A Miracle A Day

Your anniversary is coming up, and you don’t know what to do to make it special.  You want it to be different, not the same old dinner and a movie, something creative, but just can’t come up with any ideas.

For some reason, it is traditional that the man plan the anniversary events, although it’s certainly in the man’s interest to consult his significant other, too.  This can be a lot of pressure, especially since you’re expected to be creative at the same time.

If you’re a man with an anniversary coming up, and you have trouble being creative, today is your lucky day… in celebration of my own anniversary (today is my fourth), I’m going to provide a list of unusual and fun ideas for you to use on yours.

So here it is, 10 fun and different ways to celebrate your anniversary:

1. Return To The Location Of Your First Date

   This doesn’t require much other explanation.  Returning to the spot where you first had a romantic moment together celebrates everything that has happened since.

2. Start A Memory Album

   You can go purchase an album, and add a few pictures… some from this anniversary, some from previous anniversaries, if you have them.  The anniversary pictures are just to get you started… add to it every week, and it will bring you closer all year.

3. Create A Time Capsule

   This can be a lot of fun… make a time capsule for the two of you to open 5 or 10 years down the road.  Also, you can each write (or write one together) letters to your future selves… you can put them in the letters in the time capsule, or you can just do the letters, if you’d rather.

4. Renew Your Vows

   You may have heard of this one, and think it doesn’t qualify as unusual… but as you’re unlikely to be doing it very often, it will be unusual for you.  You can do it as publicly or privately as you like… just the two of you repeating them as you look into each other’s eyes, or in front of a preacher, friends, and family.  Either way, it will bring you back to the time of your original vows, likely helping you forget or let go of anything that has gotten between you since.

5. Have A Weekend Away

   Have an entire weekend away, just to yourselves.  Find someone to watch the kids, if you have them, and refuse to take any calls except from that person.  Don’t go near any computers, either… this is a little less time for the rest of the world, a little more for the two of you.

6. Make Something Together

   Making something together is fun, and if it’s something that will last, it will serve as a reminder of that joy for years to come.  It can be as big, or little, as you like.  One place that is fun, which I mentioned before, is Color Me Mine, which is a place where you can paint pottery which then gets fired.  It’s an easy way to have something that is yours without having to spend the whole day making it.

7. Make Reservations (And Have Something Waiting)

   Making reservations for dinner isn’t unusual… it’s a pretty standard part of celebrating an anniversary.  If you arrange beforehand to have something else waiting there, though… that’s something to remember.  It can be small… it’s the surprise that will make the memory, not so much the gift itself.

8. Ten Envelopes

   Take ten envelopes, and write on each one something like “For When You’re Lonely”, “For When You’re Sad”, etc.  Then put something in each one appropriate to that… a lot of the contents can be pictures, as it’s usually fairly easy to find pictures that are suitable, and it will bring up memories of the two of you together.

9. A Personalized Charm Bracelet

   I made one of these for my wife a couple of years ago.  It’s a set of charms that link to one another, and each one has something of significance on it… my wife’s, for instance, has pictures of us and our kids, our birthstones, a couple of words that have special significance to us, etc.

10. Photo Montage

    Creating a photo montage is essentially a chance to highlight any past occasions and memories that you choose, allowing you to set whatever mood you want… fun, closeness, or whatever else.  It can be small pictures printed on a piece of paper folded in half like a card, or full-sized pictures on a piece of posterboard, it’s up to you.  The bigger one probably has more impact, but the smaller one is easier to keep and look back at later.

There you go, ten different ideas for things to make your next anniversary special.  You can choose one or more of them… some of them can even be fun to do as a tradition.

Enjoy your anniversary… I’m going to enjoy mine.

PS – This post is pre-written… I’m not taking time away from my wife on our anniversary.

You have a good relationship going… you love each other, spend time with each other, maybe you've even gotten married.  After a while, though, you notice that you're not getting any closer.  You seem to have hit a plateau.

Or maybe you're just getting started in a new relationship, and you really like the other person, but things just seem to keep cropping up… one or the other of you keeps doing little things that seem to stop the relationship's growth right when it's getting started.

What do these two things have in common?  They are both things caused by something that no one likes to talk about in their own relationship… insecurity.

Everyone needs to have a sense of safety and security, a place that they can rest when life gets too chaotic.  The greatest provider of those feelings is a good relationship with your significant other… good relationships with friends and family can help, but just don't have the same magnitude.

Now you come to the catch 22, though… your relationship can't move past a certain point if you are insecure, but you need that relationship to provide your security.  What do you do?

The first thing you have to do is take action… without action, nothing will change.  That being said, here are a few steps that can help you get started.

