Reconcile or Move On, How to Decide

Should I Reconcile? You are older and wiser now, with experience, and a decision to make.

Your desire to reconcile is often a desire to live a dream. To revive your passions and the hopes you lived in the beginning. To return to Go and start over with a new chance.

Purhaps reconciliation is not only your desire, but forced upon you by others. Forced upon you by silent and sullen children. Forced upon you by a repentant spouse, full of promises and needs greater than your own. Forced upon you by family, religion, and tradition of the day.

Should I reconcile? Should I accept the hurt, the pain, and call it a day? Can I face the unknown, or is there more comfort in this familiar but battered arena? Yes, you are older and wiser now, with a decision to make.

How do you Decide?

On a blank piece of paper, across the top draw a single line, and down the center draw another line. At the top on one side write the word STAY. The other side put MOVE ON.

There is no secret or trick to this; simply write down every reason or excuse for saving or ending your marriage. Writing down one reason leads to another and another, the list can reach several reasons in no time. The point is to jot down the pros and cons. Your list might take a life of its own, growing hour by hour, day by day.

At least three things will happen.
- You will come to a decision.
- You will have realization of the issues.
- You have the start of a plan of action

Staying means taking action and making one more commitment to your marriage. That commitment is not yours alone. You both have issues to resolve. It is not advisable to take the easy way out by ignoring the issues. Face them head on.

Pay the price of hard work and honest communication. Without it, couples often fall back into old habits. A recommendable course of action is joint marriage counseling, and in many cases joint financial counseling.

Moving on means acceptance, and closes the option of going back into the marriage. While it may be sad, it also frees you to look to your future without the complications of all the "what if's".

Moving on can be like passing Go and collecting $200, knowing the next trip around the block might be better than the last.

In the game of romance, few things are ever black and white. Most of the points above are assumptions based on commonly used techniques. There is room for interpretations and misunderstandings but all this can make you wonder if everything is all right and discuss the problems you have.

Why Lovers Hurt Their Beloved Ones

Someone who claims to be "in love", should never hurt the love of their life. Love demands that you care deeply for your beloved. You should be concerned about their feelings and make them as contented as possible.

You need to keep them as happy as possible fulfilling their dreams. Encourage them during tough times and always be there for them. If you don't do these simple thing, then maybe your love is not as strong as you think.

This does happen in many relationships all through life. These couples do not have to worry to know about heaven. Their home is heaven. But some relationships, if a lover wishes to break away for any reason including feelings of being treated unjust, the results will be heartbreaking.

Let's look at what can happen. As the lover who wishes to break away remembers all the investments they made for the love, they will feel that all was a waste. All the sacrifices were in vain. They did so much for many years, and now look at the result.

This frustration and anger is directed towards the partner. At that time the lover who is breaking away forgets that worse can happen to the one they are leaving. Only selfish thoughts occupy their mind.

This is the tragedy of such love. The one who is left behind might have made more sacrifices and given a lot more to the relationship. They are puzzled as to why this break up is happening. It is like a sudden earthquake. That is why I asked, that if you love someone, why would you hurt them?

You Can Be Romantic

Why is it that so many people believe that they don’t have time or take the initiative to be romantic? Maybe most people don’t believe that they are creative enough to be romantic. Everyone is creative!

The word create offers a much broader definition than most people accept when it comes to the process of being able to come up with something original or simply well thought out.

Gifts that are considered to be traditionally romantic like candy and flowers are wonderful, but sometimes you need something that goes one step further. If your spouse enjoys flowers, you don’t have to settle for roses because they can sometimes become unexciting after a while.

Present them with something completely original such as a daisy or another flower where petals can be counted. Ask them to play the childhood game of ‘they love me, they love me not’ and watch them pluck the petals as they go.

However, don’t allow for the possibility of him or her arriving at the ‘they love me not’. Count the petals before you present the flower to your spouse and trim it so that there is an odd number of petals for the right outcome.

Arts and crafts used to be a fun break from the monotony of the school day, but believe it or not, it will come in handy when it comes to creative romantic gestures. Instead of promising that you will love him or her forever, show them.

Creativity comes in many different forms. Being creative can mean creating an atmosphere. If you want to plan the ultimate romantic evening but funds are low or you simply don’t want to have to leave the house.

Shut off the lights and imitate a power outage. You won’t have any distractions or heat, so it is up to both of you to keep the other warm and entertain each other.

Maybe romance is on your mind, but they are going out of town. Did you know that people on airplanes are typically hopeless romantics? Any flight attendant would be more than happy to make sure that your spouse receives a special present after the flight has left the ground.

Simply approach a crew member after your spouse boards the plane and they are usually more than happy to oblige a hopeless romantic like you. You might want to make sure that the gift is unwrapped or keep it to a single rose due to heightened security.

Creativity doesn’t have to come in the form of gifts every single time. Gestures like getting up and dancing with your spouse when a special song comes on the radio or TV is quite creative and incredibly romantic. Whenever the mood strikes you, allow your creative juices to flow!

What Is True Love?

The true source of fulfilling and satisfying loving relationships is not from seeking love, but is found within ourselves. Our own thoughts, expectations and behaviors determine the quality of true love we experience in our lives.

We can recognize true love as it is always empowering. True love gives, without expectations or demands in return. True love comes from a place within ourselves and expresses concern, kindness and joyfulness.

We know if we are experiencing true love by how we feel and act. Feeling needy, yearning to control or manipulate, planning or scheming to punish someone because they have disappointed us are not traits of true love.

Constantly finding flaws instead of acceptance, being possessive or jealous, and experiencing fright or sadness are all weaknesses that fill us with fear, anger and resentment. We can recognize that these feelings are not caused by true love.

These feelings are all generated by seeking to receive love from someone else. But we cannot get true love by demanding it or trying to force someone to love us. Love is never found with demands or ultimatums.

It is impossible to have true love by seeking it from someone else. These feelings make powerless victims out of us so we think our happiness is wholly dependent upon someone else behaving in a certain way. Only a relationship with God will give us true happiness.

If we find ourselves in this situation, the good news is, we don't have to remain in this vulnerable state that controls and weakens us. True love is within ourselves, and as we recognize this true love from God, we are able to discover enormous joy, comfort, kindness and happiness.

As we discover this power of true love, we will stop seeking love from outside of ourselves. We will know that our source of happiness is not dependent on the behaviors of someone else, but how our love is managed within ourselves, through God's love for us.

We, with our faith in God, are the only ones that create our own happiness. Our own happiness and contentment will cause us to serve another unselfishly, thereby receiving true love we want in return.