Love & Romance – Page 10

A Man’s Love Is Expressed Differently From A Woman’s Love

I realize I am drawing your attention to someone else’s book, rather than my own; but I cannot help myself. Steve Harvey’s Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man is genius! I want to share with you the most profound information I got from reading it.

Men show their love for their women differently than women show their love for men. If we women could really grasp this fact, relationships all over the world would improve.

How Women Love

Women show men they love them in warm, mushy ways. We talk to our men, we share everything, and we provide nurture and support. We want to be romanced because romantic touches are how we say, “I love you.” Men are very different and we know this already. The problem is we have spent centuries judging them for it instead of receiving it as the display of love it is. So when our new man gets past the courting phase, becomes solidly committed to us, and the romance begins to fade, we join the legion of sisters who complain about how he just doesn’t measure up to our ideal of what a real man is and how a real man loves.

Let me tell you, at this point the relationship is doomed and it ain’t his fault! Complements of Steve Harvey, let me share how a real man loves and see if you can’t begin to look at your fellow through a kinder lens and a heart warmed by just how very much he actually does let you know he loves you.

How A Man’s Love Is Different

There are three ways a man clearly and definitively shows his love and affection for his lady. The first thing a real man does when he knows he loves you and is ready to commit to the relationship is he professes who you are in his life. He calls you “his lady,” “girlfriend,” or “romantic partner.” He calls you by a special name with his words and with his body language. You can see it in the eyes of the folks in his world you are introduced to. You see that spark of recognition that this one (you) is different from the other women he has introduced to them. His claim on you is obvious.

Once he is ready to take the relationship to the next level, he may no longer be interested in midnight conversations that go on for hours. He doesn’t want to be treated like your best girlfriend. The profession he makes about you is significant for him and, if you are aware of its meaning, it can be significant for you too. In fact, it can be a big turn on.

The second thing a real man does when he knows he loves you and is ready to commit to the relationship is he provides for you. Now, not every man has the means to buy you expensive things, but to the degree he is able, he will provide for you. One of the examples Steve uses is if you have car trouble and ask him for help, he will do everything within his power to assist you in getting it fixed. One man might be able to afford to replace the car while another gets his cousin who is a car mechanic to fix it. Either way, the man is in love and providing. Every single weekend might not produce a romantic outing, but in any way he sees he can physically provide for you and is able, he will.

So, for instance, one year my husband provided me with a big, fancy digital camera and a printer to print the photographs I would take. He knew I was wary of making the switch from film to digital. He knew I needed to be provided with a really good camera and what is essentially a dark room to make the switch as convenient and delightful as possible. With these gifts he provided for me the means to enlarge my life and my creative expression. It was a deeply romantic gesture.

Accepting His Own Displays Of Love And Affection

The third thing a real man does when he is head over heals in love is he protects his woman. No one is allowed to hurt, insult, or disrespect her. He will not be able to tolerate her life or her spirit being in danger.

In my own experience, I have observed two important things about a man’s desire to protect his woman. The first is he will attempt to protect her from herself. This is why a man can become infuriated with some of the choices his woman makes because, as a man with his logical thinking, he could have told her this or that choice would be a mistake. How could she have put the woman he loves most in the whole world (herself) in harm’s way?

The other thing I have observed is that a real man in love will sacrifice himself to protect you from himself, if you require it. If you cannot abide him being who he is, expressing himself as a man, he will shrink inside, becoming less effective as a lover and as a partner as he attempts to protect you from him. This will not last indefinitely. Finally, the pressure to express himself as a man will rupture and you will lose him. If you find you are no longer invested in exploring the marvelous mystery he is, you might take a look at whether or not you really love him. Because asking him to stifle his masculinity is the beginning of the end.

Whether you are looking for Mr. Right, have found him, or are afraid you are losing him, knowing how a man shows his love to his woman gives you valuable information for figuring out where he is coming from and where he is going. It can also open the floodgates of gratitude and passionate love making as you learn to quit castigating him and instead appreciate his unique expressions of love!

10 Romantic Tips to Make Any Woman Happy

By maiaberens

Dictionary.com defines romantic as “displaying or expressing love or strong affection”. The media pushes flowers, dinners, vacations and expensive jewelry as ways to be romantic with a woman.

