My Advice To Married Couples After Divorcing My Wife Of 16 Years By Gerald Rogers.
Www.afterjujuman.com
Obviously, I’m not a relationship expert. But there’s something about my divorce being finalized this week that gives me perspective of things I wish I would have done different… After losing a woman that I loved, and a marriage of almost 16 years, here’s the advice I wish I would have had
1. Never stop courting. Never stop dating. NEVER EVER take that woman for granted. When you asked her to marry you, you promised to be that man that would OWN HER HEART and to fiercely protect it. This is the most important and sacred treasure you will ever be entrusted with. SHE CHOSE YOU. Never forget that, and NEVER GET LAZY in your love.
2. Protect your own heart. Just as you committed to being the protector of her heart, you must guard your own with the same vigilance. Love yourself fully, love the world openly, but there is a special place in your heart where no one must enter except for your wife. Keep that space always ready to receive her and invite her in, and refuse to let anyone or anything else enter there.
3. Fall in love over and over again. You will constantly change. You’re not the same people you were when you got married, and in five years you will not be the same person you are today. Change will come, and in that you have to re-choose each other everyday. SHE DOESN’T HAVE TO STAY WITH YOU, and if you don’t take care of her heart, she may give that heart to someone else or seal you out completely, and you may never be able to get it back. Always fight to win her love just as you did when you were courting her.
4. Always see the best in her. Focus only on what you love. What you focus on will expand. If you focus on what bugs you, all you will see is reasons to be bugged. If you focus on what you love, you can’t help but be consumed by love. Focus to the point where you can no longer see anything but love, and you know without a doubt that you are the luckiest man on earth to be have this woman as your wife.
5. It’s not your job to change or fix her… your job is to love her as she is with no expectation of her ever changing. And if she changes, love what she becomes, whether it’s what you wanted or not.
6. Take full accountability for your own emotions: It’s not your wife’s job to make you happy, and she CAN’T make you sad. You are responsible for finding your own happiness, and through that your joy will spill over into your relationship and your love.
7. Never blame your wife if you get frustrated or angry at her, it is only because it is triggering something inside of YOU. They are YOUR emotions, and your responsibility. When you feel those feelings take time to get present and to look within and understand what it is inside of YOU that is asking to be healed. You were attracted to this woman because she was the person best suited to trigger all of your childhood wounds in the most painful way so that you could heal them… when you heal yourself, you will no longer be triggered by her, and you will wonder why you ever were.
8. Allow your woman to just be. When she’s sad or upset, it’s not your job to fix it, it’s your job to HOLD HER and let her know it’s ok. Let her know that you hear her, and that she’s important and that you are that pillar on which she can always lean. The feminine spirit is about change and emotion and like a storm her emotions will roll in and out, and as you remain strong and unjudging she will trust you and open her soul to you… DON’T RUN-AWAY WHEN SHE’S UPSET. Stand present and strong and let her know you aren’t going anywhere. Listen to what she is really saying behind the words and emotion.
9. Be silly… don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Laugh. And make her laugh. Laughter makes everything else easier.
10. Fill her soul everyday… learn her love languages and the specific ways that she feels important and validated and CHERISHED. Ask her to create a list of 10 THINGS that make her feel loved and memorize those things and make it a priority everyday to make her feel like a queen.
11. Be present. Give her not only your time, but your focus, your attention and your soul. Do whatever it takes to clear your head so that when you are with her you are fully WITH HER. Treat her as you would your most valuable client. She is.
12. Be willing to take her sexually, to carry her away in the power of your masculine presence, to consume her and devour her with your strength, and to penetrate her to the deepest levels of her soul. Let her melt into her feminine softness as she knows she can trust you fully.
13. Don’t be an idiot…. And don’t be afraid of being one either. You will make mistakes and so will she. Try not to make too big of mistakes, and learn from the ones you do make. You’re not supposed to be perfect, just try to not be too stupid.
14. Give her space… The woman is so good at giving and giving, and sometimes she will need to be reminded to take time to nurture herself. Sometimes she will need to fly from your branches to go and find what feeds her soul, and if you give her that space she will come back with new songs to sing…. (okay, getting a little too poetic here, but you get the point. Tell her to take time for herself, ESPECIALLY after you have kids. She needs that space to renew and get re-centered, and to find herself after she gets lost in serving you, the kids and the world.)
15. Be vulnerable… you don’t have to have it all together. Be willing to share your fears and feelings, and quick to acknowledge your mistakes.
