The Secret Formula for Staying Madly in Love:

Watch Coach Kim talking about creating a great marriage on the CW30's The Daily Dish. 

If you feel good about yourself, you feel more positive in your relationship.

We often hear older couples brag about the fact that they’ve been together for 15, 20, or even 30 years, but in my opinion, a marriage that lasts a long time, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a successful one.  Many couples stay together even though they are miserable, and I wouldn’t call these marriages successful.  These couples are not thriving and they are not happy individually or together.

You and I want more than just a roommate to share the workload and a partner in raising kids.  We want a relationship that makes our life richer, happier, more fulfilling and more fun.  We want a relationship that thrives! 

Is your relationship thriving? 

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

Are you losing yourself (the sense of who you are) in this relationship?  Or are you finding yourself (in a process of growth and discovery) in this relationship?

Are you having fun together?  Is it fun being married to you?

How often do you have adventures or learn new things together?

Do you feel loved or appreciated for what you do? Do you make your spouse feel loved and appreciated for what they do?

How affectionate are you?  Do you hold hands, make out and have sex often?

How is your self esteem?  Do you feel good about who you are?  Does your spouse? 

People who are unhappy with their relationship, are usually also unhappy with themselves.  They often have low self esteem and fear that they, and their life, aren’t good enough.  They may have lost themselves and they feel disconnected and/or depressed about life and who they are.

They also like to lay the blame for the problems on their spouse.  Let me set the record straight right now, your spouse is not the bad guy in this relationship (most of the time) and fixing them isn’t the answer.  (Plus you can’t fix another person!)

Working on you, is always the answer!

Which is why, l believe, life coaching is a better options for most couples who are having problems than traditional counseling because you don’t do coaching together.  You don’t go with your spouse, so you can’t spend the whole time complaining about your spouse and hoping the counselor can fix him/her. 

With coaching you each have a separate coach who works with you, completely separate from your spouse.  You are not allowed to even talk about your process and what you’re learning.  You have to focus on becoming better yourself, being more accountable for your behavior and stepping it up. 

The answer to fixing things in your marriage, so you can have a rich, fun, happy and fulfilling relationship, and feel madly in love - is to work on you, your behavior and how you feel about yourself. 

You must become happier, more fun and more positive about your life. You must become more secure about who you are.  You must start growing, learning and improving yourself.  That is the secret to a great marriage.

Not what you expected huh?

Even if you are the only one in the relationship making these changes… this formula still works. 

Being positive, happy and enthusiastic about life is contagious.  Your love for life will inspire your spouse to want to change who they are too.  (You cannot change them, but you can inspire them to want to change themselves by just showing the way and including them.)

So here is the Secret Formula for Staying Madly in Love:

Be a Giver –

Problems happen, in relationships, when you are more worried about what you’re getting than what you’re giving, this triggers the other person to be worried about what they’re not getting and pretty soon… no one is getting anything because no one is giving.

I can’t tell you how many couples come to me for help and they both tell me, “My spouse doesn’t really love me.” 

That’s never accurate and it’s not the problem.  

The problem is that you are too busy being worried that you’re not loved, and every second you spend here, you are not loving your spouse either!  In each moment you are in one of two places, you are either giving love or asking for love.  There are only two choices.  Most people spend 95% of their day trying to get love. They are so busy asking for love, they don’t have the time or energy left to give. 

If you want to stay madly in love… choose to be a giver.  Choose to focus more on giving your spouse the love they want and making them feel valued, than you do worrying about yourself. 

Give to them with no strings attached, not expecting to get anything back.  When you give just because you love the person, THEY WILL FEEL IT.  That feeling will make them want to give back to you. 

Choose to be a 100% giver (without fear about what you are getting) regardless of what you receive and trust life that givers always gain eventually.  If you live your life with kindness, confidence and love… your relationship will improve and you will get the love you desire.

(When I say be a giver, it doesn’t mean that you must sacrifice yourself and serve your spouse like an indentured slave.  It means choosing not having fear about whether you’re loved  but instead choosing to give love instead of dwelling on fear.)  You MUST take good care of yourself and speak your truth about your needs but don’t let the ruling energy in your relationship be one of fear and selfishness… make it about fearless love and giving to each other.

