To paraphrase Chris Rock, “You don’t get points for NOT beating your wife.”
Meaning, you’re EXPECTED to do the right thing. So do the right thing, without any expectation of praise.
Discuss the concept that “It’s not always about you.” Some days need to be about supporting someone else in their joy - or sorrow. Your needs take a backseat.
We all want to be liked. But consider what you’re willing to *not* be liked for: If things like kindness and loyalty and being genuinely yourself *cost* you friends, is that a bad thing? Were they really friends then? Try not to do or say anything simply out of a desire to be liked.
Take a CPR class together.
Emphasize importance of staying certified ( or making a habit of watching an online course every year on the same day, like the day after Thanksgiving or something like that.
Putting up the Christmas tree the weekend or next after Thanksgiving, then watching Polar Express in the glow of the lights. Maybe the smell of gingerbread cookies baking too.
You gotta play with them. Down on the floor, at the park, in the water, in the snow. Connect through play, it will be the foundation of your relationship.
Drinking doesn’t work like climbing a hill, it works like surfing waves. “More” is not always better. Once you feel tipsy, drinking more will make you feel *worse*. Remember “more alcohol will ruin my buzz.” Coast, recover, then okay to start again.
Listen to books of love letters. I forget the title but one of the Bush twins wrote a book about her grandparents (George and Barbara). Stories about real love, real life. Fiction is great too but having a real world examples of happy partnerships is gold.
Start the tradition of First Sunday dinners. On the first Sunday of the month, have a "mini-holiday" dinner. Invite family, friends. Use the nice dishes, make a big meal. Celebrate family.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. ____ In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. ____ If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
— Haim G. Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers
(Re-ticket this every year.)
Blessing for the Brokenhearted: Poem by Jan Richardson
___________
"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
– Henry David Thoreau
________________________
________________________
Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.
__________Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.
___________Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—
as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,
as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,
as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.