16. Be fully transparent. If you want to have trust you must be willing to share EVERYTHING… Especially those things you don’t want to share. It takes courage to fully love, to fully open your heart and let her in when you don’t know i she will like what she finds… Part of that courage is allowing her to love you completely, your darkness as well as your light. DROP THE MASK… If you feel like you need to wear a mask around her, and show up perfect all the time, you will never experience the full dimension of what love can be.
17. Never stop growing together… The stagnant pond breeds malaria, the flowing stream is always fresh and cool. Atrophy is the natural process when you stop working a muscle, just as it is if you stop working on your relationship. Find common goals, dreams and visions to work towards.
18. Don’t worry about money. Money is a game, find ways to work together as a team to win it. It never helps when teammates fight. Figure out ways to leverage both persons strength to win.
19. Forgive immediately and focus on the future rather than carrying weight from the past. Don’t let your history hold you hostage. Holding onto past mistakes that either you or she makes, is like a heavy anchor to your marriage and will hold you back. FORGIVENESS IS FREEDOM. Cut the anchor loose and always choose love.
20. Always choose love. ALWAYS CHOOSE LOVE. In the end, this is the only advice you need. If this is the guiding principle through which all your choices is governed, there is nothing that will threaten the happiness of your marriage. Love will always endure.
In the end marriage isn’t about happily ever after. It’s about work. And a commitment to grow together and a willingness to continually invest in creating something that can endure eternity. Through that work, the happiness will come. Marriage is life, and it will bring ups and downs. Embracing all of the cycles and learning to learn from and love each experience will bring the strength and perspective to keep building, one brick at a time.
These are lessons I learned the hard way. These are lessons I learned too late. But these are lessons I am learning and committed in carrying forward. Truth is, I loved being married, and in time, I will get married again, and when I do, I will build it with a foundation that will endure any storm and any amount of time.
If you are reading this and find wisdom in my pain, share it those those young husbands whose hearts are still full of hope, and with those couples you may know who may have forgotten how to love. One of those men may be like I was, and in these hard earned lessons perhaps something will awaken in him and he will learn to be the man his lady has been waiting for.
MEN- THIS IS YOUR CHARGE: Commit to being an EPIC LOVER. There is no greater challenge, and no greater prize. Your woman deserves that from you. Be the type of husband your wife can’t help but brag about.
(From the Editor: We wish to thank Joachim Cabanyes for sending it to us for publication, Joachim Cabanyes is an honorary member of Authors-choice blog.)
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Our Fear Of Being Vulnerable Is Why We’re Missing Out On Love
Zara Barrie
Zara Barrie in Dating
Jul 14, 2015 • 1:32pm
Elitedaily.com
....
Is this universal FEAR of vulnerability the very reason our relationships tend to be fleeting and meaningless?
We fear being hurt more than we want love.
I don’t know a single person, male or female, who doesn’t want love.
He might hide behind the mask of cynicism. She might not be ready. He might be a narcissist — regardless of the endless stream of issues we are laden with — at the end of the day, we all WANT to love.
Someday. Sometime.
But what’s greater? What is more profound? Is the fear of hitting the ground so overwhelmingly powerful that it overrides the desire to fall?
Are we all so collectively damaged that we choose fear over love? We can’t experience love without making ourselves vulnerable.
The walls must come down for us to really be seen. We need to let people truly see us if we want the love to be real.
Otherwise, it’s nothing more than a falsified, fantasy love. It’s people falling for the perfectly curated version of you, not the real you.
We are afraid to surrender our power.
We are a generation of control freaks. We vehemently control our image on social media.
We take pills to control our short, rapid-fire, fleeting attention spans. F*ck, we take pills to control our feelings.
When we’re vulnerable to another human being, we lose the tight fist of control. We are suddenly stripped of our power.
When we are raw and exposed, we give our partners the opportunity to get to know us. All of us. It’s only when people know us that they can hurt us.
Otherwise it’s just ego bruise, and we can recover much faster from a cracked ego than a broken heart.
We are scarred from the past.
We all have that one scar that cuts so deep; we never want feel that pain again.
We all have experienced the trauma of opening up to someone who royally f*cked us over. We have all put our trust in someone who took it and recklessly ran with it.
Is the damage from the past what makes us so afraid to ever dare allow ourselves to open up again?
We are afraid we won’t like what we see.
We are so terrified that if we were to strip ourselves of our sky-high walls and let you in, you would see us. The real us.
What if you saw us without heaps of expensive makeup, sans Instagram filters, with zero protective layers of designer outerwear- — and you didn’t like what you saw?