Send romantic text messages or think of things you can do to lighten your spouse’s load and make life easier.  Once a week, ask your spouse, “How can I give to you better, to make you feel more loved?”  Then, do what they ask.  This will create a relationship that just gets better with time.

Be accurate –

Understand this… your spouse is exactly the same as you.  They are a flawed, scared, imperfect, struggling human being… just like you.  They are afraid they aren’t good enough… just like you.  They are basically a good person and they make the best choices they can with what they know at the time… just like you. 

Sometimes they don’t know much though, so their choices suck… just like you.  At the end of the day though, they want to love you and have a good relationship… just like you.

That is accurate.

Problems begin when you start to see your spouse as better or worse, than you are.  Seeing others as different from you is the root of all conflict and drama.  As soon as you cast another person as the “bad guy” so you can be the “good guy” you have created drama and your relationship is in trouble.

You must get out of the habit of making your spouse the bad guy so you can be the good guy, or making them the good guy so you can dwell in self pity about how terrible you are.  This drama is beneath you.

 It is human nature though, for us to see other people as different from us.  This mindset is to blame for war, racism, crime and all the fighting in your marriage.  If you see other people as different from you, there is no compassion, wisdom or understanding there. 

As soon as you step back from the situation and see your spouse as the same as you, compassion, love and understanding come in and you can then solve your conflicts with loving communication. 

(There are some great articles on having these tough conversations on our website at www.claritypointcoaching.com)

Be in trust –

There are two core fears that wreck havoc in your relationships.  These fears are deadly in your marriage because they make it impossible to be a giver or accurate.  These fears started messing up your life when you were just a child, and have held you back your entire life.  Do you want to know what they are?

1) The fear that you’re not good enough,

2) The fear that your life’s not going to be good enough.

These two fears can have you and your spouse so wrapped up in pressure, stress and overwhelm that neither of you is capable of love. 

So how do you get out of these fears?

Choose to trust God, the universe and the process of life, that you are good enough right now and that your life is a perfect process of becoming and you are right on track all the time. 

1) Choose to trust that your value is infinite and absolute and nothing you do or don’t do can change it.

2) Choose to trust life that it is always giving you the perfect experiences you need, to become who you are meant to become.  Every experience is here to teach you something about yourself. 

If you live with this mindset, you won’t sweat the small stuff, you won’t get as overwhelmed and you will feel more peaceful and content.  Peaceful people are always happier in their relationships. 

Be adventurous -

Always be stretching, growing, learning and trying new things.  This makes you feel better about who you are and more interesting and fun to be with.  It is good for your self esteem and great for your relationship.

Dr. Lewandowski. a professor at Monmouth University in New Jersey says, "People have a fundamental motivation to improve themselves and add to who they are as a person.  If your partner is helping you to become a better person, you become happier and more satisfied in the relationship." 

 If you and your spouse constantly encourage each other to try new things and take on new adventures together it will make the relationship feel fulfilling and fun.  Couples who are madly in love, tend to love life and live it to the fullest.

Be fun -

There is no rule that says you stop having fun when you get married.  As a matter of fact, you can have more fun, be more spontaneous and laugh more often, if that’s the kind of relationship you want.  Don’t just spend time together – spend fun, spontaneous, happy time together.   Don’t just have a date night once a week – have a SMOKIN’ HOT date once a week.  Make being married to you fun!  Couples who make life fun… stay together!

Be affectionate -

Hold hands out in public, cuddle for a few minutes every morning and night, sit on the same side of the booth at dinner, make out on occasion and have sex as often as possible.  (If you are having fun and focused on giving… your sex life will naturally be amazing.)

We find that couples who focus on being givers, are living in trust and accuracy, are affectionate, adventuresome and fun, have fewer issues with each other. They are offended less often and they don't sweat the small stuff.  They happy together because they feel good about who they are individually, and that makes being together amazing.

It has taken me a while to understand how to keep passion alive and create a relationship that is rich and fulfilling but I can promise you that these secrets work.  If you have questions or would like to speak with a ClarityPoint Coach who could help you solve problems and create solutions, give us a call.