Choosing a Mate Requires Understanding

A couple of signs hang in our home.  They read:

A happy home is where both mates feel they got better than they deserved.

Happiness is being married to your best friend.

Both of us feel that way.  Our relationship began as a friendship and has continued that way.  Both of us feel very fortunate to have each other.  We admire the qualities in each other that we lack in ourselves.

How did you go about making your selection of your mate?  Did you seek advice from parents, magazines, websites, movies, friends?

There is an abundance of questionable advice on “how to attract a mate” these days.  Unfortunately, people are taking the advice, which is often questionable, and the result is failed marriages.  The divorce rate is astounding in our country today.

My advice regarding just one aspect of a relationship: 

♥ Joy comes from being your best self, the wonderful person that you are created to be, and everyone is created wonderfully.  Be your true self!

♥ When you are not happy with yourself, you are seldom happy with others. Successful guidance and advice comes from encouraging a person to develop the strengths and person they have been designed to be. 

♥ When advice that does not take this into consideration is followed (even when the  process achieves the immediately sought result), the end result is unhappiness and disatisfaction.    We should not become someone we are not in order to win the attention of a targeted mate.  We cannot continue the masquerade consistently and remain happy.   

♥ We are the best mate when we are truly the person we were created to be. The best mate for each of us is the mate who appreciates us for who we really are.  

♥ Society has so glorified “coupling” that the reason for it has been lost.  The two are to become one.  Each is not to lose his or her own identity.  But the two temperaments should be so complementary of each other and appreciative of each other’s strengths that they balance each other, thereby creating a completed individual.  Their strengths fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzel.  Perhaps that is why we see so many SJ-NF unions in society.  These two temperaments balance (complement) each other very well. 

♥ The only way to accomplish such a successful mating is for each partner to be truly who each is and to encourage each other in that endeavor.  Be your true self!

♥ It all boils down to one ingredient.  The ingredient that is missing in successful relationships, then, is understanding — of the other person and of ourselves.  With understanding, our goals will be right and our relationships will be right.  There is real joy in understanding.

♥♥♥  Therefore, get understanding.  ♥♥♥ 

Relationship Garden

The joys of yard gardening are much missed now that I am limited to pots on my patio, but the body aches and pains are not. To smell the earth and flowers as I move among the trees, shrubs and plants of all kinds brings me much joy. I visit my plant friends every chance I get. They never cease to reward me with their individual gifts of fragrance, color, texture, and (for some) even their sound.

Life's relationships, it seems, are similar to a garden. When we approach people with the appreciation we approach our "garden friends," their response is a reward of mutual appreciation.

However, sometimes we misstep in a garden (or a relationship), unintentionally trampling a tender being and preventing that one from producing to their full potential. It seems to me it is always the most fragile, most exotic, and most favorite that I have damaged in my wayward act.

Sometimes the damage is done when we are ridding our "gardens" of debris and weeds that we feel would hinder their growth or detract from the garden's beauty. We unintentionally destroy some of the good along with the bad.

Gardens are sometimes forgiving. I recall once receiving a five-gallon bucket half filled with iris corms that needed to be planted - a gift when I arrived in a new home from a new neighbor who had thinned her irises and was eager to help me get my landscaping underway.  Busyness and distractions took over, however, and I let the corms sit for many long months without attention (much like we sometimes do to our friends) until, finally, almost a year had passed when I re-discovered the neglected treasures.  I raced to plant every one and then anxiously waited for the following spring to learn whether any had survived.

When we realize we've neglected our relationships and then try to re-establish them with a call, a card, or a long overdue knock on the door, the wait for a reply seems an eternity. We long to see the the face of the one we have neglected just as I longed to see the green shoots of the iris blades emerge through the hard clay soil in which I planted them with such regret over my delay.

Spring did arrive, of course, and I began to inspect the ground like we would watch the mailbox, wait for a return phone call, or await the sound of footsteps to the door.  One, then three, then five more, and on it went until I lost count at over 100 irises emerged that year! They forgave my neglect! I had attended to their needs before it was too late.

The trampled "friends" in my garden have not been so forgiving. After all, even though it was unintentional, the damage was far greater.  However,  with my irises, there were some that emerged the following spring after a time of rest - blanketed by the soil, warmed by the sun, and fed by the rain.  They emerged to say, "I really do want to be.  I really do want to share a life with you.  I forgive you, but I'll need your care and protection from your carelessness in order to become strong again." These were usually those fragile, exotic and most cherished of the friends - the ones that had given me the most pleasure and who I mourned the most.

I was thankful for them all the more when I recalled the ones that did not return. For them I mourned as well, but I have had to learn to live beyond the grief.  For them I am thankful, for in their loss, I have become more forgiving of others.