One of the reasons we still fall in love with each other because we are best friend.
Quoted from John Gottman's book, the simple truth that happy marriage is based on a deep friendship. A mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other's company.
These couples tend to know each other intimately - each other's likes, dislikes, personality, hopes and dreams.
They express their fondness in small gestures daily.
In our case, we feel comfortable in sharing our feeling, our anger, discomfort, happiness and sadness between us. Like recently, when he encountered problems in his work, even though I couldn't help him physically but by lending my ear to his predicament, it lightened his burden by half and I do my part to pray so that God gave him a wisdom to solve the problem and He did.
On the other hand, when I was so excited learning something that I have been passionate about and taking the online course, I couldn't help to share my excitement feeling to him.
Even though he may not understand what I'm talking about, but sharing this with him and seeing his encouragement expression gives me a drive to learn more for my personal growth.
We are so connected with each other even we can feel it if our spouse is in trouble or in the happy mood before asking him/her.
As my love language is gift, it's like a subconscious effort for me to give him a little surprise in daily life. I know that he loves mango and guava so whenever I do my grocery and found this fruits, I won't forget to buy them for him. On the other hand, he also knows that one of my favourite food is oyster omelette so whenever we dine at the food court, he will ask me if I want this oyster omelette or sometimes he surprised me by buying it before I'm asking. This is just an example that little things count.
Not only that, we have differences in pursuing our career. He's as a corporate person prefers to have steady life, steady income and would like to pursue in the trading and investment. On the other hand, I'm an entrepreneur woman who prefer to have adrenalin junkies, learning and doing something new, challenge myself to the higher level. We honor and respect each other. When I encouraged myself to learn something new for me and apparently something that he liked - trading and investment, it didn't last for long because it's not my passion. Thus we prefer to excel in what we are passionate for instead of forcing each other's way.
We also always find the way to stay connected wherever we are even when he's on the business trip.
We always say "I love you" and kiss each other when I drop him off and before he's going to the office. And "love you" message will be more intense when he's going for business trip. Sometimes when we miss each other, we will text each other with "dirty joke" to brighten up our day.
Importantly, after the incident 2 years ago when I had a mental breakdown, we committed to have couple time at least once a month and couple trip once a year.
It really makes a different in our relationship. We usually do something that we did during our courtship - dining and movie date. During those couple time, we usually talk about us, our plan, dream and hope for future and we close the day by making love.
As John's Gottman said in his book " Friendship fuels the Flames of Romance", it's really powerful statement. When we are with each other, the positive energy overflowing in each other and it erases most of the bad events in the past for eg during our conflict and arguments.
We love joke too even though sometimes it's a little bit too much dirty jokes, however it really made our day. And we only realise that this jokes are sometimes useful and it's part of Repair Attempts to soften the arguments and it acts as a safe haven of our emotional bank accounts too.
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