Love vs Happiness

Really knowing how to love is essential to really being happy…

In loving relationships, be it marriage, dating, friendship or familial, the essential ingredient to keeping the relationship thriving is that both people are happy.  Don’t you agree?  But when one partner, friend, spouse, person, is unhappy, the seesaw in the relationship begins to tip and thus ensues a balancing act and a scramble to either fix the seesaw so that both parties are happy or to simply get off of the seesaw and dissolve the relationship.  Does it sound easy?  Nah, you know it’s not.

But we balance that seesaw daily when we’re married or in a relationship.  We give and take because we love our partner.  Some days we give more and some days we take more, but the bottom line is that this is a relationship between 2 people and outsiders need not apply.

Now let me just stop here and tell you that I’m happily married to my husband and we are just short of celebrating our our 19th wedding anniversary.  I want to clear that up before a friend reading my blog fears the worst.  Calm down dears, nothing here but a little love lesson.

When we toss around the word love in marriage, it encompasses so much more than we realize.  Love isn’t always that passionate french kissing of our youth and first dates ~ you remember those?  The days when you could kiss for hours because everything about him/her was so new!  It was like tasting chocolate for the first time ~ you wanted more and more.

But then as time goes on, sometimes the passion fizzles a bit, we begin to disconnect with each other,  life gets in the way, work takes over, children arrive and your free time to just enjoy your other half becomes non-existent ~ there is always something that needs to be done, a child who needs attention, a house that needs to be cleaned, bills that need to be paid, work that needs attending and that connection between the two of you gets swallowed up into the abyss of a fast-paced life called family.

Has this happened to you?  I think it happens to all of us once in awhile.  The key here is to realize it and reconnect.  But the reason I chose the card above is that I wanted to remind you and myself that we are the owners of our own happiness.  It’s not our spouse/partner’s responsibility to make us happy.  That’s OUR responsibility.  Just because we’re in love (or like) doesn’t mean that we can pass the baton of happiness over to our other half and put him/her in charge of making us happy.  No matter with whom we’re partnering, we are responsible for ourselves.

Does that make sense?   Love and happiness go hand in hand like all good relationships do ~ but the key is to hang onto your happiness and not give that job away ~ this is your life, this is your happiness and this is your love.  Life begins with self-love and once you’ve got that, happiness steps up and you’ve got it made!

Shine On!

xo