52 Ways to Show I Love You: Accepting Responsibility
and Old, Familiar Ones.... Last week, in “Recognizing Mistakes”, I introduced some ways in which a close relationship can become derailed. Misunderstandings, poor or missing communication, failures to clearly express wants and needs and to consider ways to meet them can all offer occasions to show love. Taking these opportunities a bit further, we can Accept Responsibility for a challenge within the relationship. What needs accepting? Individual responsibility — I did it! People vary in how they experience their inevitable errors, especially those [...]
52 Ways to Show I Love You: Recognizing Mistakes
Source: bykst/Pixabay According to Cardinal John Henry Newman, “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Hopefully, we grow not only in response to changing conditions but also in recognition of “mistakes” we have made in the past. Regrets of ways in which we may have hurt someone we love, or damaged our relationship with them, can be the most troubling. Recognizing such errors can be a big first step towards repair and showing your love. What [...]
Creating Surprises: An Excellent Way to Show Love
Source: Alexas_Fotos/Pixabay A few days ago, when I slid into the driver’s seat for the first time since the anesthetic haze following surgery had cleared, I buckled up for my debut solo excursion in nearly a month. I noticed how spotless the windshield looked. The car was immaculate. Lint and debris had disappeared from the seats and floor mats. Bottles of water sat in the spaces designed for them. Clearly my husband had intended to surprise me. I was delighted. His unexpected actions have long left me [...]
“Showing Up” Powerfully Demonstrates Your Love
Being there for performances, events, dates and times of need shows love. Source: cocoparisienne/Pixabay Woody Allen is often credited with saying “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” I don’t know what the statistics would say about the proportion of love that is expressed through “showing up” but my guess is that, in successful relationships, it is large. “Don’t tell me, show me.” “Don’t talk the talk; walk the walk.” There was even the hit song from My Fair Lady, “Show me”. What do we show up [...]
52 Ways to Show I Love You: Expressing Love Through Observing
Observation, the first task of scientific inquiry, can also express love. Source: nightowl/Pixabay With careful observation, people can identify the sources of their own happiness, meaning and joy. For example, using discernment, they can evaluate what money can and cannot buy. Yes, it can secure a good bit of comfort, beauty and freedom, providing relief, pleasure, and opportunity. But it cannot buy respect, love, trust, or creativity. While purchased pleasures can also offer distraction from intensity or relief from the grind of discipline, they can also [...]
52 Ways to Show I Love You: Allocating Resources
Source: liuhonghezhengsji/Pixabay We each have resources available to us. Internal resources, such as our genetic potentials, developed talents, memories, personality styles. Motivations that animate us intersect with external resources — including time, money and energy — accessed through or heavily influenced by our environment at any moment. We constantly make decisions, consciously or unconsciously, about ways in which we use our resources. When we choose to use them in the service of a relationship or of someone we care about, we are showing [...]
52 Ways to Show I Love You: Recognizing the Relationship
52 Ways to Show I Love You: Recognizing the Relationship Understanding and honoring the "we" transcends meeting individual needs. Source: takazart/Pixabay On February 26th, the film La La Land, nominated in 14 categories, won six Academy Awards. Musicals have always been my favorite film genre, watching dance my favorite spectator entertainment. From Busby Berkeley through Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron to Gene Kelly and now Robert Fairchild, I feel the thrills of freedom and yearning in a dancer’s movements as I watch, [...]
A Lifelong Love of Writing
One letter at a time/Unsplash When I was a child, I was slow to speak. Family lore had it that I ran before I was a year old but waited until I had passed my second birthday to utter a word. At that point, sentences tumbled out of my mouth. Maybe writing is like that for me now – so much mulled over across the years, so many ways of expression considered. Today, convinced that my journey and [...]