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Wednesday 5 March 2014
Some people
believe when they separate they will no longer have to deal with their former
partner. But if you have children, this is not possible – you remain linked
forever as parents.
The
challenge is to make the ongoing parenting relationship as manageable and as
constructive as possible. Be civil to your former partner, irrespective of how
he approaches you, but never compromise safety.
Constructive
co-parenting involves establishing a businesslike relationship with your former
partner. Here are some practical tips to assist you.
- Remember to keep your goals uppermost.
- Focus on the children, not the past relationship.
- Hold meetings at a neutral location if possible.
- Use the telephone, email or a communication book if face-to-face discussion is a problem.
- Consider legal advice, mediation or counseling if you have difficulties.
- Be flexible. Children have commitments and special occasions will arise.
- Do not breach or allow any breach of a court order that prohibits contact with your former partner.
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Could your
relationship be a little more romantic, adventurous, spontaneous, harmonious or
more fun? Is your relationship as good as it can get, or has it lost a bit of
its sparkle and could do with a boost? If so, here are 10 suggestions to help
spice it up!
1. Know each other’s deepest desires and keep them alive and
growing:
Everything
we do comes from a desire and everything we think and do moves us closer to or
further away from our desires and each other. Learn what it is that each of you
desires the most. If you don't know, talk to your partner and share your
deepest desires with them. Talking is not just about communicating, it's about
connection. Then, create clear intentions and stay focused on your desires - be
it romance, fun, adventure, happiness, harmony, deep connection.
2. Make a commitment to your relationship:
What are you
committed to? What is currently happening in your relationship reveals what
your spoken and unspoken commitments are to. What are you spending your time
doing? Consciously carve out time exclusively for your relationship and to
committing to one another and making passion and love a priority.
3. Create new beliefs about how you can be together:
Our beliefs
about what is possible impact on our actions and the results we get from our
actions. If you're not experiencing what you want in your relationship, it
could be that you're being blocked by holding on to unhelpful beliefs about
what's possible. If so, create new beliefs about how you and your partner can
be together that are aligned with your desires.
4. Allow your partner to be different and learn from them:
What's
different between us and our partners can often be where the spark is. To keep
that spark alive, we need to accept, appreciate and honour our partners'
differences.
5. Look for opportunities to pamper and spoil your partner:
Pampering
can be as simple as letting your partner sleep in late, while you make
breakfast and take care of the kids, or allowing them to relax while you wash
the dishes after dinner. Or, it can be bringing home a little surprise gift
that you know they'll love, like ice-cream or a favorite CD or magazine
6. Remind yourself what it was that attracted you and what you
loved about your partner when you met:
You should
find (give or take a few kilos) that those things are still there; they just
need to be rediscovered and celebrated.
7. Touch your partner in loving ways:
When we
touch, we connect at that moment. Give your partner gentle touches, hugs and
kisses so they can feel your love and connection. Or touch their heart, by
giving them a hand-written love letter.
8. Make time for intimacy:
Even when
you and your partner are both running on busy schedules, be sure to take time
to be intimate. If we do not priorities our basic human need for intimacy, we
risk feelings of being unloved and unappreciated creeping in. As you set
intimacy as a priority in your relationship, you'll soon find other things in
your life will start to fall into place as your relationship is strengthened.
9. Spend regular time alone together:
It's
difficult to have a successful relationship without spending at least one morning,
afternoon or night a week alone together, free from distractions of family and
work responsibilities. Experiment and find fun things to do together. Have a
picnic in the park or on the beach, go kayaking or bush walking, get massages
together or better still, give each other a massage! Your dates don't need to
be expensive but your intention needs to be to connect and focus on each other.
So, if you love going to the movies, seeing live bands or going to the theatre,
have dinner beforehand or coffee and dessert afterwards. A true date means
you're spending time looking at one another, not at something else.
10. Plan romantic or fun and adventurous activities:
As well as
having a regular weekly date, plan for a few longer get away times each year of
at least three days and two nights that you can spend enjoying quality time
together. Use this time from your daily responsibilities for family, home and
work. If you're a romantic and your budget allows for it, go to a beautiful
exotic island like Fiji or Hawaii and sit by the water sipping cocktails. Go
lower budget and go camping and 4-wheel driving or rent a beach house or a bed
and breakfast in the mountains and spend time just focusing on each other's
needs.
