by Bill Ferguson
One of the things I discovered as a former
family law attorney is that love by itself is never enough to
have a relationship work. The divorce courts are full of
people who love each other.
For example, what good is my love for you
if I treat you lousy? It’s worthless. If I want our
relationship to work, I need to make sure you feel loved. It’s
the experience of love that makes the difference.
So, what creates the experience of love?
The experience of love is created by giving the gift of
acceptance and appreciation.
Notice how you feel when someone genuinely
accepts and appreciates you. Doesn't this feel good? Of course
it does. You feel better about yourself and better about life.
You also feel better about the other person.
The same thing happens when you accept and
appreciate someone else. That person automatically feels
better about life and better about you. By giving acceptance
and appreciation, you create the experience of love.
Now notice how you feel when someone is
non-accepting and critical toward you. Instantly, the
experience of love disappears. You get hurt and upset. You put
up your walls of protection and automatically resist the
person who is non-accepting toward you.
The same thing happens when you are
non-accepting toward someone else. That person gets upset,
puts up his or her walls of protection and automatically
becomes critical and resentful toward you.
Then you get hurt. Your walls of protection
get stronger and you become even more judgmental and critical
of the other person. Then the other person gets more upset and
becomes more critical of you.
Without knowing, you create a cycle of
conflict, a cycle of hurting, attacking and withdrawing from
each other. This cycle then goes on and on without either
person ever noticing his or her role in the problem. It’s
this cycle of conflict that creates the suffering in
relationships.
To end the cycle of conflict, or to make
sure it never starts, you need to make sure the other person
feels loved accepted and appreciated. This is the key to
having any relationship work.
Unfortunately, this is much easier said
than done. Some people are very difficult to accept.
Fortunately, acceptance is nothing more than surrendering to
the truth. The people in your life are exactly the way that
they are, whether you like it or not.
Pick someone in your life that you can’t
accept. Notice that this person has a very particular state of
mind and a very particular way of seeing life. Notice that
this person is the way he or she is and that your feelings
about it are totally irrelevant.
When you can be at peace with the truth of
how someone is, you can see what you need to do. You have
peace of mind. You are creative and resourceful. You can find
solutions and you can take the action you need to have your
life be great.
When you fight the truth, you create a
state of fear and upset. You close down inside and you get
tunnel vision. All you can do is fight, resist, hang on or
withdraw. This in turn destroys the experience of love, fuels
the conflict and makes your situation worse.
If you want your relationship to work, let
go of your demands and expectations for how the person should
be, and make peace with the way the person is. Empower the
person and do everything you can to make sure the person feels
loved, accepted and appreciated.
Then watch what happens. As the person
feels loved and empowered by you, that person becomes a lot
more interested in making you happy. Automatically, that
person becomes more accepting and appreciative of you. Then
you feel loved and become more accepting and appreciative of
the other person.
Instead of creating the cycle of conflict,
you create the cycle of loving, supporting and empowering each
other. Creating this cycle is the key to having your
relationship be great.
So, to have your relationship be as great
as it can be, make sure the other person feels loved, accepted
and appreciated. Let go of your demands for how the person
should be and see the beauty in the person, just the way he or
she is.
Bill Ferguson has been featured on Oprah
and is the author of the best selling book, How To Heal A
Painful Relationship. He leads workshops in Houston and
does individual telephone consulting. To learn more about Bill
and his work, call (713) 520-5370 or visit www.masteryoflife.com
and www.divorceasfriends.com
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