NEW HOPE FOR A TIRED RELATIONSHIP

    We are all familiar with the phrase, “love springs eternal,” BUT, just how does one bring this phrase to life in a relationship that is slowly disappearing?

    When we are engaged in a solid, loving relationship, the stars shine brighter, the moon glows bigger and everything else in life seems to just fall into place.

    This is ideal, of course!  The reality is that our love life often needs extra care and attention, even at the best of times. The good news is there are effective love life enhancing tips and hints available to those who need new insights and creative ideas to even jump start a love life that has fallen off-course.  

    It becomes a pretty tall order to have the creative love juices surging deep within all of the time.  Saying, “I love you,” can be simple enough, but, showing how much you love him or her is something entirely different.

When your Love Life Slides off the Track

    How often have you heard the statement, “The passion is gone?”  Perhaps you feel you are more like roommates, than lovers.  Once the excitement in a loving relationship goes out the door, so can the passion.

    Once you have experienced distance in your relationship, and affection starts to wane, you can feel great sadness.  When you begin to lose all the important things that seemed to matter when you first met, it can be difficult to begin again.

    You can breathe new life into your love life!  It is time to pour new energy into showing your partner just how much they mean to you.

    Even Before you Begin....
    
    **Resolve to never give up!  Have a plan and then see it through right until the very end.  A good relationship is worth every minute of your efforts!

    **If you are feeling you are the only one doing all of the work in this relationship and you just want out, think again! Your interpretation of your relationship will color how you act next.  
    
    You need to be positive to move forward. Don’t make a rash decision while in the heat of the moment.  Take some time to cool off, to re-group and then to remain committed. You are going to learn how to enhance your love life!

    **Forget about the idea of making another relationship work when the one you are in now needs work.  If you are not willing to do the work needed in your current relationship, remember that a new relationship will be even more difficult to work through.  

    We carry the baggage from our unresolved relationships right into the new ones!

    **Think that the upset you feel now will bring about the wisdom necessary to grow in your relationship, despite the situation. You will be stimulated to face what comes next. Enhancing your love life takes work!

    **Fixing a relationship that involves two, takes two.  You must both agree to this, otherwise, the relationship will end when one partner refuses to do the work.

    **Once the decision to move forward is clear by both parties, enhancing your love life will take both partners working together, making new promises and beginning with a first step.

    **There needs to be action now.  You both want to be making new choices such as changing your thinking, engaging in new behavioral patterns and changing your relationship from one that is just so-so into one filled with love and promise.

    **Remember -- it is much wiser to learn to remake the future than to continue to relive the past. Tell yourself this truth, over and over.

Practical Tips to Enhance your Love Life

    **Rebuild your love life - Work on yourself first. The relationship will follow. Two broken people cannot fix each other. Do something loving for yourself today, and then come back and do something loving for your partner.

    **Be honest with yourself - Only you can do the work that you alone need. Learning to love yourself first teaches you how to love others. Learn to love you. Only then will you have the kind of love your partner needs. Only then.

    **Begin all over again - Begin with a fresh start.  Remember when you first met and everything was great? Each of you seemed to know what to do. The relationship was everything you wanted, right?  Become re-acquainted. Get to know each other all over again. Begin by wooing each other like you did back then. Think a minute on those special moments.  Think about those moments again.

    **Resolve now to recreate those good times. You can begin your fresh start in your love life any moment you choose. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. It's time to move forward and without regrets.

    **Establish a love life enhancement goal - What is your relationship goal? What is most important to you and to your partner? Spend quality time together talking about what is important to both of you. Set some love life goals. Write them all down on paper. Setting goals will allow you both to control the direction of change you wish for. To follow a new path without knowing where it leads is like walking into a maze.

    **Develop a love life sense of humor - Laugh about anything or nothing at all for 1 minute of each day. Show your loved one your lighter side.  Smile and then smile again. It's very catching. Cultivate the positive by only looking at the bright side of things for a change.

    **Claim your bliss - Be happy now! It's your choice. Live and love to your absolute fullest and watch as the sparks start to fly.

    **Cultivate togetherness - Plan to spend time together. The key now is to  "plan." Stand by what you plan. Keep your commitments to be only with your partner. Work on this together and you will accomplish much more.

    **Cultivate calm - Don’t let disagreements spoil your love life. Freely offer words such as, "I'm sorry," when needed and then put it behind you. Don't waste valuable time nursing a quarrel. Someone has to be first to back down -- might as well be you. Your love life will not thrive in an atmosphere of discord.