I have a different view of what’s romantic and I suspect any woman in a relationship for any length of time would agree. Of course, flowers, dinners, vacations and jewelry are lovely but they don’t necessarily speak to women’s three most primary needs in a relationship as described in John Gray’s Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

Having worked with John for many years and having become intimately knowledgeable with the Mars Venus concepts by virtue of my job, I had several aha! moments when I learned what they the three primary love needs were for a woman.

I am in total agreement with John Gray that women need most to be cared about, understood and respected. He suggests that “when a man responds to a woman in a way that acknowledges and prioritizes her rights, wishes and needs, she feels respected”.

A man can not care, not try to understand and not respect a woman at all, and still buy flowers and think that’s romantic. It won’t cut it, guys. So, following are 10 romantic tips in no particular order of importance that will make any woman happy and show her that you care, that you try to understand her and that you acknowledge and make important her rights, wishes and needs.

Remember to do the things you promised to do – without being reminded.

When my husband remembers that he promised to fix the blinds on the weekend and goes to Home Depot to buy what he needs, comes home and fixes the blinds just as he said, I feel this as an expression of love and caring. He knows that I like the house to look nice and things to work; I feel he understands and respects my desire to have it so.

Surprise her with something you know she wants – big or small.

This is such a big deal to me that I still remember when my ex-husband came home from work one day when I was pregnant with my first child 42 years ago with a balsa wood model airplane because I had said sometime in the past that I never had one.

I remember it as perhaps the sweetest, most romantic thing he ever did for me in the 19 years we were together. He occasionally brought me flowers but it didn’t make up for all his bad, uncaring, disrespectful behavior during the relationship.

Care about how she dresses.

My husband cares about what I wear, not from a critical or fault-finding perspective, but rather from an honest, loving interest in how I want to look and how I can look my best. It’s not about a compliment although heartfelt compliments are nice.

It’s that he knows that how I look is important to me and he cares to honor that. The way he makes me feel special and complimented is by telling me that how I look will make other men envy him.

Notice when she gets a haircut or changes her hairstyle.

I love that my husband always notices when I change my hair. It means he is really seeing me and paying attention not just used to me and making me become part of his exterior flow of things seen but not noticed like how the neighborhood looks.

Choose to spend time with her when she needs to do mundane things and you could be doing something more important or more fun.

When I do errands on the weekend, my husband often comes with me just because he says spending time with me is an adventure. I love that! I enjoy his company and even feel cared about. He could easily stay home and correct his student’s papers but instead he chooses time with me.

Pay attention to anything she creates – from cookies to a book she may write.

I feel so seen and important when my husbands listens to or reads everything I write. And I write a lot. I feel like I am the best, most creative person he ever met – and it feels good. And, he even was excited about the quiche I made a few weeks ago.

Look her in the eyes and tell her what inner qualities you love about her.

Oh, she likes to hear you think she’s hot, but watch her light up when you tell her you love how she always seems to attract the nicest friends or she is the best mother or you can’t get over how organized she is in all the family paperwork and even in her thinking.

Join her – even a bit – on her quests for self-improvement whether it’s a diet or exercise program or a self-help journey.

When I want to lose some weight and I give up half and half in my coffee and my husband joins me in doing that even though he doesn’t need to lose any, I feel his support for what I’m doing and I know he wouldn’t want to have something I particularly love, when I am choosing to forgo it.

Make her feel that you would rather spend time with her than anyone else.

Need I say more?

Show care and concern for those she loves, too.

I happen to have four adult children, their three partners and two grandchildren in my family. When my husband keeps saying how much he wishes my daughter didn’t move out of our neighborhood, it’s hard to explain how I feel. It’s a complex feeling made up of love, appreciation and shades of many other things.

Which leads me to tell you that when you do these 10 romantic things for her, the benefits to you will be beyond your wildest dreams.

Understanding The Desire To Love And Be Loved in Return

By sarahelizabethmalinak

“We are all part of the same human condition. The yearning to love and be loved is at the heart of who we are.” – Lynne Twist

That quote speaks to every man and every woman in every place and time! The worlds’ greatest love stories, from the brilliantly successful ones to the dismally tragic ones, come down to the yearning to love and be loved in return.

Loving and Being Loved

In every love story, there is a quality to the relationship that is defined by how each person deals with his or her own yearning to love and be loved.

Some of us have a stronger desire to love than to be loved. We pour ourselves out on everyone we love with abandon. We are supportive and nurturing, even if we risk suffocating the object of our affection. We may pour out our love in bold, brash, even bullying ways.

