The Essentials of a Beautiful Loving Relationship
We all want great relationships with our significant others. And at times, the relationships are great.
Particularly in the beginning, relationships are amazing. Energy and excitement are high. Everything is new. This is a new person you are attracted to. Both sides are working hard to appease the other. There is excitement about the future. High expectations have been set. Family and friends begin to commingle. There may be some angst about whether it will last. Nonetheless, the future is bright, and the possibilities are endless.
And then……
Things start to change. Energy begins to dissipate. A routine forms and excitement lessens. It seems like your other isn’t putting in the same effort. The bedroom is becoming dry. Those high expectations are not consistently being met. People fall into old, concealed habits. Negative emotions begin to show. Who is this person? How come they don’t want to hang out? Why am I hearing “no” more often? Where have they been all night?
I find this has been the general pattern of many relationships. A rocket launched into the sky with high promise, only to fall to the earth as a dud. This person who once felt like the perfect fit, has become a person that, at worst, you’ve come to despise. At best, you tolerate.
What gives? Where did we go wrong? What am I missing? What are the essentials of a Beautiful, Loving Relationship?
I’m a blessed soul. I’ve made mistakes in my life, especially on this topic. And yet here I am, writing on this topic with amazing possibilities of building on relationships with a few very lovely women. But it’s early, and as I mentioned above, this is the time to exercise caution and keep certain key things in mind. I do not want to fall into any traps set by other, or myself. I do not want to hurt anyone, and I do not want to be hurt. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this topic. I spent a ton of time thinking about how to create a Beautiful, Loving Relationship. Many dates, much subject matter, and many cycles of thinking, feeling, pondering, visualizing, and realizing has brought me to the following essentials that you need to keep in mind as you start to date someone more seriously.
I would say that during the initial 4-6 month period of dating, you should gauge the potential for a beautiful relationship based on these essentials. If you feel like you can’t build on these essentials, then you will never feel unconditional love for this person. You can still date and have fun, that’s fine too, but be truthful with that and have a great time. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you both truly know where you stand. But don’t lie to each other, don’t try to take ownership of each other, don’t pressure or get pressured for something more serious, and don’t hurt each other with lies. Don’t lie to yourself about the potential here, and don’t lie to the other person about how you feel. Without these essentials, you headed for misery.
Essentials of building a Beautiful, Loving Relationship
Before I get into the 8 essentials, I want you to think about this listing from two vantage points in your relationship lifecycle.
First vantage point: Dating: when you start dating someone, it’s important to gauge the potential for this relationship by determining whether these essentials can be met. So spend the first 6 months having fun, but remember to take time and ponder the potential for building these essentials if the relationship were to become more serious. Take your time. Have fun dating. But keep these in mind. Use these essentials as a way to grade the relationship.
Second vantage point: Long Term Relationship: When the relationship begins to strengthen into exclusiveness, start building these essentials. Continue to re-assess at times, and do things together to help strengthen these. The more you strengthen these, the closer you will be. The relationship will continue to grow into something beautiful, and loving. Don’t assume they will all be built out quickly, or perfectly. Maybe your judgement during dating was wrong, and you need to decide to throw in your cards. Other essentials may be growing strong, while some need more tending. Tend to them.
As your relationship continues to grow, or if your married, the goal is to continue to build on, and strengthen these essentials. If you do that, the sky is the limit. When challenges arise, use these essentials as guidance on where you may need to focus your attention.
One last thing: Many of these essentials are very connected. The more you build on one essential, the more others will grow as well. The same goes in the other direction. An essential that is low or non-existent, will impact the ability to grow other essentials. So you need to build, and continuously tend to all of these plants.
The Essentials:
Best Friends: You need to be best friends. Best friends love hanging out. They love doing things together. Sometimes those things are routine but your best friend makes it better. They make you feel great, confident, and unique. They care about your well being. Their well being is impacted by your well being. They pick you up when you fall. They pull you back to earth when you become unhinged. You can tell a best friend anything, and they can tell you anything. They may laugh at you. They may criticize you. They may give you a hug. You are their number 1 when they need help. They are your number 1 when you need help. You both have to be each others number 1’s. The the most important takeaway here.
Having, understanding, and supporting individual and collective desires and goals: A Beautiful, Loving Relationship is a journey. There are really 3 journeys here. Both of you should have individual journeys and paths. We all want to grow as individuals, become happier, reduce/remove negativity. We want to be joyous, vibrant, and energetic. We want peace. We may want to be great fathers and mothers. We also have professional goals, health goals, and other individual passions that we love, and which we want to improve at. The important thing here is that both of you need to have, understand, and support each others individual desires, goals, and growth.
