect soulmate – all relationships are likely to challenge us in one or the other way. So, the best relationship thing is to find someone you really like and invest in that relationship. Stop looking for the perfect partner, and start focusing on what you need to address within yourself in order to achieve a more ideal romance. A relationship is one of the best vehicles for developing yourself. It’s hard to confront your fear of intimacy when you’re not in an intimate relationship. There are many unexpected choices that could make you happy, but to make a relationship work means being willing to take the plunge with someone and then looking inward.

There are few key actions we can take to create a perfect imperfect relationship. Like,

Focus on your own feelings and behaviors. You can’t feel another person’s feelings; your own emotional responses are what you experience. Therefore, you can nourish your ability to love and care for another person by engaging in acts that are sensitive, kind, and loving. In other words, how you act toward a person influences how you feel toward that person. When you act in love, you feel in love. What I’m suggesting is that once you connect with a person who you enjoy and respect, be willing to be vulnerable and to tune out that doubting voice that stands in your way of happiness.

Stop listening to your inner critic. The “critical inner voice” is a coach in people’s heads that stands at the helm of self-sabotaging behaviors. This voice will tell you that either you are unworthy of a nice relationship or it will critique your partner potential. In the end, this type of thinking or behavior will keep you both feel often single inside the status quo, a place where you are both unchallenged and unfulfilled. This inner critic is shaped from past experiences, and what is happening around you. That is why challenging it means taking a third step in your self-development: Learning how you project your past onto your partner. As you explore your past, you can equip yourself with the knowledge and tools to differentiate from it and you can become who you want to be in a relationship and shape the relationship you want to be in.

P.S: Relationships, of course, are rarely easy, but they also shouldn’t be drudgery. We shouldn’t expect a perfectly smooth journey. We must remember that every couple is made of two independent people with two sovereign minds. This means that, at times, the two of you may see and experience the world very differently. Struggles will arise, and when they do, what matters most will be our ability to get through the hard times. Rather than turn back at the first obstacle, we can be resilient and resourceful. We can anticipate and face challenges with a combination of strength and vulnerability and for this we must open our hearts and minds to another person. Naturally, some connections are stronger and some choices more ideal than others, but any love can grow when we are willing to explore our own limitations and grow our own capacity for closeness.

“Heart Whispers”

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”
– Stephen Chbosky

Love seems to be a universally valued attribute. Two essential ingredients are proven to correlate with a happy existence: “One is love and the other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”

While many of us believe we would like to be in love, we face many hurdles in taking the actions that allow love to flow freely throughout our lives and relationships. We have many ways of defending ourselves against love and can struggle to give and receive love with ease, openness and vulnerability. With love being so closely connected to meaning and fulfillment, it’s valuable for each of us to define love as an action or series of actions we can take to bring us closer to the people we value. In a romantic context, some essential characteristics that fit the description of a loving relationship include:
1. Expressions of affection, both physical and emotional.
2. A wish to offer pleasure and satisfaction to another.
3. Tenderness, compassion, and sensitivity to the needs of the other.
4. A desire for shared activities and pursuits.
5. An appropriate level of sharing of possessions.
6. An ongoing, honest exchange of personal feelings.
7. The process of offering concern, comfort, and outward assistance for the loved one’s aspirations.

Love includes feeling for the other that goes beyond any selfishness or self-interest on the part of the loved one. As such, love nurtures and has a positive effect on each person’s self-esteem and sense of well-being. Love never involves deception, because misleading another person fractures his or her sense of reality. So how well do we meet these standards for being loving? When we think about a relationship that is meaningful to us, we have to ask: Do we both behave in ways that nurture each other? Do we take actions to make the other person feel good? Do we consider what lights that person up, separate from our own interests?

Too often, we think of love as an almost passive state of being, as opposed to a conscious choice we make. When we regard love as something we simply fall into, we can easily slip into routines with the person we value or lose a sense of separateness and respect. Instead, we view that person as a part of us. We then run the risk of creating a fantasy bond, an illusion of fusion in which real feelings of fondness and attraction are replaced by the form of being in a relationship. In other words, we come to see ourselves and our partner as a single unit. We then fall into roles rather than appreciating each other as individuals and experiencing the exciting, loving feelings that result.

