How do we keep love alive? For love to continue it cannot be stopped or limited. Love is about opening. Opening your Self, each other, and doors in life. Limitations are about fear. Limitations stop love from opening and growing. In a relationship each person is responsible for keeping love alive. Each person will have their strengths and weaknesses, styles and patterns. So, when all of this is put together, we have several key parts to keeping love alive in a partnership. Today I will address the unfolding awareness, communication, and behaviors that you and your partner can implement to keep your love growing!
Awareness in a relationship is a foundational key! A true partnership requires each person to be aware of their own Self, each other, and the experience they wish to have. Once the awareness is active it will constantly unfold in life. In other words, awareness leads to more awareness. You can see how this is a key part to the opening of the relationship and its love. The more aware you are with your Self, the more you know your strengths and challenges. The more you are aware of your partner the more you realize there is a lot to know. Your awareness will open you to not thinking you know. The assumption that you know your partner or your partner knows you, limits the relationship. The opportunity to learn stops immediately upon that assumption. Awareness! It will help you see that life is a constant adventure of exploration, not an endpoint of knowing the answer.
As your awareness becomes a rhythm in your own life, you will wish to communicate your new learnings. Each person wants to be known. As you gain awareness of your Self you will want others to know you. That is true of your partner as well. Each of you is in a constant state of change. So, how do you communicate so that you are embracing the constant change? I teach a style of communicating called Teach and Explore Communication. At its core is Compassionate Curiosity. If each person in a partnership can learn to stay in a constant state of Compassionate Curiosity, then they will always be asking questions to explore their partner. If you are in a constant state of exploration of your partner and you are willing to be explored by your partner, then you will always be on an adventure of learning about one another and life, together and as individuals. Compassion is a key ingredient to love. When it is coupled with curiosity, it opens doors endlessly. When a couple learns to constantly open doors, their relationship will keep moving and growing!
In a healthy, growing relationship, your communication deepens beyond verbal and into sexual. Sexual expression is the most intimate and opening form of communication between partners. If you are communicating in a way that opens doors, sexual expression will continue to grow and be exciting. It can stay a form of intimate communication rather than a behavior. The sacred exchange that can occur during lovemaking can unite the two of you beyond your physical bodies. Because of this, it is critical to keep your bedroom as a sacred place (not that you are only going to have sex in that room!). Too often, sex is a behavior in the relationship and consequently, it becomes boring or uneventful. Incidentally, boring is the absence of self. If there is an absence of self in the sexual expression in a partnership, then slowly sex will become uninteresting, and the partners can drift apart. If sexual expression remains a part of a deeper communication between the partners, then it will continue to open and be a point of exploration for the partners.
As your awareness becomes habit and your communication is anchored in Compassionate Curiosity, you will both want to experience more of life with and through one another. There are many ways in which partners can enjoy physically experiencing their relationship. Each day, set aside a time where you can sit quietly and talk. Make it a time that both of you can look forward to. Create a weekly date night. For example, experience a new restaurant every Friday night! Take, at least, an annual trip together ALONE. This does not have to be expensive, just intimate. Introduce spontaneous intimate events throughout life. For example, sharing a hot bath, serving the other for a day, planning a picnic or an event that is special to your partner. I often make the couples with whom I work, speak with only their eyes. It is an amazing experience for them. Can you do this with your partner? Another idea is to create a love game with little cards that you hide around that, when found, have an instruction of what you wish your partner to do. This can be intimate sexually and/or emotionally. Have a movie night periodically, at home or at a theatre. If you are readers, share your reading time. Open your day with a quote of affirmation or gratitude and share your interpretation of the statement/teaching. Awaken each morning and look at your partner and say, “Thank you for being beside me.” As you crawl into bed at the end of a day, share three things you are so very grateful for in your partner and do your best not to repeat them. Regardless of what you choose to share, the idea is to create an experience where, as partners, you are focused on one another, figuratively or literally. There are many ideas that can be shared here but without the awareness or communication, they are just tasks that will slowly slip away into the shadows as you get lost in the day-to-day monotony of expectations.
Keep your love alive by opening doors! If you limit your partner you are limiting the partnership. Teach your partner about you and ask your partner about her or him. Do your best to work at being Compassionately Curious! Then learn to play!! Play together like you just met! Always. May each of you find great, endless love in this life and beyond!
