Love and Relationship Advice Blog

Today we received this question and thought it was a good one for us to give a few comments...

"I have been in a relationship for almost 3 years- we were friends for five years before we dated. For the last year he has become rather difficult - not affectionate, when i talk about affection he gets angry and says I am not happy with him - I talk about us going out on dates - he gets irritated - he gets irritated easily anyway - stressed - I fell in love with this man cause he is a Christian or claims to be, His 17 year old daughter is rude to me and i talk to him about it and he tells me to talk to her - We are not married - so I feel it is his place to talk to her - a few weeks ago - we were talking and he told me i was not marriage or mom material - I raised two boys by myself on $10,000/year, they were in 4h and sports - then later he denies saying it. He says can you see something like that coming out of my mouth - well you said it, we had a discussion about it. Meanwhile, because I was upset about that - he told me he needed his space - I cannot hangout with him and his kids anymore - I have my dogs at his house and I had a fish tank at his house. I got the fish tank yesterday - He does not understand why I cannot sit with him at church anymore or why I have to move my dogs - 5 years of friendship and he just shuts it off. We also went to the Song of Solomon couples counseling. PLEASE HELP ME"

Here's our advice to this woman and any other person in her situation...

You seem to be getting a lot of signals that this relationship is over and you have a choice whether to pay attention to them or not. Look at the way you are describing how you are being treated by this "friend." You need to ask yourself if this is the way you would want a friend to treat you (let alone a partner) and if you would treat a friend this way.

It's high time for you to look at what you want in a relationship and decide if this is it or not. We do not hear that this man is wanting to "work on your relationship" or even be kind to you. He is telling you in many ways that he doesn't want to be with you--and you know what? You deserve more than this.

The person that you need to convince is yourself! You need to gather the courage and the strength to know in your heart that you deserve to be in a relationship where you are treated with respect and kindness--and that you deserve to be with someone who wants to be with you.

So gather your courage and let this man go his own way--and you go yours.

Posted by Susie and Otto Collins at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Recently we received an interesting question from a guy and we thought that our answer would be helpful to a lot of people in his situation.

In a nutshell, here's what he was asking...

He and his girlfriend were completely in love but last week she started having these doubts about their relationship working out because he was leaving for college across the country. He was confused because it seemd that half of her was trying to convince the other half of her that loved him to break up with him. Her indecisiveness was killing him so he broke up with her. He said that he still loved her but asked how he could forget her.

Here's our answer to him and to anyone in this situation...

Your question is "how can I forget her?" but we think that you gave up too soon.

t looks like your girlfriend was "testing you, the relationship and your love" and you FAILED the test. Women
(and men for that matter) don't want someone in their life who is going to run away when things get tough. They want someone who is going to stand and fight for them and the love they share with their partner and for
what is possible. They want someone to stand up and say and show them things like... "you don't have to
worry about our love" and "I'm just going to love you" no matter what.

You didn't do that. You broke up with her.

We would suggest that you take some time and find out what you truly want. Chances are there are some patterns that you will see in your life where you "give up" easily when things don't go exactly as planned or when you hit a snag. Or you may have a pattern of attracting partners to you who have trouble committing.
Whatever your pattern is--take this opportunity to know what you want and to go for it.

Tell her what it is that you truly want and if you want her and this relationship (you say you love her), be willing to say it and prove to her that you are there and will be there. If you're unsure, then say that but say that what you are willing to commit to.

In our experience, this pattern of easily backing out of a situation or relationship and not truly committing will repeat itself until you tackle it. Be willing to fight for what you want and if it's clear that she can't or doesn't want to continue in the relationship, you will at least have taken a stand for what you want.

Posted by Susie and Otto Collins at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few years ago, Otto had the opportunity to learn some powerful relationship advice and life lessons on a golf
course. We were having a mini-family reunion and Otto and a cousin Gary, a successful banking executive, played golf nearly all day on Saturday.

Whenever Otto is in the company of someone who is successful, he likes to play "20 Questions" to find out all he can about why and how that person is successful. That's what Otto did that day and what he learned from someone who isn't particularly "spiritual" or a "relationship expert" was remarkable.

Along with answering Otto's questions, Gary, an excellent golfer, put into practice what he was saying. When Gary would hit a ball in the sand or into the "rough," he would find something positive to say about the poor shot.

He explained that this is what he does in all aspects of his life. No matter how bad a situation is, he said he will find something good about it.

We think that if you apply Gary's way of looking at life to your relationships, they will be much better.

The great motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar said many years ago that if you continually look for the good in others that that is what you will find--more good in the world. This sounds very simple but it's often difficult to do.

Do you dwell on the negative aspects in your relationships or do you look at what's positive?

Do you complain to your friends about the negative qualities of your mate or someone in your life?

We know from experience that if you do dwell on the negative, that's what you'll get more of. We also know, that if you find that positive aspect about that person who irritates you, that relationship will improve

This is not Pollyanna or Pie-in-the -sky. We have tried it and it works.

At the time, we had been having challenges with Otto's 11 year old son and every weekend he was with us ended in a negative spiral. We would talk about him behind his back and say things like... "Why won't he pick his clothes up off the floor?" and "Why does he continually whine about everything?"

What we've found is that by focusing on the positive and letting him know when he has done something right, our times together have gone much better.