A fantasy bond offers a false sense of security—the illusion that we are no longer alone. However, when we connect to someone in this way, we lose our sense of vitality, and we give up significant aspects of our relationship. The behavioral operations of love are replaced with a fantasy of being in love, which does not nurture either partner. Relationships tend to go south when we stop taking actions that our partner would perceive as loving and instead start looking to our partner solely to meet our own needs. It’s important to distinguish emotional hunger from real love. When we reach out to our partner, it can be valuable to examine whether our behaviors are for them or for ourselves. Are we looking to them to fulfill us in some way that is unfair to them? Are we hoping they will make up for an emptiness or hurt from our past?

Love should never be an act of manipulation. It is not a mark of ownership over another person, but the exact opposite—a genuine appreciation of a person as a separate individual. When we see a person this way, we allow ourselves to fully value them for who they are and for the happiness they bring to our lives. We are driven to be generous toward the person, to show compassion and kindness in a way that both they and the outside world would view as loving.

P.S: “Love is all you need”- A key to a happy and fulfilling life.

“What should one look for in a partner?”

“Everything that happens to you matters to me”.
– Cassandra Clare

Regardless of many, there is one particular trait that is always crucial, something that I think everyone should look for in a partner: responsiveness. A responsive partner is someone who makes you feel understood, validated, and cared for. Find a responsive partner and everything else can fall into place; it’s like relationships on Easy mode. But a lot of people have a hard time separating responsive partners from “nice” partners.

Responsiveness has nothing to do with how willing someone is to wine-and-dine you or say flattering things to you. It’s about how they react in more vulnerable, emotionally-charged moments: When their goals come into conflict with yours, how do they deal with the problem? For instance, say you get a job offer a couple hours away from where you currently live. A responsive partner would first think about your perspective and then try to find a solution to the geographic challenge, whereas a less-responsive partner might suddenly turn self-absorbed jerk (“I like it here! We can’t move and that’s that!”). Next to this, How about when you share something personal with your partner, maybe a setback you’ve encountered or a disappointing experience you’ve had? A responsive partner is likely to listen and try to understand (“That must have felt awful. Then what happened?”), while a less-responsive one might dismiss or downplay your experience and try to push the conversation back to safer territory (“Aah! that sucks. Hey! do you want to party tonight?”). Now, here you can imagine it’s easier to work out relationship issues, big and small, with a partner who’s more responsive rather than less. It’s easier to feel closer and more connected to a responsive partner, because they’re easier to talk to and share meaningful experiences with. To find someone who is responsive to your needs, (who is willing to put efforts rather than making excuses) you need to watch for three important key behaviors:

1. Understanding:
Highly responsive partners pay attention while you share your perspective, and try to properly understand what you are communicating. Understanding partners often ask questions in an attempt to gather more information, so that they can better comprehend your point of view. They may also summarize and paraphrase your perspective, to ensure that their understanding is accurate.

2. Validating:
Responsive partners make you feel that your perspectives are valid and respected and thereby make you feel supported. In the context of a disagreement, validation doesn’t necessarily mean that your partner gives in to you every time. But a responsive partner can make you feel like your views are valid even while they’re standing their ground.

3. Caring:
Finally, responsive partners will make it clear that they are concerned about your wellbeing, even in the context of a conflict. They often do this by expressing affection, or by communicating concern in more instrumental ways. Having already put effort into understanding your needs, responsive people are in a better position to care for you in a particularly sensitive, helpful way because they really do understand what you’re going through.

P.S: The situation does play a role in determining how responsive someone is. Someone under a lot of stress is not going to be nearly as responsive at that moment as they are when they’re not. Moreover, Responsiveness can also vary from relationship to relationship—people, logically, tend to be more responsive toward partners when they are in more satisfying relationships, and when they feel that their partners are more responsive toward them in return. So part of having a responsive partner is being a responsive partner yourself and you are likely to have a much more rewarding relationship.

