Relationship issues

On May 3, 2017 I will need to tell my wife I love her for at least the 7,300th time. That's once a day for 20 years.

I think relationships are much like everything else in the world that people do. You have to want to do or not do it in order to be successful. I used to smoke cigarettes when I was in college. I had started because I wanted to hang with this girl who smoked and it was a way to hang out as no one else around smoked. When I graduated college, that was the last cigarette I smoked. I had decided that I didn't want to smoke anymore so I didn't. I know that had I wanted to keep smoking I would never be able to quit.

Move forward a year or two and I took up serious fishing and the guys I fished with used chewing tobacco. I had chewed a few times in high school after football practice and it was ok. Well... Fishing and having a dip of Skoal Cherry was really good. Chewed for the next 7 years. Durng that time, I got married and my wife did not like that I chewed, but it was really the only bad habit I had, so she "tolerated" it. No big arguments or anything but I could tell it irritated her. SO, for her birthday one year I quit chewing.... Problem was that I didn't really want to quit. Turns out that attempt to quit failed. After about 6 months, playing softball and chewing commenced. I made the mistake of keeping it a secret.

That was a bad idea. Nothing life threatening or relationship ending, but disappointment. I felt guilty and she was disappointed. But, we talked and worked it out. Eventually I decided that I wanted to quit. And I did.

The reason I explain this is that I wanted to stay with this lady that I've told I loved everyday we've been married. I think that the leading cause of relationship failures is that people fall out of love with each other and eventually one of them just don't want to be with the other anymore. Because of that, people argue over little things and start to pick out any little thing to criticize about the other.

The other major relationship devourer is trust. All too often you see where one person does not trust the other. If you want to be in a relationship, you MUST trust the person you are in that relationship with. If you don't have trust, you have no relationship. All you have is two people sharing space and time. Trust is an implicit necessity in a stable, good relationship. Once you start mistrusting the person you are in a relationship, you will start seeing nothing but wrongs. Everything the other person does will have doubts about what it "really" is.

Finally, love the person you are with. Tell them that and expect them to return that love.

You see this everyday in the relationship threads on A2K. "I don't trust my [other person]" or, "Is my [other person] cheating on me?"...

Relationships can be simple or they can be difficult. there 2 basic thing that can make you successful.
1. WANT to be in the relationship.
2. TRUST the person you are in the relationship with.
3. LOVE the person you are in a relationship with.

also, remember that your husband/wife is not a room mate you have sex with. They are your lover, your confidante, your best friend, your other half.