How To Deal With Insecurity In Relationships:

1. Find Out The Source
   

   There are several ways to find the source of your insecurity, but the two biggest and most effective ways are writing it out and talking it out.

   Writing It Out:  Get a pen and a piece of paper, or your computer and a word processor, and just start writing about what you've been thinking about, in a free flow of words and thoughts.  Expand on anything that touches that insecure nerve inside you.  It may take two minutes if you barely have it buried, or an hour if it's deeper.

   Talking It Out:  Talk to someone that you can trust, at least mostly, like a close friend or a family member (or there could be one person who fits both descriptions).  You start out like you do in writing it… tell them what's been bothering you lately.  The advantage and disadvantage of this form is that they can ask questions, which may cause you to probe deeper inside, or may distract you from the true source.

   Either way you take, you're going to know it when you hit the true source of your insecurity… and it may be quite a revelation.

2. Tell Your Significant Other
   

   Now that you know what the source of your insecurity is, you have to take the next step and tell your significant other.  This is probably the hardest part of the whole process, because you're already insecure, or you wouldn't be doing it in the first place.

   No matter how uncomfortable it is, though, and regardless of whether you think you can deal with it on your own, this step is vital.  That's part of a relationship, you need to share anything that has a bearing on the relationship, and insecurity does have a major impact.

   Telling them also helps to cement it in your mind, and makes your commitment to dealing with it stronger.

3. Make A Plan
   

   Now that you've found the source, and talked to your partner about it, it's time to make a plan for dealing with your insecurity.  This is the time to get into specifics about what you're going to do to take care of the specific issues.

   It may be very easy, something that can be done in a day… or it may be a difficult process that takes years.  Either way, your plan needs specific actions and a time table for those actions.  Without both of those things you are much less likely to stick with the plan, and much less likely to succeed.

4. Take Action On Your Plan
   

   Now you have a plan… time to take the first action on it.  Even the very first action is often a major relief of all the issues stirred up by insecurity.  Each additional step takes away more and more of insecurity's power over your life and relationship.

5. Review And Update Your Plan
   

   This is a step that many people forget… your original plan may no longer be the best plan once you start moving forward.  You may even find that it's hurting your progress more than it's helping it.

   If that's the case, change it.  If it's off badly enough, throw away your old plan and create a new one from scratch.

   Once you've got a plan that seems likely to work, whether it's the original one or a completely new one, repeat step four.  Then, after a while, repeat this step.  Keep up the cycle of steps four and five until you're done, and the insecurity is a thing of the past.

You can follow this process with more than one insecurity at a time… but you should have a separate plan for each major source.  Many times, though, if you spend enough time on step one, you'll find that there is one root thing behind seemingly unrelated insecurities. 

The process of dealing with insecurity is often not fast… the insecurity may be coming from something years, or even decades, in your past.  If you're still reading this article, however, you've already taken the first step:  admitting to yourself that the problem exists.  Now you just need to take the next step, number one above.

The funny thing about how our minds work is that you don't necessarily even have to make much progress on dealing with the insecurity long term to start feeling the effects of being on the path to dealing with it.  Just having talked about it, and especially having some sort of plan to go forward with, is often enough to take the majority of insecurity's sting away.

If anyone has any further ideas for things to help with what is, truly, a major problem, please share them in the comments. 

It is important in any relationship for both people to feel loved.  That isn’t too hard to figure out or remember.

What isn’t quite so obvious, or easy to remember, is that your spouse needs different things to feel loved than you do.  How you show your wife that you love her is different than how you show your husband that you love him.

I’ve already written about how to show your husband you love him (see link above), and now it’s time to write about the wives (and girlfriends, for those of you who aren’t yet married).  It’s only fair, after all… both sides of a relationship need to work to show the other person they love them.

How to use this list:  This is not a list of specific actions.  It is more of a set of general guidelines and principles.  You will have to find your own ways of doing each of the points, other than one or two examples.

So, on to the meat of the article, how to show your wife you love her:

How strong is your relationship?  Is it absolutely, positively unshakable?

If so, do you know why?  If not, do you know what the problem is?

This article has seven “pillars” of a strong relationship… if all seven are standing firm, your relationship will be strong and reliable.  If one of them falls, the relationship gets a little more shaky, as the others have to pick up the added burden of support.

The pillars all support each other, as well.  That means that as one falls, the others are weaker, and more likely to fall themselves.  This can cause a domino effect, where a relationship that has been relatively good completely falls apart in an amazingly short time.

The good news is that a pillar can be repaired, but it requires a lot of time and effort for most of them, so if you notice one of them starting to become unstable in your relationship, fix it before it falls completely.