“Eternal Love”

“It’s a blessed thing to love and feel loved in return.”
– E.A Bucchianeri

We all say “I love you” differently because we all love differently.
And we all somewhere in our mind have been on a mission to figure out what exactly love is. Some people describe it as “a funny five minutes.” It’s also been called a mysterious mix of sentiment and sex or a combination of infatuation and companionship. Well, it’s more than that. On the basis of my personal insights, I can now say with confidence that what love is. It’s intuitive and yet not necessarily obvious: It’s the continual search for a basic, secure connection with someone else. Through this bond, partners in love become emotionally dependent on each other for nurturing, soothing, and protection. We have a wired-in need for emotional contact and responsiveness from significant others. It’s a survival response, like the driving force of the bond of security a baby seeks with its mother. And that’s why a great deal of evidence indicates that the need for secure attachment never disappears; it evolves into the adult need for a secure emotional bond with a partner. Although our culture has framed dependency as a bad thing, a weakness, it is not. Being attached to someone provides our greatest sense of security and safety. It means depending on a partner to respond when you call, to know that you matter to him or her, that you are cherished, and that he will respond to your emotional needs. Love is all about the human hunger for safe emotional connection, a survival imperative we experience from the cradle to the grave. Once we do feel safely linked with our partner, we can tolerate the hurts they will inevitably inflict upon us in the course of daily life because all the drama—fights, flirting, tears, tantrums also revolve around love.

Broken Connections:
We start out intensely connected to and responsive to our partners. But our level of attentiveness tends to drop off over time due to many reasons. We then experience moments of disconnection, times when we don’t express our needs clearly. Like, He is upset and really wants to be comforted, but she leaves him alone, thinking that he wants solitude. These moments are actually inescapable in a relationship. Just remember, If you’re going to dance with someone, you’re going to step on each other’s feet once in a while.
Losing the connection with a loved one, however, jeopardizes our sense of security. We experience a primal feeling of panic which sets off an alarm of fear or threat that comes from our own inner cosmos. If we feel abandoned at a moment of need, we are set up to enter a state of panic. Now, what we do next counts, after those moments of disconnection, has a huge impact on the shape of our relationship. Can you turn around and reconnect? If not, you’ll start engaging in fights that follow a clear pattern. I call these “demon dialogues.” If they gain momentum, they start to take over and induce a terrible sense of emotional isolation. Your relationship feels less and less like a safe place, and it starts to unravel. Now, here comes the need to talk about root cause and tackle things wisely. More often, we talk about the surface emotions, the ire or indifference, and blame the other. “He’s so angry; I feel so attacked,” or “She’s so cold. I don’t think she cares at all!” But we don’t talk about these conflicts in terms of deeply rooted attachment needs. Each person retreats into a corner, making it harder and harder for the two to express their fundamental attachment needs, foreclosing the ability to gain reassurance from each other. So, most of the time It’s our perception that counts, not the reality. Their intentions are good but they fail to give each other what they really need. Therefore, instead of blaming each other, you need to sort out the root cause – an underlying vulnerability for connection, which if not sorted, will be compounded by sadness, shame, and, most of all, fear.

Repairing Bonds:
Accepting your attachment needs instead of feeling ashamed of them is a big and necessary first step, and it applies to single people as well as to those in relationships. Disappointments are always part of relationships. But you can always choose how you handle them. Will you react defensively, out of fear, or in the spirit of understanding? And what’s frustrating to people is not knowing how to bridge that emotional distance. Of course, you may not feel you really have a choice if your panic button has been pushed and your emotions are boiling over. Here you need to aware about the pros and cons of your every single word while arguing. Why arguing? Instead talk and discuss and use these “demon dialogues” as power struggle to resolve your fights or conflicts rather then using them for creating more emotional distance.
No matter why is it that in the end, in-spite if excelling high in life and earning good money these things don’t seem to matter, and all that counts for you is that you and your partner want to talk about emotional stuff and cuddle?” It’s just because that’s just the way we are made. We need someone to pay real attention to us, to hold us tight. If you take that leap of faith and respond with such a bid for reconnection, you have to hope your partner will, too, instead of saying something hurtful like, “Well, you’re being asinine and difficult.” That’s the tricky part about relationships: To change the dance, both people have to change their steps.

Healing Touches:
Touch is the most basic way of connecting with another human being. Taking your partner’s hand when she is nervous or touching his shoulder in the middle of an argument can instantly defuse anxiety and anger. If you watch two people in love, they touch each other all the time. If you watch two people finding their way back into a love relationship, after falling into demon dialogues, they touch each other more, too. They literally reach for each other; it’s a tangible sign of their desire for connection.