Also of significant importance is the determination of your collective goals. You need to determine, understand, and support your collective goals as you continue on this relationship. Some of these may come from things you have in common. Maybe you are both religious or spiritual and want to continue on that journey to the infinite together. Maybe your relationship has led to realization of new collective goals: creating a business in an area you have both become passionate about, purchasing and owning a home together, having and raising beautiful children, traveling to new places and experiencing the world together. Again the important thing here is that you both have individual goals and paths, and that you have shared / collective goals and paths, and that you both understand them and do everything in your power to support and help each other on those paths.
Commonality: Beautiful, Loving Relationships must have commonality across several areas. Values are foundational commonalities, and the more of these you have in common, the more the rest of these essentials will naturally play themselves out. The most important ones are things like Love, Compassion, Kindness, Integrity, Loyalty, and Respect. These are really foundational to a Loving Relationship. I think all people have these values to some extent, but the important thing is….. to what extent are they lacking them in day to day life. If they are lacking (and their opposites consistently rear their ugly heads), then the relationship is in trouble.
Other commonalities can be things we desire to have, or do in life. People may have strong commonality in things like spiritual matters and religion, professional growth, financial growth, healthiness, nature, family, and raising kids. They may having commonality in hobbies and other free time activities, like watching movies, following a sports team, gardening, meditating, traveling, cooking, and trying new restaurants and foods. Overall, the important thing is for there to be commonality. Again, commonality on values is foundational. If someone isn’t kind, or is disloyal, the outcome is obvious, and hopefully you caught that in the dating phase. If not, you both have a lot of work to do to correct them now. Other commonalities are important as well. As I noted above, these essentials of Beautiful Loving Relationships are highly related. For example, commonality enables building on being a best friend (#1 above). It also can be a big part of you collective paths (#2 above).
Self Love: I find it very difficult for two people to have unconditional love for each other if they don’t first have self love. Please don’t interpret self love as that egotistical, vain, or even narcissistic type. That is absolutely not what we are talking about here, as these are really just internal responses to a lack of self love and a whole lot of repressed insecurity. This is about having compassion for yourself. It’s about being aware that you are not perfect, that you have flaws, that you have compassion for yourself and your flaws, and that you are working on the journey to get better every day. It’s foundational to being vulnerable, to admitting mistakes, to being able to apologize to someone you may have hurt, and to forgiving someone who has hurt you. It is the purest form of self confidence, because nothing rattles you, including you. You don’t beat yourself up. You don’t internalize and repress. You don’t project that internal non-love onto others, a common killer of many relationships. You love yourself, you are compassionate towards yourself. And because of that, naturally you can truly love someone else. You can love them and all of their flaws because you have compassion for them. And because they love themselves compassionately, they can love you. When you mess up, they will feel that compassion and let you know it’s OK. You will seek out to understand them, and apologize. They will feel compassion and gratitude for your understanding, and they will forgive you. Same goes the other way. When hurt by them, you will be compassionate, and forgiving.
Also, In a Beautiful, Loving Relationship, both of you are pushing each other to continue loving yourselves. You don’t allow each other to get down, or beat each other up. You support each other through compassion, you remind each other that neither of you are perfect, that you are growing, that you are getting better every day, and that you believe in each other. You will help each other get better, grow, and reach each others goals. It’s a nice place to be.
Listening: Yes, we all know this one. It’s like the common root cause of bad relationships. “We don’t communicate”. But I think the real root cause here is this: People are not willing to just shut up and listen. So here is a maxim to follow: “Seek to Understand, Before Seeking to be Understood”. It’s about listening. Listening with a compassionate open mind, and heart. Conflicts will arise, and there is no problem with that. There will be misunderstandings. There will be complaints, and concerns. Remember, we are human, we have emotions, and we have flaws.
Self love is key to the essential of real communication and candor, so do not lose sight of self love, and the compassionate environment it creates. Communication in that environment is much easier. However, you must go into those conversations with strong intention to listen and understand, with compassion. Take your time. Be absolutely present. Just listen. STFU and listen. Let feelings and thoughts run their course. Show your significant other that you are listening. That you are understanding what they are saying, why they are saying it, and why they feel that way. Repeat it back to them. Then take your time responding. Think, and feel through how your want to respond to help the situation. I can’t emphasize enough, compassion and empathy are key here. And whatever actions, and changes your communication leads you to, make them happen, in earnest! Many times, these grievances will relate to other essentials of a Beautiful, Loving Relationship. Maybe you fell off your shared values. Maybe your love making didn’t feel passionate enough for him or her. Maybe you aren’t focusing enough on a shared goal. Maybe you criticized too harshly. Maybe you are not listening (LOL).
Remember, you are both on individual and collective paths, and are supporting each other towards reaching those goals. Communication is a huge part of working through challenges on your path.