So now, here it is, what you’ve been waiting for, the seven pillars of a strong relationship (or how to make your relationship unshakable):

1. Honesty

   Honesty is important in every aspect of life, including relationships.  If you are not honest with your partner, then you are intentionally erecting internal walls that keep them away from who you really are.  Keeping your partner at a distance is not conducive to a strong relationship (see #6).

   There is someone it is even more important to be honest with than your partner, however, and that someone is probably someone you’re very used to deceiving… you.  If you aren’t honest with yourself, about who you are, what you want, where you are going… you can’t possibly be honest with your partner.  So be honest with yourself first.

2. Trust

   Nothing makes a relationship shaky faster than broken trust.  Trust is (relatively) easily given the first time, but once broken, is very difficult to repair.

   The trust referred to here isn’t just about your partner being able to believe what you say.  It’s about them being able to trust you completely… trust you to not hurt them, trust you to be committed to them, trust you with everything from the smallest detail up to and including trusting you with their life.

   It isn’t just big things that break someone’s trust, either.  Little things can chip away at it until it’s so fragile that the slightest burden shatters it.

3. Respect

   If you want a solid relationship, respect is an essential part.  You need to respect your partner’s needs and wants, their weaknesses and strengths, their dreams and goals.  You need to respect who they are.  Don’t try to make them be like you… don’t treat them like they are wrong any time they differ from you.  Very little in the world is black and white, wrong and right… understand that and accept that their differences don’t need “fixed”.

   It’s also important to remember that you need to truly respect them, not just make a show of it in front of them.  If you truly respect them, then you won’t disrespect them to your friends or family, or anyone else.  Doing so, even if they never find out, only weakens your respect for them further, and doesn’t help your commitment, either.

4. Communication

   No list of things which are important to a relationship could possibly be complete without listing communication.  Communication is a part of so much of the rest of a relationship… it’s hard to trust someone who won’t communicate with you, it’s hard to have intimacy, attention nearly always includes a communication component… virtually every aspect of a relationship is touched by communication.

   That’s why it’s important to know how to communicate well and effectively.  A big part of this is body language… become aware of your body language, and make certain that it reflects the actual words that come out of your mouth… in other words, don’t be thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow (which will affect your body language) while you’re talking to your partner about something important right now.

   It’s also important that you understand that listening is as big a part of communication as what you express yourself.  Don’t make conversations a competition, don’t try to “fix” everything your partner tells you (Men, pay special attention to that one), and don’t be just waiting for them to stop talking so you can speak.

   What you should do in communication is focus on things that you have in common… that’s what brings you together.  Focusing your communication on things that you don’t share makes it harder for your partner to relate to you, which is certainly not going to help with strengthening the relationship.

5. Attention

   I’ve mentioned attention a few times before, in previous articles… attention is the means by which you give something or someone importance in your life.  Everyone knows this instinctively, although being consciously aware of it is much more rare.

   This means that when you give your partner and your relationship attention, they will notice and respond.  When you give them less, they will notice that, too.  Indiscriminate, undirected attention can become oppressive, however.  You need to give them your attention in ways that show that you are thinking about them, not about you.

   Giving your partner attention doesn’t necessarily even involve time with them.  It can be picking out something that they will like and getting it for them, or making them something, or planning a trip that they will enjoy, etc.  Giving them attention simply means spending time and energy on them, even if most of that time and energy isn’t actually with them.

6. Intimacy

   Many relationships have drifted from a husband/wife relationship to a friends relationship because of a lack of intimacy.  This doesn’t just mean sexual intimacy, although that is important, too… it means dropping the walls you have inside of you and letting your partner deeper than the surface level that you keep up to protect yourself from being hurt.

   It means trusting them enough to let them in to where they can hurt you.  The more intimacy (by this definition) your relationship has, the stronger it will be… provided that the intimacy is mutual.  When only one person allows the other past their walls, it is very hard, and very tiring, on the other person.  It also starts affecting many of the other pillars, as the person who does open their walls will start to wonder why the other doesn’t (trust), whether the other person cares (attention, respect), and if they can continue to count on the other person (trust, commitment).

   Letting down your walls with your partner can be very hard, especially the ones deep inside, the ones that you don’t even let down for yourself… but your relationship can only be as strong as your intimacy allows.

7. Commitment

   Commitment… everyone needs it for a good, strong, deep relationship.  Many people will deny that they do, but that’s only at the surface… if they’re honest with themselves, they will admit that they need commitment for the relationship to move past a certain point.

   The commitment I am talking about here doesn’t have to be marriage.  It simply means that you can rely on the other person to be there, to put effort into your relationship, to keep you near the top of their list of priorities.  In the US, at least, and every other culture that I know of, this is most strongly expressed and embodied in marriage… it’s a sign of commitment that everyone can recognize.