Secure and Saucy Sex:
A big myth about love is that it’s got a “best before” date, that passion is a burning fever that must subside. That’s pretty silly. I don’t see any scientific or human reason why people can’t have happy long-term love relationships. Passion is like everything else: It ebbs and flows. But sex is always going to be boring if it’s one-dimensional, cut off from emotional connection. On the other hand, if you’re emotionally involved, sex has a hundred dimensions to it, and is as much play as passion. I call this kind of secure sex “synchrony sex,” where emotional openness and responsiveness, tender touch, and erotic exploration all come together. When partners have a secure emotional connection, physical intimacy can retain all of its initial ardor and creativity and then some. Lovers can be tender and playful one moment, fiery and erotic another. Securely attached partners can more openly express their needs and preferences and are more willing to experiment sexually with their lovers.
In a secure relationship, excitement comes not from trying to resurrect the novel moments of infatuated passion but from the risk involved in staying open in the moment-to-moment, here-and-now experience of physical and emotional connection. With this openness comes the sense that lovemaking with your partner is always a new adventure.

Lasting Love:
Once you’re reconnected with your partner, and both of you are getting your attachment needs filled, you have to keep working at being emotionally responsive to one another. You can do that by helping each other identify the attachment issues that tend to come up in your recurring arguments. You should also celebrate positive moments together, both big and small. Regularly and deliberately hold, hug, and kiss each other when you wake up, leave the house, return, and go to sleep. Recognize special days, anniversaries, and birthdays in very personal ways. These rituals keep your relationship safe in a distracting and chaotic world. Stories shape our lives, and the stories we tell about our lives shape us in turn. Create a future love story for you and your partner that outlines what your life together will look like five or ten years down the road. It will prime you to keep your bond strong.

“Hopeless Romantic”

“I’m not done with love, but I refuse to settle. I’m a hopeless romantic. And I won’t stop till I get it right.”
– Halle Berry

A hopeless romantic person is some one who happens to be in love with love and loves the romance of love. They are mostly idealists, sentimental and fanciful dreamers. Hopeless romantics believe in true love, and the eternal bliss that comes from being united with one’s soul mate is what they crave most and that’s why they passionately seek their soul mate. They dream of roses and candlelight, walking on the beach at sunset, dancing in the rain (almost doing every crazy act). They know that somewhere out there is a knight in shining armor ready to carry them off, or a beautiful princess waiting to be carried off into the sunset. Hopeless romantics recognize in themselves the ability to love infinitely deeply, and they ache to be loved with the same fervor in return. When a hopeless romantic has someone to lavish their affection on, lavish they do. Hopeless romantics sometimes write love letters full of poetic phrases and send flowers, but mostly they try to find a thousand thoughtful little ways to show their love. They just simply make romance into an art form.

They believe in fairy tales and waits for them to come true, waits for the chance when he/she will be able to act out their love. Although, they usually perform a romantic act of love, yet rarely or never gets the chance to get the special someone and often gets disappointed, as real life is much harsher than fairy tales. Hopeless non-romantics think that hopeless romantics are delusional and too intense. Because hopeless romantic is a kinda social personality trait which is in constant conflicts with Commitment Issues. But, hopeless romantics do not feel, in any way, hopeless; on the contrary a hopeless romantic has such immense hope that it is impossible for them to escape immense pain when their heart, so willingly offered, is returned in pieces. Hopeless romantics will give all they have to the one they love. They love deeply, completely, entirely and dangerously. They will hand their whole heart to whomever they love, and do so willingly and joyfully. What, then, becomes of a hopeless romantic once their heart has been broken, if they are so very apt to believe in true love? Hopeless romantics, though they suffer immense heartbreak, still believe in love. That is their very definition – to always believe in love. They give the world its once-upon-a-times and happily-ever-afters. Hopeless romantics may have their feet on the ground, but their souls fly somewhere over the rainbow.
Relationships are the learning playground of life. And the idea of a hopeless romantic definitely has some beautiful and positive elements to it. Good Luck!

“Blessing in Disguise”

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
– Rumi

I have observed and realized that living with purpose is the only way to really live. It’s a journey with no definite beginning or an end and nothing is truly new under the sun and there are only endless re-packings in this world. But I wasn’t always like this. I was actually the complete opposite. Like, Ever since I could remember, I’d always been profoundly emotional about everything; Happiness, sadness and all the ridges and crevices of human emotions. Always thinking and feeling a little deeper than others and letting everything move me, the beautiful and ugly parts. Everything was so pulsating, as if it were connected to my own veins. It was a lot of things. Maybe it was teenage angst. Maybe at the time, it was my relationship with my parents or maybe it was genetic. Whatever it was, when you’re depressed you just don’t see anything else around you. Your mind is bleak and everything is just gray. Sometimes there are colors, but they fade away quickly when the dark clouds come.