    **Don't allow negative behavior to rule your love life - When the relationship is strained, it can sink very quickly. Sometimes you don't do what your partner wants you to do, so he/she becomes upset and even distant. Agree to allow each other to make your own choices. Remember, women will respond quickest to a man's action or lack of action. Men will respond quickest to a woman's attitude.

    **Take good care of yourself. When you feel tension present in your love life it is easy to reach for inappropriate food, alcohol or drugs. This is a big mistake. Resolve to pamper yourself. A healthy mind and body will translate into a healthy love life.

    **Sleep until rested. You can’t make up for lost sleep. When you are well rested you are loving yourself and then you have more to offer your loved one.

    **Give genuine gifts! - Take the time to pay sincere gifts of love. Offer genuine compliments often. Offer generous praise for your partner. The road to prosperity in your love life will be paved with a commitment to generosity towards your partner.

    **Feel close to your partner.  We feel closest to those who cause us to feel good about ourselves. Lavish expressions of love on your partner.  Bring them straight from the heart.

    **Show appreciation. Nurture your love life with warmth and goodwill.  This inspires your partner to want to please you. Appreciation is among the top ten needs for most people.

    **Exercise better choices - This is a great gift. It requires that you do not repeat the bad choices you have made in your love life that have brought you to this point in time. You will get what you focus on. Look for and see the goodness in your partner.  This will spur you on to even better choices.

    **Show affection! - There is great healing in your power of touch. Hold hands. Kiss in your car. Give your partner a massage. Spend time holding and caressing. Give your partner an extended hug every day; one that lasts several minutes. Purpose to touch each other every day.

    **Celebrate your love life! - Plan for special days in romantic ways. Make a note of very special days.  The ones that belong just to the two of you; your first date, when you first made love, when you moved into your home, the day you got married, the day of the proposal. Plan something really special.

    **Fun, fun, fun! - Kick your heels up and play like a kid again. Tell your partner you want to enjoy what he or she enjoys and then spend the entire day together. Make a commitment to do this regularly.

    **Dress up and go out on the town. - Go on a date and dress to the nines! Make it a special night; even rent a tuxedo or buy a new dress. Make advance reservations for a classy restaurant. Delight in all the planning.

    **Expect the unexpected. Be spontaneous and suggest something completely out of character. Send an intimate greeting card for no reason. Suddenly stop beside a country road, breath in the fresh air and say, "I love you!" and then be on your way. If your partner loves sports on TV, sit alongside and watch the game, too. Let your imagination have free reign.

    **Who said life had to be so serious? There will be faux pas and rock and roll!  So what? Better to just roll with the punches. Poke fun at yourself, it is very refreshing, but, not at your partner. That's their own job. Smile all the time.

    **Take on “the art of communicating.” An entire book could be written on this subject!  Your communication is the most important aspect of your love life.  Without it, you are only half a person.  We communicate in all kinds of ways, including verbal and non-verbal.

     Just be very open to your partner and listen.  Listening is the key to communicating. When you are communicating well you feel connected.  When you feel disconnected you become distant.  Your love life cannot survive being distant.

    **Watch what you say. Choose the words you speak with great care. Words hastily offered are not easily retrieved.  They become your reality. Your love life lives on the tip of your tongue.

    **Make an effort each day to tell your partner how much they mean to you and how much they are appreciated. Talk with tenderness. Use terms of endearment, such as "Honey," "Sweetie," "Baby," etc. and be polite, saying "thank you." Whisper even the simplest of words that reflect your love and your relationship will grow.

    **Nurture your love life with words of affection, understanding, acceptance and forgiveness. Nurture is to nourish, educate, grow or develop; cultivate.

    **Cultivate a healthy love life.  Healthy couples can identify problems with confidence.  They can talk openly and honestly about their differences and come to workable solutions. Work on this actively, or the relationship will evaporate.

    **Trusting and Being Trusted.  Be a straight shooter.  Trust is the great equalizer in a good relationship; without it there is no good!  A good foundation in a healthy love relationship is built on trust and trust must be earned.

    Holding back on the truth about how you feel, only telling part of the story, fudging on what your wants and needs are to your partner slowly erodes the trust in your relationship. Total honesty brings about awesome trust.  Do all that you can to achieve it!

    **Go the extra mile.  Motivate each other to be the best you can be. Be inventive in coming up with ways to inspire your love life. Never stop. NEVER! Push the romance envelope with a getaway in the mountains for a long weekend. Splurge and go all out! Use your imagination.

    **Agree to Agree.  It is important to understand that relationships seldom feel easy; however, a relationship is less of a struggle when two people agree to do whatever it takes to make it workable. This does not mean "giving it your best shot and if it doesn't work, you move on." This means doing whatever it takes!