Are we afraid that if we were to allow someone into our protective, precious orb — and this person didn’t like how it felt in that sacred space — we wouldn’t be able to recover?
Herein lies the tricky part of this protective method: When we are hit with the unexpected fist of true love, our walls will naturally be inclined to ever-so-slightly lower.
Even the most guarded girl in the world isn’t immune to the powerful force of love.
If you’re lucky enough to feel it, don’t resist it. Don’t stave yourself from the most profound experience of your life because you’re afraid to feel the scary feelings.
By cutting yourself off from feeling vulnerable, you’re also cutting yourself off from the most wonderful feelings in the universe.
You have to open yourself up and let the good in, even if it means risking feeling some bad.
And if you do find yourself hurt — because it CAN happen — always remember this: There is no pain in the world you can’t recover from. I promise. It’s all worth it.
Zara Barrie in Dating
Jul 14, 2015 • 1:32pm
Elitedaily.com
....
Is this universal FEAR of vulnerability the very reason our relationships tend to be fleeting and meaningless?
We fear being hurt more than we want love.
I don’t know a single person, male or female, who doesn’t want love.
He might hide behind the mask of cynicism. She might not be ready. He might be a narcissist — regardless of the endless stream of issues we are laden with — at the end of the day, we all WANT to love.
Someday. Sometime.
But what’s greater? What is more profound? Is the fear of hitting the ground so overwhelmingly powerful that it overrides the desire to fall?
Are we all so collectively damaged that we choose fear over love? We can’t experience love without making ourselves vulnerable.
The walls must come down for us to really be seen. We need to let people truly see us if we want the love to be real.
Otherwise, it’s nothing more than a falsified, fantasy love. It’s people falling for the perfectly curated version of you, not the real you.
We are afraid to surrender our power.
We are a generation of control freaks. We vehemently control our image on social media.
We take pills to control our short, rapid-fire, fleeting attention spans. F*ck, we take pills to control our feelings.
When we’re vulnerable to another human being, we lose the tight fist of control. We are suddenly stripped of our power.
When we are raw and exposed, we give our partners the opportunity to get to know us. All of us. It’s only when people know us that they can hurt us.
Otherwise it’s just ego bruise, and we can recover much faster from a cracked ego than a broken heart.
We are scarred from the past.
We all have that one scar that cuts so deep; we never want feel that pain again.
We all have experienced the trauma of opening up to someone who royally f*cked us over. We have all put our trust in someone who took it and recklessly ran with it.
Is the damage from the past what makes us so afraid to ever dare allow ourselves to open up again?
We are afraid we won’t like what we see.
We are so terrified that if we were to strip ourselves of our sky-high walls and let you in, you would see us. The real us.
What if you saw us without heaps of expensive makeup, sans Instagram filters, with zero protective layers of designer outerwear- — and you didn’t like what you saw?
Are we afraid that if we were to allow someone into our protective, precious orb — and this person didn’t like how it felt in that sacred space — we wouldn’t be able to recover?
Herein lies the tricky part of this protective method: When we are hit with the unexpected fist of true love, our walls will naturally be inclined to ever-so-slightly lower.
Even the most guarded girl in the world isn’t immune to the powerful force of love.
If you’re lucky enough to feel it, don’t resist it. Don’t stave yourself from the most profound experience of your life because you’re afraid to feel the scary feelings.
By cutting yourself off from feeling vulnerable, you’re also cutting yourself off from the most wonderful feelings in the universe.
You have to open yourself up and let the good in, even if it means risking feeling some bad.
And if you do find yourself hurt — because it CAN happen — always remember this: There is no pain in the world you can’t recover from. I promise. It’s all worth it.
Monday, July 13, 2015
It’s Perfectly Okay To Not Know If Someone Is Your Forever Right Away
Paul Hudson
Paul Hudson in Dating
Jun 16, 2015 • 5:00pm
Elitedaily.com
How do you know if someone is “the one”? The truth is, there’s no absolute way of knowing — ever.
Most of what we experience in life amounts to little more than an illusion. I understand how real the emotions we experience feel to us.
I understand how our concerns, our passions, our realities seem so incredibly tangible, so honest and true.
The problem is, it’s all in our heads. It’s all in the minds of conscious beings — if it weren’t for consciousness, nothing would matter because there would be no one or thing for it to matter to.
Nothing in life is for certain. Nothing in life is entirely guaranteed. Nothing in the universe, in existence, is constant or everlasting.