Novelty, Spontaneity, and Mystery: To be happy, we need novelty and spontaneity in our lives. Unexpected newness. We need new experiences. We need mystery. We need to set out to do something where the ending is not known. We have all been in relationships that have become mundane and repetitive with respect to experiences. Initially all is great because it’s new. Then routine sets in. Followed by boredom. Followed by individuals seeking more away from the relationship, followed by disloyalty, and eventual separation.
So it is essential to have novelty. To have change. To have different experiences. It provides a sense of adventure, newness, freshness. It provides excitement, elevated emotions, and new memories. It’s part of being on an adventure and journey together. Novelty builds friendship. It’s enabled by having collective goals and commonality. Spontaneity and mystery bring excitement. Spontaneous novelty feels safe because there is self love, friendship, and strong communication. So you need to get out there and do new, different, and unexpected things together. Get a babysitter and go on dates. Make love in the back of your car. Drive westward with no intended destination and wing it. Get on a plane to a random city and bring nothing but yourselves (and a credit card). Walk around a random town and notice the minutia. Jump into the ocean naked. Get a bottle of liquor and karaoke. The key things here are Novelty, Spontaneity, and Mystery.
A Collective Sense of Spirituality: Maybe it’s just me, but I find this to be a really good connector of people, and thus an essential to having a Beautiful, Loving Relationship. Spirituality is about realizing the infinite, the presence of god, pure beingness, enlightenment, or whatever you want to call it. It’s a realization we’ve all had. We came from it. All comes from it. All is it. It is all. That’s the truth. It’s pure energy, pure allness. Infinite, formless potential. Right now, as you read this, you are it. The problem we all have is that we cover it up with mental activity, thoughts, notions, and emotions, and then we forget we covered it. It’s not that thinking, feelings, memories are bad. The problem is we get lost in them because we forget our infinite source.
So why is this important to relationships? Well, it’s quite simple: We all come from, and are, that infinite energy. When we realize unity with that energy, we realize unity with all, and we experience a very natural, loving, connected state with the external world. When you are in a relationship with someone who has a similar sense, similar realization of the infinite, it develops an energetic, heartfelt sense of unity between your souls. In those moments of realization, there is just being, and your sense of separation dissolves. The connection is unforgettable, and thus bonds the relationship very closely.
Now it’s important to understand that it requires practice realize the infinite. There are endless spiritual practices and ways to meditate so I won’t go into them here. The important take away is that the practice of spirituality is essential to a Beautiful, Loving Relationship because it bring your energies back into their shared source where you can both experience unity, and oneness at the energetic and spiritual level. It’s an incredibly important and foundational essential that will nurture all other relationship essentials.
Lovemaking: Simply put, it’s essential to a Beautiful, Loving Relationship. I’ve come to think about this as the ultimate exchange of loving energy between two people. That is what we are exchanging. Love. Anything less may work to get your rocks off, but will not grow your relationship. If anything, it will eventually hinder it, or lead to its dissolution as people are not fulfilled and look elsewhere.
The greatest sex we have is when there is a fun, boundless, naked, thoughtless, selfless, and passionate exchange of love where you are in it to please the other, innately knowing you will be pleased, and released. It requires trust, patience, build up, play, self control, and exploration. It should feel more like a spontaneous speechless dance as opposed to a routine with instruction.
That’s not to say that you can’t talk about it or have quickies. You can, and you should, provided you both can communicate and stay on the same page about your needs. It’s good to have variety, spontaneity, and mystery here. Different times, different places, different speeds. However, the most important thing here is to find the time to have more lengthy sessions where you can allow for more anticipation, and buildup, and then connect your energies more slowly, subtly, and deeply. It’s a good workout. Its spiritual. Its loving. It’s the ultimate release.
And there you have it. My view of the 8 essentials of a Beautiful, Loving Relationship.
Remember, if you're early on in a relationship, you can use these essentials as a way to assess the potential for this relationship. It may help you identify areas that you need to work on and bring into your new relationship, or any new relationship you start. It may also help you identify areas of concern in the person you are dating. Particularly, if you feel like the other person is totally void of certain essentials, you should probably throw your cards in now, or give up on the possibility of having any long term relationship with that person.
Also remember, if you are in a long term relationship, or are married, you can use these essentials as a measuring stick for where you are now, and where you can both improve. Don't kill yourself if you're not hitting on all of these essentials at a high level. Remember, your relationship is a journey. You're not perfect, but you should both be striving to get better and better every day. I trust that if you make conscious efforts to improve on any of these essentials, your relationship will improve. You will get closer, more intimate. You will feel more connected. You will be able to communicate better. You’ll enjoy love making more. It won’t happen overnight. Just get a little better every day. =)