I am thinking of men who only need a hint that something is wrong and then swoop in to fix the problem, their loved one, and the people involved! This also brings to mind women who turn into protective mother bears when their loved ones (cubs) are threatened.

Others who are more committed to loving than being loved show their support and nurture by being submissive, following their lover wherever he or she leads. Even if it is to a dark place, the supportive, nurturing, I-am-totally-there-for-you individual loves the risk of loving no matter the cost.

A Stronger Desire to be Loved

Then there are those of us with a stronger desire to be loved. As supportive as I think I am, sometimes my desire to be loved by my husband is so strong I embarrass myself! When he is preoccupied with something, with steely focus accomplishing something, if I interrupt and thereby incur even a slight dismissal, the pout that forms on my lips is telling!

In an instant, it is all about me and my needs and desires. If I were truly one of those supportive types, wouldn’t I have seen and appreciated his preoccupation with whatever he was accomplishing?

Managing my desire to be loved and choosing to sometimes follow my yearning to love, as a priority over my yearning to be loved, is simple enough. It can be heartbreaking to watch someone completely sabotage their relationship because nothing can satisfy the hunger for proof that their lover loves them beyond all others!

Sabotaging the Relationship

Of course, the supportive, nurturing lovers can sabotage their relationships too. Smothering love can snuff out love, shocking the supportive individual with the level of resentment the recipient of their love feels towards them and all their loving attention!

Yet, the “yearning to love and be loved is at the heart of who we are.” At some point in your life, I hope you were your mother’s and father’s beloved infant. Mothers and fathers do their best. Sometimes their best is brilliant, sometimes it is good enough, and other times it is barely adequate.

Relationship With Caregivers

Whatever your relationship with your primary caregiver; when you were an infant, someone answered your call and met your needs. That person was an extension of you, as far as you were concerned, and when she or he was answering your needs and desires, it was as if the two of you were one.

When we fall in love with someone who falls in love with us, we see each other in a way that feels familiar. Falling in love is the closest we come to “mother love,” that love that answers all our needs. Even if the timing isn’t completely right; the need is answered by this person, this mother or father, who completes us.

Yearning for Love

I imagine the first time we feel the yearning to love and be loved happens the first time we realize our primary caregiver is, in fact, not an extension of us. The distance between that person and us must be wide and terribly tangible. Even if she is within arms reach, the sudden realization of the difference between us, of the boundaries that define each of us, must feel like a chasm.

Jump ahead twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and the lover who reminds us of how it feels to be completed by another shows up without boundaries, longing to get as close to us as we will allow. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual closeness are aches easily filled by our new lover. Nobody wants that honeymoon period to end.

The Honeymoon Period Has to End

The honeymoon period ends. For some, the ache of what feels like separation might actually stir up grief. For others, getting some boundaries back in place, letting friends and family back in to their own and the new life they have created with their new lover is a breath of fresh air!

In whatever way you deal with the yearning to love and be loved, use it to the best advantage of your lover and yourself. When you feel the ache of it rising in your gut, let the ache grow. Let it come up into your chest, around your heart and throat, and breathe through it, in and out.

Appreciate the gift of having someone in your life with whom you can satisfy that desire for connection. Let it drive you to acts of love that delight, not smother…acts of love that might even give a person some space.

Use it to value your ability to love and be loved in return. Use it to value his or her freedom to love and be loved in return. Use it to remind you that you two are vulnerable to each other in a way no one else is and celebrate that reality in your own heart, with lovemaking, and with respect. The quality of your loving will blossom into something even more beautiful than it already is!

Why Play is Crucial to the Game of Love

By wendystrgar

It is said that the game of love is everyone’s favorite game, and yet even with all the new technologies designed to help us connect, more and more people are opting out of the game, preferring to live alone, rather than to risk another bad relationship outcome.

This preference reflects a deep change in our collective human psyche, for it used to be that what lovers feared most was loneliness. Now, being caught in a static or unsatisfying relationship is even more troubling. Wanting to be together, to build a family, is no longer enough.

What Happened To The Game Of Love?

Just in the last couple of weeks, I have spoken with several people who have expressed this sentiment. When I pressed the point and asked if they were to meet a compatible, kind and intelligent partner, would they truly feel like there wasn’t room in their life to accommodate them.