I’m Attracted To DILFs And I Don’t Give A F*ck
You can’t possibly know if someone is your forever because it isn’t possible to know.
The beauty of it is if nothing in this universe is for certain, then everything is possible. Literally everything. There is some chance of every possibility, every possible reality coming to being.
Regardless of whether you believe in predetermination or not, because you don’t know the outcome of a situation, it exists in a state of uncertainty, a state of possibility, a state of both existing and not existing, simultaneously.
So is falling in love, meeting the love of your life — your forever — a choice? A decision? Pure luck?
As everything in life is, it’s a combination of everything. It’s easy to get washed away by life, pulled downstream seemingly against our will.
But in reality, nothing is entirely against our will. Everything that happens in our lives, the things that seem to happen by chance, that seem to happen, not by our design but rather happen to us, are partially designed by our own hand.
We are where we are, in the situation we find ourselves in, living the life we are living because of the choices we made.
Even if some parts of our reality are out of our control, if you believe in free will, then you must accept that had you not chosen the path in life you chose, the predicament you are now finding yourself in would have not been a likely possibility.
Human beings love to simplify. We love to take a three-dimensional scenario and break it apart, removing what we believe to be fluff, what we reason to be trivial, having no effect on the outcome or meaning.
But the fact is that every time we remove a part of our existence from the equation, believing it does not affect the rest of reality, we are in fact altering that reality.
It’s true. Some things, events, concepts, experiences, thoughts, truths, states have less of an effect on their surrounding parts than do others, but people love to oversimplify.
We have this odd belief that if we ourselves aren’t capable of understanding it — whatever it may be — if we ourselves can’t process all the information, understand how all the pieces fit together, then all that we don’t understand the importance of must be unnecessary.
Nothing could be further from the truth. There are limits to our cognitive abilities just as there are limits to everything else in life, in existence.
People will never fully understand the world nor the reality we exist in because we simply don’t have the processing power. We can’t keep track of all the connections.
So what does this all mean? It means we’re all shooting in the dark. We are all hoping we’re making the best possible choices, but without knowing any outcome for certain, you never know if the decisions you are making are going to take you down the path which you want to be taken down.
Of course, as with all possibilities, some have more of a chance of coming to fruition than others.
Some things are more or less likely to bring about a certain outcome than others.
We never know for certain whether or not we will reach our chosen destination, but there is honestly nothing more we can do than play the odds and hope for the best.
When you’re meeting someone new, someone you like, someone you are considering as a life partner, you can never be certain he or she will be your forever.
There are countless scenarios that are, in fact, out of your control that can change the outcome of any relationship, change the direction of any life.
Promises of an undying love are romantic — maybe even necessary, if only because of the culture we’ve created — but they amount to little more than wishful thinking.
You are just as likely to fall out of love with, or lose, someone you thought you’d love and hold forever as you are to not be able to let go of someone you never thought you’d have an issue letting go of.
As the saying goes, “Love works in mysterious ways.” The truth is those ways aren’t really mysterious.
There are cause and effect relationships to be found and understood, but love and life are so incredibly complex that trying to dig into it overwhelms us.
It’s not that you’re dumb — relatively speaking, human beings are all dumb. We simply dub love as mysterious because we can’t comprehend its complexity.
You could meet the love of your life walking down the street and not realize it until after months and months of dating.
Just the same, you could fall for someone in an instance and spend the rest of your lives together.
It’s even possible to have dated the love of your life and lost him or her, only to realize the huge mistake you made.
Of course, there is always a possibility for a new love. There is always a possibility of starting anew and building a grander or different love, however, the exact opposite is also true.
I can’t say which is more likely because it depends on the circumstance, but as long as there is a possibility for love in your life, you need to do your best to aim for it.
You may succeed, you may fail — there’s only one way to know for sure. It’s okay to not know if someone is your forever right away because, in reality, you never know.
You can hope. You can wish. You can even do your best to make it so. But at the end of the day, anything can happen.
Things out of your control can destroy just as things out of your control can create. All I can recommend is focusing on that which you do have some control over and then hoping for the best.
I’m afraid you’re not guaranteed a happy ending, but you definitely are in for a hell of a ride.
Paul Hudson in Dating
Jun 16, 2015 • 5:00pm
Elitedaily.com
How do you know if someone is “the one”? The truth is, there’s no absolute way of knowing — ever.
Most of what we experience in life amounts to little more than an illusion. I understand how real the emotions we experience feel to us.
I understand how our concerns, our passions, our realities seem so incredibly tangible, so honest and true.