My Story has the ingredients of teenage rebellion, angst, emotional abuse, a broken home, unstable minds, cultural expectations and differences brewing in the mind of a self-destructive young girl. I always showed the shiny surface of mine to everyone else. Although, I dealt with the pain through carving a razor through my flesh, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, screaming at the top of my lungs and what not. I did everything (right n wrong) just to drain out these feeling out of my mind. Despite all of that, I was a hopeless romantic, desperately loving the idea of love more than actually loving someone. In my first year of Masters, I fell in love for the first time. I thought loving someone would save me from myself. The most dangerous notion any human being in this world can ever have. So I loved him, I loved him so much as if letting go meant I would fall into the dark abyss below me. Love is a beautiful thing, but I loved madly with a foundation of despair, unhappiness with oneself, self-loathing and dangerously addictive attachment. When you love that way, whatever you build is ultimately doomed. It went on like that for five years. When we loved, we loved with all our hearts, when we fought we fought with all of our demons. We brought out the worst in each other, physically and emotionally. I was willing to kill myself because I didn’t want to be alone. Then one day I woke up. Depressed and weak, something in me, a tiny little light was telling me that I needed to get out of it. I had no other choice but to follow it. So I took a look at the man I loved with despair and knew that we couldn’t keep living like this anymore. We couldn’t even if we tried, and we’ve tried too many times. So I (not we) broke it off; my mad love perished.

I tried to stitch my life back together after that. I wasn’t sure how but I knew what I didn’t want anymore, I didn’t want to live my life unhappy. That was all I needed to know. I didn’t want to rely on tangible things for happiness.
At first everything felt painful, but I pummeled my way through it. I started going out for a morning walk and read more books about spirituality and motivation; two in particular, “The Power of Now” and “The monk who sold his Ferrari” changed my life. Then I started offering prayer. Ever since then, my life was shifted radically. The depression, suicidal thoughts and tendencies went away. I became stronger. When I was sad, I allowed myself to feel sad and cry, but I didn’t have that cloud over my head anymore and I knew that even if it dented me I was able to mold myself back together. Things weren’t gray anymore. I felt as if I had woken up from a deep dark slumber. I reset my mind, body, soul through self-realization. Try a little experiment. Close your eyes and say to yourself: “I wonder what my next thought is going to be.” Watch your thoughts and emotions, but don’t get involved in them or judge them – this will bring you into the now. Just focus on now and be in your body. “Most illnesses creep in when you are not present in the body. If the master is not present in the house, all kinds of shady characters will take up residence there. When you inhabit your body, it will be hard for unwanted guests to enter”. Believe me your problems are only projections of your mind. If you stop thinking, your problems will disappear, because when you are present there are no problems. Seriously, the greater part of human brain is self created.

Tolstoy tells a story of a beggar who sat out in the streets every day begging for pennies from every passerby. The beggar was so caught up in his own misery and poverty mentality that he lived his whole life unaware that the pot that he was sitting on everyday was actually a pot full of gold.
I reckon most of us live our lives this way. Begging for happiness. Seeking it and trying to inject it into our veins as if it were a drug, as if the only way we could get it is if we buy it. Anything that is physically tangible can satisfy us only for a blink. We must stop paving this self-destructive path with instant gratifications, stop pursuing a path that continuously leads to illusory forms of happiness. Because the truth is, everything is golden and we can touch it if we choose to see it.

And now I sit here, alive and happy, and most importantly stronger than I have ever been. Through being vulnerable we can show others our wounds, but we can also show them that we all have the same ones. I want you to see that there is always hope, that there is always light around us and that we are ultimately much more resilient than we could ever imagined. Your worries, addictions, flaws, wounds are nothing but a minute speck in this vast, perpetual space. Just the fact that you are living in this enigmatic and profoundly beautiful planet is a miracle in itself. Take a deep breathe and be thankful that you can still do it because alive is a beautiful to be. Drench yourself in the grandeur of being alive. I want you to know, that it’s really OK to feel things deeply, to have darkness, to have scars, to know pain, to know hurt, to know struggles. Trust your struggles, be proud of your scars because it is what makes you. If you are still seeing gray, know that it won’t last very long. When you catch a glimpse of light hold on to it and keep it in the palms of your hands. It’ll find its way through you. It’ll find its way through your cracks, through your wounds, it will eventually shed light on all the shadows until nothing is hiding anymore, until truth seeps out through every corner of you.