There was a brief pause, and then “I’m not sure” was as close as they would come to an opening. Our modern age has made it is easier to be passionate and maintain passion about a pet or a favorite sports team, than a lover. What has happened to the game of love?

Isn’t It The Play That Matters?

Memories of childhood games on late summer evenings remind me of what the game of love once meant to us. As kids we understood that it was the play that mattered. Winning and losing reflected their respective original meanings, which were “to desire” and “to be set free.”

Playing capture the flag in the dwindling light of the sky or a full neighborhood game of hide and seek was an apprenticeship in freedom. Pretending was rich with excitement, as we all shared in the wonder of not knowing the outcome. And yet we all knew that no victory was ever final, there was always tomorrow night.

Lovers in the past shared one secret; they knew that it wasn’t about winning or losing, it was the play that was essential. Playing allows us to experience freedom from duty and necessity. It is a primary condition of creativity and allows us the self-conscious delight of living out alternative realities. It is what makes us so deeply human.

Playfulness Is Essential

Nowhere does this ring more true, than in our most intimate moments. Adding playfulness to sexual desire invites new friends into the bedroom: imagination and fantasy. Invite these allies to any passionate encounter with openness to play, a willingness to pretend, and the freedom to live in the wonder of not knowing the outcome.

Just Say Yes To The Game Of Love!

Saying yes to this game of love keeps life fresh and while it offers no guarantees of long-term winning, it does promise to share glimpses of what we all desire most of the magical influence of love.

Rewarding our instinct to love creates the self-confidence to transform a private secret to a public force with the power to renew life and transmute human defects into lovable qualities. We are, after all, most lovable when we love. Playing this game doesn’t guarantee a life without bruises or the happily ever after story that we all long for.

It will however teach you about all the many ways you can love, and love again…

I’m In Love With My Best Friend. How Do I Tell Her?

By loveandsex

If you find yourself in love with your best friend, take heart. You’re not the only one! It can be intimidating, however, to think of ways to tell your best friend how you feel without risking losing your best friend.

You might be tempted to feel the situation out with your friend’s friends, or you might prefer the idea to keeping quiet. How do you approach your best friend if you have feelings for them?

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

I really like this girl, I think I love her… But she’s one of my best friends and I don’t want to tell her about my feelings because I’m afraid that I will lose my friend. I told her friend about my feelings and I think she told her. Since then she’s gone all weird with me and doesn’t go out with me anymore. She always says that she’s busy or something. What should I do? Please help.

–Fizwan, England

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrom_1KQaU[/youtube]

The Friend’s Friends

Bouncing the idea of hooking up with your best friend off their friends’ might sound appealing. You get an opinion that is as close as possible to your best friend’s opinion without actually being their opinion. Sure, it sounds great but in reality, this plan tends to backfire the most. What usually happens is the friend never keeps it quiet and approaches your best friend with the info.

While that’s scary enough, the friend usually puts whatever spin on it they like, based on how they feel about you. If that friend dislikes you or thinks you aren’t a good match for her friend, your best friend might hear a convoluted story. It’s not always this way, but if you tell your best friend’s friend your feelings, you can pretty much guarantee that your best friend will hear about it too.

Keeping Quiet

Risking losing your best friend over your feelings might sound like it’s too much to handle and it might be tempting to just stay quiet rather than risk the end of the friendship. Sure, if you stay quiet, you won’t risk losing your best friend over your feelings. But you might also be living an unfulfilled life.

What if you grow out of the friendship and end up going separate ways anyway, but you never got to tell your best friend how you felt? Think long and hard about whether you truly want to stay quiet. Make sure it’s a decision you really want to make.

Telling Your Best Friend

You might decide that you want to let your best friend know that you have romantic feelings for them. It takes some guts, but in the end, you might be better off. Just make sure to tell your friend directly how you feel instead of letting someone else do it for you. It’s much better when they hear it straight from you!

If your friendship ends over it, you might want to consider the fact that perhaps your friendship wasn’t meant to be in the first place. Who knows though, your friend could secretly be nursing a crush on you as well! The only tried and true way to find out if you can make a relationship work with your best friend is talking to them, one on one.

Take It Slow

If you end up being lucky enough to start a romantic relationship with your best friend, you might want to take it slow. Don’t skip the dating process just because you already know each other well.

This might cause you to move to fast and end up crashing and burning later down the road. Take the time to get to know each other in a different way. You might be surprised at how much new things you learn about your best friend!