The problem is, it’s all in our heads. It’s all in the minds of conscious beings — if it weren’t for consciousness, nothing would matter because there would be no one or thing for it to matter to.
Nothing in life is for certain. Nothing in life is entirely guaranteed. Nothing in the universe, in existence, is constant or everlasting.
I’m Attracted To DILFs And I Don’t Give A F*ck
You can’t possibly know if someone is your forever because it isn’t possible to know.
The beauty of it is if nothing in this universe is for certain, then everything is possible. Literally everything. There is some chance of every possibility, every possible reality coming to being.
Regardless of whether you believe in predetermination or not, because you don’t know the outcome of a situation, it exists in a state of uncertainty, a state of possibility, a state of both existing and not existing, simultaneously.
So is falling in love, meeting the love of your life — your forever — a choice? A decision? Pure luck?
As everything in life is, it’s a combination of everything. It’s easy to get washed away by life, pulled downstream seemingly against our will.
But in reality, nothing is entirely against our will. Everything that happens in our lives, the things that seem to happen by chance, that seem to happen, not by our design but rather happen to us, are partially designed by our own hand.
We are where we are, in the situation we find ourselves in, living the life we are living because of the choices we made.
Even if some parts of our reality are out of our control, if you believe in free will, then you must accept that had you not chosen the path in life you chose, the predicament you are now finding yourself in would have not been a likely possibility.
Human beings love to simplify. We love to take a three-dimensional scenario and break it apart, removing what we believe to be fluff, what we reason to be trivial, having no effect on the outcome or meaning.
But the fact is that every time we remove a part of our existence from the equation, believing it does not affect the rest of reality, we are in fact altering that reality.
It’s true. Some things, events, concepts, experiences, thoughts, truths, states have less of an effect on their surrounding parts than do others, but people love to oversimplify.
We have this odd belief that if we ourselves aren’t capable of understanding it — whatever it may be — if we ourselves can’t process all the information, understand how all the pieces fit together, then all that we don’t understand the importance of must be unnecessary.
Nothing could be further from the truth. There are limits to our cognitive abilities just as there are limits to everything else in life, in existence.
People will never fully understand the world nor the reality we exist in because we simply don’t have the processing power. We can’t keep track of all the connections.
So what does this all mean? It means we’re all shooting in the dark. We are all hoping we’re making the best possible choices, but without knowing any outcome for certain, you never know if the decisions you are making are going to take you down the path which you want to be taken down.
Of course, as with all possibilities, some have more of a chance of coming to fruition than others.
Some things are more or less likely to bring about a certain outcome than others.
We never know for certain whether or not we will reach our chosen destination, but there is honestly nothing more we can do than play the odds and hope for the best.
When you’re meeting someone new, someone you like, someone you are considering as a life partner, you can never be certain he or she will be your forever.
There are countless scenarios that are, in fact, out of your control that can change the outcome of any relationship, change the direction of any life.
Promises of an undying love are romantic — maybe even necessary, if only because of the culture we’ve created — but they amount to little more than wishful thinking.
You are just as likely to fall out of love with, or lose, someone you thought you’d love and hold forever as you are to not be able to let go of someone you never thought you’d have an issue letting go of.
As the saying goes, “Love works in mysterious ways.” The truth is those ways aren’t really mysterious.
There are cause and effect relationships to be found and understood, but love and life are so incredibly complex that trying to dig into it overwhelms us.
It’s not that you’re dumb — relatively speaking, human beings are all dumb. We simply dub love as mysterious because we can’t comprehend its complexity.
You could meet the love of your life walking down the street and not realize it until after months and months of dating.
Just the same, you could fall for someone in an instance and spend the rest of your lives together.
It’s even possible to have dated the love of your life and lost him or her, only to realize the huge mistake you made.
Of course, there is always a possibility for a new love. There is always a possibility of starting anew and building a grander or different love, however, the exact opposite is also true.
I can’t say which is more likely because it depends on the circumstance, but as long as there is a possibility for love in your life, you need to do your best to aim for it.
You may succeed, you may fail — there’s only one way to know for sure. It’s okay to not know if someone is your forever right away because, in reality, you never know.
You can hope. You can wish. You can even do your best to make it so. But at the end of the day, anything can happen.
Things out of your control can destroy just as things out of your control can create. All I can recommend is focusing on that which you do have some control over and then hoping for the best.
I’m afraid you’re not guaranteed a happy ending, but you definitely are in for a hell of a ride.
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