   On the other hand, just because you are married doesn’t mean that you have commitment.  People get married for bad reasons, or forget to maintain their commitment, or other things may happen (lack of intimacy and communication can weaken commitment, marriage or no marriage).

   Regardless of whether you’re married or not, commitment is important.

Each pillar is related to at least two others.  With some of them it’s not too hard to see how they are related… it’s very difficult to have trust without honesty, for example.  Others are a little less obvious, like the fact that a lack of attention to your partner weakens your commitment to them.

When you think about the relationships between the pillars, it makes it easy to see why it’s important to regularly ensure the strength of all of them.  The crumbling of one pillar can easily pull one of the related pillars down with it, and even if it stops there, that’s knocking out two of the seven pillars… that’s a lot of shakiness and instability to have suddenly injected into a relationship.

I don’t think you can say that any one pillar is more important than the rest, but it is easier to focus on a few and strengthen them, which then strengthens the pillars to which the few are related, eventually strengthening the whole relationship.

So go ahead, pick a few to focus on, but don’t ignore any of them.  An unshakably strong relationship will be your reward.

Tuesday has rolled around again, and this time I’m not going to miss my Tips Tuesday post.  Today I have a few tips for you on how to make your wife happy, although some could easily be adapted to other relationships.  And, of course, wives vary, and so will your mileage.

One thing to keep in mind with all of these tips is that they only work if you do it without being asked.  That being said, most of them will work on any woman, a few depend on how the household labor is split up.  In any event, here we go, 7 quick tips on how to make your wife happy:

1. Do The Dishes

   Some might call me sexist for this one, since it seems to be making the assumption that it’s the wife’s job to do the dishes.  I don’t necessarily think that, but it IS normally my wife who does the dishes (or my son if he’s in trouble), and she really appreciates when I do the dishes.  Make sure you get them clean, though, or it can be worse than not doing them!

2. Plan A Whole Night For Her

   There are a few women who would not appreciate this at all… but if you’re married to one of those, I’m quite certain that you know it, and you can skip this one.

   Plan a whole night for her… including making sure the kids are taken care of (find a babysitter that she trusts).  Plan dinner, and any events, and how the night will end… personally I like being at the beach for sunset, or a little later with the stars out.

   Oh, and a word of advice… stick to the plan unless something considerably better comes up, you’ll likely be happier over all.

3. Take Her Surprise Shopping

   I’ve heard there are women out there who don’t like shopping, but I’ve never actually met one.  This one is fun, as you get to see her get all excited like a kid.  How much you can afford is up to you, as is where you take her, though it’s pretty hard to go wrong with shoes.

4. Write Her A Letter

   This one is cheap, and if you are the writing type, easy.  If you’re not the writing type it can be hard, but it may be appreciated that much more, if she knows that you went to extra effort to write it.

   A note on this one… I’m NOT talking about email or a text message.  I’m talking about an honest to goodness old fashioned pen and paper sent through the post office letter.  Many women, and men for that matter (though men are less likely to admit it), are sentimental enough that they will keep a letter that you write to them for the rest of their lives.

5. Take Care Of Everything For One Night

   Take care of everything around the home for one night… this can be to allow her to go out with her girlfriends, or just to allow her to relax and unwind at home.  And I do mean take care of everything… dinner, the kids, cleaning, making the bed, whatever else you can think of… do it!

   Unless she has “her own way” of doing it, where you can’t do it right… my wife doesn’t like me to fold laundry.

6. Celebrate An Unusual Date

   This one is fun, too.  Pick a date that means something (and that you remember, of course), but isn’t a “normal” date to celebrate.  That means a date OTHER than your anniversary, your birthdays, or any other holiday.  It could be, but isn’t limited to, any of the following:

   • The day you met
   • The day you proposed
   • The day she conceived
   • The day you moved in together
   • The day you got your wedding rings

   
   Or you can choose another date of significance to the two of you… like September 15th for me and my wife.

7. Do That Thing You’ve Been Promising To Do

   We pretty much all have something we’ve been saying we would get to but haven’t yet actually done.  Do it… and let her know.  Don’t brag about it, just tell her “Honey, I finally did ——-” (you fill in the blanks).  This one isn’t as much of a direct happy inducer as the others, but it takes something off the overhead of stuff that she associates with you.  That makes it easier for her to be happy, and especially it makes it easier for her to think good things about you.

So… there you go, seven quick tips (quick to write, not to do) to make your wife happy.  Don’t do them all at once, she won’t appreciate it as much.  Don’t even do them all one day after another… pick one and do it once every two weeks or even once a month.  Number six, of course, can’t be done just any day, and most of them shouldn’t be done twice in a row (ie don’t send her a letter, then two weeks later send another one… instead send her a letter, and then two weeks later take care of everything for one night, or something like that).

What are you waiting for?  Go make your wife happy!