3 Reminders for a Healthy Love Life

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Whether you're in a relationship or not, it's so easy to forget how important it is to maintain a healthy relationship with yourself - first and foremost.  We can get so caught up in finding someone that we forget our values and boundaries.  If we don't go into relationships with a clear idea of who we are, we're bound to either lose our identities in the process or find that we've settled for someone who's not right for us. 

Know Thyself and Be Whole:

We have been taught that a relationship is a fifty-fifty proposition. A more accurate view is that two incomplete people can come together and find completion. This is a false premise that has had a disastrous impact on our relationships. Each person must come into a relationship a whole, complete person who is able to handle the responsibility; willing to share in the responsibility for mutual growth.  A relationship must not be a crutch. We want to develop complimentary unions where strengths and weaknesses have support . We want to be able to stand on our own, but stand a little taller in a relationship. We want to bring an identity to the table and have it reflected to us a little brighter. In a relationship, two halves do not make a whole, and we cannot allow anyone else to take responsibility for our completion.  

-Author Unknown

Once you're in a loving relationship, time and stress can take its toll and cause you to lose sight of the things you love about that person.  It becomes much easier to identify their flaws than their positive attributes.  The following quote reminds us of the beauty of intimacy and being able to let your guard down & feel safe.  True intimacy is hard to find and the comfort it brings definitely outweighs the small annoyances that are bound challenge your union.

Let Your Guard Down: 

Oh, the comfort - the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person - having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
 
~Dinah Craik

When you're with someone for a long time, you may begin to feel that you are growing apart in some ways.  But a reasonable amount of distance does not have to be detrimental.  As we evolve as individuals, we must also evolve as partners.   If you want your relationship to grow and flourish and your loved one to remain loving and kind, give them the time, space and opportunity to make contact with their own minds. 

Let Go to Hold On:

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

~Rainer Maria Rilke