Your Relationship Won’t Thrive and Grow by Itself…

You have have to nourish it.

Just like most people do not have a plan to grow personally, most do not have a plan to grow their relationships. Love and Relationships are like a garden. The soil needs tilled, nourished, watered, and sometimes things grow rapidly and other times more slowly. Sometimes things need pruned for the health of the plant or die back, yet leave seeds to plant again.

Many people have unhealthy relationships because they do not work the garden. They just expect magic to happen and plants to grow, be beautiful, and nourish their souls. After that initial attraction, there is some work involved. We sometimes need to be reminded that this takes much planning and effort!

It has been my experience that many people are in pain in their relationships, or in the aftermath of them. I was very fortunate to have had a great marriage. No marriage is perfect, but we were very targeted about communication, relationship development, and seeking wise counsel as needed. John was a great husband and father. It is so very hard to believe he is no longer walking this Earth.

Early on, as newlyweds, we were very in love. I know people must have been sick at the sight of us! But as the newlywed years settled and the family of origin upbringings reared their heads, the hoe had to till the ground, and the pruning shears had to come out.

We dealt with many difficult situations in our marriage that could tax any relationship. Yet, John always heard me out, and I always heard him out. He chose love, safety, protection, sanity, and grace and mercy for myself and his children. Along the way, we attended marriage retreats, seminars, workshops, personal growth classes, and really dug deeply and learned how to meet each other’s needs.

I know it sounds storybook. It wasn’t. It was good. It was love. And he is sorely missed.

Once, about 4 months after a marriage seminar, John came home with a matted, framed print of the Top 30 Things He Loved about His Wife. Some were sweet, some so funny, and some are just beautiful. I am so glad today that I have that gift to remind me how he viewed me. I am happy my sons and daughters read this to help them navigate their future relationships.

Many people operate today in the triangle of unhealthy relationships. They become the Persecutor, the Rescuer, or the Victim, and they can swap roles very easily. Mostly, they dominate a particular role. If you have both parties playing these roles, the marriage relationship can be rather volatile. We must come out of the self-indulgent place and walk in a healthy manner, making ourselves better people, better in our roles as man and wife, and have better marriages. These relationships are GIFTS and are meant to be for GOOD.

It is so sad and traumatizing to me as a coach to see and hear of the pain people walk out even ten years or more after a traumatic divorce. It just doesn’t have to be this way. I see people lose hope that they can ever have love or are not worthy of love in these instances. It is far from the truth.

Making yourself the best you that you can be is crucial to future relationships. We are not brought together by accident. We meet the people we are supposed to meet and a greater love can come from that- we must believe that the greatest love of our lives are yet to come.

What do you do to have a healthy relationship?

Do you invest heavily in it? Have you made peace with past relationships, holding the other person in high esteem as a human and maybe as parent to the gifts of your children? There is no need to not live peaceably. We can forgive and love again. We can believe the best for our future. We can become the man or woman we are supposed to be for our current or future relationships, learning how to be better to ourselves, better to our children, better to family and friends and neighbors. When we live this way, that love of our lives will be placed in our paths. Do you BELIEVE with me? I believe.

I had a coach after John died who challenged me when I called him the love of my life. He said that he understood that I loved being married and we were great at it. That John wasn’t gone, just in another dimension, and that we had the legacy of our children. But he challenged me to be OPEN to the opportunity that another, greater love could come. That the love of my life could be in the second part of my life. He wasn’t diminishing, he was merely helping me to consider goodness to come.

It is my hope that if you are in a marriage, that it is beautiful and being watered and nurtured, that you both value one another and give to one another, treating each as better than yourselves. If you have experienced loss or pain of divorce, I pray for restoration. I pray for you to be OPEN to what is to come and even create it as you walk out TODAY, making yourself the best that you can be for you and the world around you. If you desire that relationship, believe, picture what it is you desire. Write out what you seek in a mate and how you want to be treated and how you will treat them. An when it comes, remember me. Know that I believe for you and with you that the best of relationships is yet to come!

This week on my YouTube Channel is my short talk on the subject “Relationships“. If you didn’t get a chance to see my previous video posts, please check them out as well.

As you know, each month I will be adding two segments specifically designed to help me, help you. Please click the YouTube logo below. And don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to the YouTube channel so you will automatically get video updates as they come out.