    **Memories last a lifetime - So can your love life. Create a love scrapbook. Stash your memories of special greeting cards, matchbook covers that remind you of great visits, snapshots, a pressed flower, ticket stubs, a handwritten love poem, a funny, thoughtful valentine.

    Celebrate spending time together living out a life’s dream.  If you have always wanted to see Whitney Houston in concert, go!  Save the concert tickets and program and frame them as a life long memory the two of you have shared.

    **Spread a little sunshine.  Give each other permission to their own space.  Nothing grows well in the shade!  If you are forever in your loved one’s pocket, you can stifle the love so freely given. Even love partners need time alone. You need space. This is another way to love yourself, first.

    **Call the love doctor.  A lack in your love life is nearly always a symptom of something that needs fixing in the relationship.  Work on being more attentive, thoughtful and creative in expression of your love and your love life with come alive again.

    **Go on a date with your partner.  Even relationships that are old-hat need new juice! Once every week plan to spend some quality date time together. Enlist a trusted friend to stay the night with your kids and head for the “ten buck a night motel.”  Relive those olden days when you really lit the fire.

    **Practice volume control when talking.  A quiet loving voice is respectful and will get you more of what you want, more often.

    **Push your partner’s hot buttons - Push them spontaneously. I'm not talking about the ones you shouldn’t push. Push the turn-on buttons. Know what delights and pleases your partner and push those buttons often.

    Pay special attention to do this. Often a warm and tender hug, a kiss on the back of the neck or an unexpected massage is all it takes to get those home fires burning again.

    ~~Remember that your love life is something that needs to be worked on all the time and not only when it is broken and needs to be fixed.

    **Practice Prevention - Don't allow your relationship to slide into oblivion. Look at your love life as an active, breathing thing.  Life needs to be refueled and taken care of.  Look at the many ways you can actively prevent your love life from sizzling out.

    **Learn to love more, smarter.  You can acquire a healthier and stronger love life when you are learning more about what makes them so.  Visit quality relationship sites on the Internet. Develop a desire to read. Join a book club and read together. Subscribe to relationship ezines. Attend relationship seminars. Get love life coaching. You can never be too smart about loving relationships.

    **Priorities, priorities.  Abandon the idea once and for all that your life is your work.  Don’t confuse your career with your life. The same is true of your relationship! Relationship must always come first, then your career.

    Put even a few of these love life enhancers into practice and a more healthy love relationship will be your reward.

Enhance your love life by being more affectionate

       While your love is preparing the next meal go up behind him or her, and slide your arms around their waist. Nuzzle your face into the side of their neck and tell them how much you love them.

       When walking past your loved one, brush by them with a quick touch. This could be a quick touch to the small of the back, shoulder or waist.  Softly kiss your loved one on the cheek.

       Snuggle your love while on the couch. Hold hands, caress her softly and kiss during commercials.

       Hold your sweetheart's hand while driving in the car, or walking together.

       Offer to brush her hair.

       While having dinner together, touch hands often.


Enhance your love life by showing random acts

    Showing random acts of affection liberally will put a smile on your loved one’s face.  They will feel good, and that will cause you to feel good.  Showing random acts of affection is all part of being thoughtful.

    Show affection towards your partner for no reason and at completely spontaneous times. Why should showing your love by cuddling and kissing be limited to certain situations?

    When you are showing random acts of affection to your partner they feel inspired to do the same thing!  

    Over time, your relationship needs an injection of new blood and showing random acts of affection guarantees your love life is active and well.  You feel less like roommates and more like lovers.


        * Hug your partner from behind next time they are brushing their teeth.

        * Play slow music and treat your lover to a romantic dance.

        * While your partner is busy around the home, walk by and stop to kiss him or her on the forehead.

        * Offer a long, warm kiss to your love as soon as you walk in the door and     just as you leave each day.

        * Sneak up on your love and surprise them with a nuzzle in their hair or neck.

        * Run your fingers through your love's hair as you wait in a line.

        * Rub up against your love's leg while sitting beside him or her.

        * Place your hand on the small of her back as often as possible.

        * Caress your partner's face or arms during a heart-to-heart.

        * Catch your love’s eye while they are reading the newspaper or otherwise engaged in concentration.  When they look up and make eye contact back, smile and tell them how much you love them.

        * When your lover dresses to go out, be sure to pay attention and direct your gaze to admire him or her with your eyes.  Tell them how fabulous they look and seal it with a kiss.

Part 4

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