Chronic Over Thinking

“Sometimes we find our dreams more acceptable than reality.”
– Judy

Everyone who knows me tells me I think too much. This is a lifelong illness with which I was born, and is commonly known as Chronic Over thinking. Being an experienced chronic over-thinker myself, I can’t even walk into an ice cream Parlour without having a minor panic attack over the array of flavors and toppings. What size do I want? It’s too much. What if I choose one flavor, but then realize I want the other? And when I picked the dark chocolate flavor, there’s no going back; I’m stuck with the chocolate and think why did I make such a stupid choice? I should have picked the chip-chocolate flavor. Yeah, that chocolate was definitely calling my name (Rolf). And before we chronic over-thinkers know it, the poorly-chosen chocolate ice cream has gone, and we barely enjoyed one bite because time and energy were spent thinking about the chip-chocolate.

I tried to figure out what exactly goes on in our minds? Here’s a start (and trust me, this list is just an over grazing surface — see, already over-thinking).

1. Nothing is ever 100 percent without a doubt. There are always countless “what-ifs & buts” and pre-assumed situations that will find their way into our minds, even after we have made a well-thought out choice. But still peace of mind is our acquaintance, not a close friend.

2. Now comes our most funny aspect; Navigating relationships. At present when the hook-up culture is so prevalent and constant communication is completely plausible. There is so much to over-analyze, so many signs to read into. “Why did he send a winky face emoji instead of a normal smile? Why did he end that sentence with a period and not an exclamation point? Is he mad at me? Oh god, yes he’s mad… what did I do? Sh*t, now he sent a smiley face. Does that mean we are OK?” Impressively enough, we can go on and on.

3. One irony is that we run away from uncertain outcomes. I can only speak for the over-thinker in myself here, but I know when I start reading too much into a person or a situation, I convince myself to end it before the other person can. This way I retain control and hurt myself rather than the other person hurting me – as if one is preferable over the other.

4. The deadly point is we can’t compartmentalize. If something is wrong in one part of our life, it will likely consume our thoughts in other parts of life as well. We are good at hiding this and being productive regardless, but it’s still there, nibbling at the back of our minds.

5. You know what is so scary about us? We don’t live in the moment. Some people can do this well, or claim to, but we are completely incapable. Each moment leads to another, and another, and another… and suddenly, we are five years down the road, wondering how this decision is going to affect us then, rather than enjoying the spontaneity.

6. And Alas! In the last, we rarely enjoy experiences to the fullest extent. This isn’t because we aren’t happy or wish we were elsewhere. We just wish we could have found a way to combine every possible choice to have a perfect, happy, blended assortment, leaving no room for wondering about the alternative.

I, myself is a chronic thinker and although I struggle to overcome it but at the end came back to the pavilion. Like I’m tired but I can’t sleep, I’m not unhappy, but still feel depressed. The future seems so far away and I feel lost and lonely. Sometimes I want to fast forward these days and sometimes I want things the way they used to be. And see in the end sadly though, I don’t want any of that. I want to be young and reckless and free like I am now. Or, more accurately, like I was.

On serious notes, chronic thinking or worrying is a mental habit that should be broken. Unrelenting doubts and fears can be paralyzing. They can sap your emotional energy, send your anxiety levels soaring, and interfere with your daily life. We need to train our brain to stay calm and look at life from a more positive perspective and for this se need to overcome many cognitive distortions, like:

All-or-nothing thinking- Looking at things in black-or-white categories, with no middle ground.

Over generalizations- Generalizing from a single negative experience, expecting it to hold true forever.

The mental filter – Focusing on the negatives while filtering out all the positives. Noticing that one thing which went wrong, rather than believing on all the things that went right. You believe the way you feel that reflects your reality only.

Jumping to conclusions – Making negative interpretations without actual evidence by acting like a mind reader.
Catastrophizing – The worst aspect ever. Expecting the worst-case scenario to happen.

‘Should be’ and ‘should-not-be’ – Holding yourself to a strict list of what you should and shouldn’t do, and beating yourself up on, if you have broken any of the rules.

Labeling and Personalization – Labeling yourself based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings and assuming responsibility for things that are outside your control.

One has to have a little control on over thinking, for the things to enjoy we need to let them as they are and with time either we get the life that we want or we leave and stay strong.