The two of us have a wonderful relationship. But, it wouldn't stay that way for very long if we continually focused on what we didn't like about the other instead of what we most appreciate in each other.

What we try to do is when we find that irritating thought coming up, to switch it to a positive quality that we appreciate in the other.

This usually changes the dynamic from being critical to one of being grateful.

So we suggest that you focus on the positive aspects of things that your friends and loved ones do and say instead of the negative. You won't believe what changes can happen in your relationships if you do!

Posted by Susie and Otto Collins at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You never really know how your words and your actions affect other people. That's been our experience anyway.

Here's a practical example of something that happened recently to illustrate this point...

Susie's mother passed a couple of weeks ago and among the beautiful cards and sentiments that she received after her mother's death was a letter from a former neighbor who had lived next door to her childhood home.

In this woman's letter, she described how much Susie's mom's kindness and love had meant to her during a particular time in her life.

One of the memories that this woman wrote about was this...

It was a Christmas eve many years ago, the first Christmas that she had spent away from her family. She had two babies, twins, and her husband was conducting the Christmas eve service at the church where he was the pastor--and she felt very alone. In her words, she was experiencing a "pity party."

She heard a knock at the door and there was Susie's mom who said that she knew that this woman was alone and she wanted to come over to spend some time with her until her husband came home.

This woman never forgot this simple yet beautiful act of kindness from Susie's mom and even "repaid" that kindness by being there for Susie's sister when she was alone with a small child, away from her family.

You just never know when one phone call, one visit or even one card will make a difference in someone's life.

Susie was recently at a workshop and talked in front of the group about the passing of her mom and what that had meant to her.Another woman in the group was touched by what Susie had shared and was able to talk about her own situation with her mom. She told Susie later that what she had said had helped her.

You just never know when one word or action from you will help someone to feel more love or to resolve some difficulty within them.

So what this letter from Susie's previous neighbor reminded us of is when you get an impulse to phone someone or to visit someone or even to send a card to someone--don't put it off. Your outreach may be very important to that person atthat time in their life and may cause a chain reaction of kindness and love that you may not have dreamed possible.

One of our favorite movies is "Pay it Forward" and if you haven't seen it or haven't seen it in awhile, we suggest
that you do. You will be inspired to act on your impulses of kindness and won't let the excuses of "I'll do it later" or "I'd like to but I don't have time right now" stand in your way.

Susie's mother's kindness that Christmas eve made all the difference in her neighbor's life.

Whether it's with your partner, your kids, your family members, friends, co-workers--yours can too.

Posted by Susie and Otto Collins at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although they may not be aware of them, everyone who creates a great relationship has certain things that they do over and over to create more love,passion, connection (or whatever is important to them) on a consistent basis in their relationships.

In any relationship it's usually not just one thing we do that creates the magic but many different things. Sort of like ingredients that go into a recipe for a favorite food or dessert-- if you leave out one of the key ingredients things don't go so well.

So what are the key ingredients in a close, connected and loving relationship?

Sadly, one of the ingredients that most people consider to be essential for a connected, alive and long-lasting relationship is something so simple but is often the first to disappear.

That ingredient is the simple act of having fun together.

That's right-- FUN.

A question many people wonder about fun is...

"Why does it disappear when it's usually part of what brought us together?"
That's a good question and we'll answer it like this.

Life gets in the way and we often choose other things on a day to day and moment to moment basis that don't move us toward more love, passion and connection.

Our jobs become priorities and when kids come along (although we may be having fun in different ways), we tend to put having fun as a couple very low on our list of "things to do."

In our relationship, even though the two of us are together most of our time together,we found that because of everything else going on in our busy lives we had allowed the "fun" part of being together fade a bit. Although we do have fun working together, we had been short-changing that part of our relationship and did a few things to get things revved up a bit.

So, we did what we're going to suggest that you do. We decided to make a list of things we considered fun to do together and do those things.

Susie already had a good quality bicycle but Otto didn't.

So, last week Otto bought a bike and we took our first ride together Tuesday evening as part of his birthday celebration. It just took an hour and boy was it fun.

Another "fun" thing on our list that we enjoy doing together is watching concerts of our favorite recording artists on DVD.

So, the other evening, after we stopped working, we watched a wonderful VH1 Storytellers concert and program featuring one of our favorite musical artists, Natalie Merchant. What a joy for both of us!

You get the point...

If you are in a marriage or relationship, we invite you to make a list of things that you enjoy doing together. They might be things that you used to enjoy together but no longer do--or they might be new things that would be fun for both of you.

If you are not currently in a relationship, we also invite you to make your list of what you consider "fun" activities. Again, they might be new activities or they might be things that you used to enjoy. Not only would this be a way to create more fun in your life, it might also be a way to meet someone special.

Whether you are in a relationship or not, you have to carve out some time from your life for having fun and doing this new or not-so-new activity.

Why would you want to do this?

It's pretty simple--It brings aliveness and renewal to your life and your relationship.

What we've found is that anytime you want to create more love, passion and connection in your relationships and life-- fun is always one place you can count on to give more of what you want to you.

We invite you to explore what fun means to you this week and to make time in your life for it.

It's so important for the quality of any successful and happy relationship.

Posted by Susie and Otto Collins at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)