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Security is an essential ingredient for
intimacy. Security results from a feeling of predictability and safety, which
in turn arises from consistent benevolence on the part of others. If we are
randomly attacked by our lover, we can never feel safe or secure. If we have to
use a rickety old footbridge to cross a chasm, each wobbly step will be a
fearful nightmare.
Why do we stay in relationships where we
do not feel safe and secure?
One central reason is that we have a
habit of listening to people’s words, rather than
regarding their actions. The old adage “actions speak louder
than words” has fallen out of favor in our modern age, but it is essential for
evaluating potential relationships of any kind.
Abusive behavior always results from a
lack of integrity.
If, on a first date, a woman tells you
openly that she will attack you whenever she feels insecure, angry or
vulnerable – and promises to blame you when you get upset about being attacked
– you would be very unlikely to continue dating her.
No, people always tell you that they are
acting virtuously, even if their actions completely contradict their stated
values. If a woman has a habit of attacking others when she feels anxious, that
behavior can only be maintained if she
redefines her abuse as virtuous in some manner. She will say that she is only
defending herself, or that she has been patient for a long time but “enough is
enough,” or that the other party started the conflict, and so on.
If her culpability can be proved beyond a
shadow of a doubt, she then reverts to the secondary defense of abusers, which
is to say that it is ignoble to point fingers and play “the blame game” that
“forgiveness is a virtue, and we need to move on now.”
In other words, she will openly state
that unjustly attacking others is wrong, and then will unjustly attack others.
This lack of integrity ensures that no one around her will ever feel a
consistent sense of security or safety. (In fact, that is exactly what it is designed to
do, since destabilizing people is an essential prerequisite for controlling
them.)
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It is impossible to imagine genuine love
in the absence of honesty. For love to be genuine, it must be an accurate
assessment of particular traits within another human being. If the person that
we claim to “love” constantly lies to us or falsifies his actions, then whatever
perception we have of that person that causes us to love him are incorrect.
Since that which causes us to love is
incorrect, our “love” must thus be invalid. To analogize this, imagine that you
work for me and I pay you in cash. However, when you try to spend your
earnings, you discover that I have paid you with counterfeit bills. As a
result, I have received value through your work, but you have not received
value through my payment. My dishonesty has thus generated a false value for
you, because if you knew that I was going to pay you with counterfeit money,
you would not have worked for me to begin with.
Since the truth would have produced an
opposite action in you – a rejection of employment, rather than an acceptance
of it – your diligent behavior was as unjustified as your interpretation of my
honesty.
In the same way, if I tell you that I am
courageous, and virtuous, yet hide sordid aspects of my life from you, drink in
secret and so on – and you believe me – then you will feel more positive towards
me than if I told you the truth.
Since our emotions are so directly
dependent upon our perceptions and are so foundational to our experience of the
world, someone who lies to us is fundamentally manipulating our experience of
the world.
Since our emotions also alter our bodies
biochemically, a liar who gets close to us manipulates our biochemistry as
surely as if he were drugging us directly.
Thus our own emotional stability, which
is a key part of a peaceful and happy life, requires as a bare minimum general
honesty from those around us.
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One of the most fundamental questions in
philosophy – and psychology – is the question: “Compared to what?” When I say
that a proposition is “true,” then I mean that it is true compared to something
else – falsehood, or inconsistency with internal logic or empirical validation.
Similarly, when we look at the question
of love, clearly love is an expression of a preference. Naturally, we must then
ask, “A preference – compared to what?”
If I say that I love honesty, then
clearly I love it compared to dishonesty.
If I say that I love virtue, then clearly
I love virtue compared to vice or corruption.
Now, since we can only determine the
traits of another human being through empirical observation, our experience of
“love” must involve the actions of another (said actions can include words, of
course). Just as our conception of “tall” is derived from the objective (i.e.
measurable) characteristics of a man – and “tall” is valid relative to the
average height of a human male – just so is our experience of “love” derived
from the objective characteristics (words and actions) of another human being.
Thus “love” must be valid relative to an
objective and external standard, which we shall work to define shortly.
