Commandment 9: Celebrate Your Love ... - A Relationship Blog

Celebrate love. It is the breath of your existence
and?the best of all reasons for living.
?Author Unknown

As an INFP and someone who puts their relationship as their top priority in life, I can?t agree enough with the above quote.

So often, relationships become stale and boring for the simple reason that people take them for granted. Other things begin to take up time and get in the way, or the people in the relationship simply become complacent and don?t actively think about how they can keep things fun.

I don?t think this commandment really needs much explaining. In so many other posts, we have talked about the need to put effort into your relationship. Celebrating your love is really just an extension of effort.

Essentially, celebrating your love is every article ever written on how to make things interesting again. If you notice, pretty much all the advice is saying is to do all the things when you first fell in love and to act how you were when you were in the honeymoon phase.

The Ease of Celebrating From Day to Day

In all honesty, this commandment is pretty much the easiest to do, with the only exception possibly being to always have manners. There is no deep and critical thinking about who you are and what you need in a relationship. All it requires is taking the time to think about how you can have fun doing something for your partner.

Better yet, you can often take something basic that you would do anyway and make a slight adjustment to turn it into something romantic. Chances are you are going to go out to dinner sometimes with your partner. Half the time you might even call it a date. To all the guys out there: With a simple 10 minute stop at a grocery store, you can get a small and cheap bouquet of flowers that will immediately start the night off right.

Speaking of flowers, do that even when there is no occassion. You don?t have to do it constantly and ruin the idea of them being special; once every 2-4 weeks is quite sufficient. On the other hand, if you are a woman, you might buy your guy a special type of chocolate that he likes while at the store once in awhile to show you were thinking of him.

Don?t think I am excluding gay couples from this as well; the above advice is just as applicable to you lovely people as well.

Need a few more examples? Just do little things like walking up behind the other person and giving them a massage without them asking for it. Make them a dinner they really like once in awhile and tell them it was because you were thinking about them. Surprise the person with a gift certificate to some activity they will enjoy. If your guy likes to golf, get them some time at a driving range. On the flipside, I don?t know many women who don?t like spa days, or at least pedicures. It all doesn?t have to be separate either: go bowling or mini-golfing together, even if you are 50 years old, and share a milkshake with two straws like you are back in high school. It?ll be fun; trust me.

Celebrating Special Occassions: Go For The Gold

I like to do very small and easy things as shown above just so that when the big things come around, we celebrate like crazy.

Birthday dinners, anniversaries, Valentine?s Day, and whatever else are big occassions and they deserve to be treated that way.

A Word On Anniversaries Before I Continue?

I really think the whole idea that anniversaries are completely the guy?s responsibility to both remember as well as execute is a bunch of bullshit.

I?m not saying that there can?t be some chivalry here and the guy can and probably should make dinner plans (and they can even be a special surprise, which is what I prefer to do).

What I absolutely cannot stand is people who use anniversaries as an opportunity to pull a ?Gotcha!? moment and ruin the day for both people. Being completely silent about any anniversary to see if the other person will remember is childish, immature, and it sets you up for failure. Entrapping your significant other is not acceptable in any way when it comes to any aspect of your relationship. To do it on the biggest day of your relationship every year is, in a word, horrific. We all make mistakes or forget things sometimes, so be a team with your partner and be proactive in saying ?Our anniversary is coming up, honey. Do you have any plans made yet or have anything particular in mind that you would like to do??

Ok, Now I?ll Continue

For starters, I tend to go for places that require a reservation when we are celebrating something big, but it doesn?t have to be that way. Maybe your first date together was to a movie and Dairy Queen when you were in high school and borrowing Dad?s car to get there. So instead of going out to a great, big, fancy, and expensive dinner, try cooking a really nice meal at home and then going out for ice cream at that same Dairy Queen. It?ll be special and cost a fraction of what a steakhouse would.

Speaking of cooking at home, breakfast in bed is another great place to start. I don?t mean one person has to do it for the other; you could both go cook and bring it back to bed. Again, at least as far as anniversaries go, it isn?t all on one person to do all the planning and executing. Since it takes two for a relationship, that means the anniversary is for both people too.

Birthdays are of course a different case. Make the other people feel like the world is theirs for the day! Be completely selfless in your acts towards the other person.

Summing It All Up

While other commandments focus on what to do to ensure your relationship has a strong foundation, this one is all about maintaining a great love life as you and your partner both pass through time together.

I feel like this commandment is simply a no-brainer, yet so many people let time pass and begin to take their relationships for granted. The remedy is so simple, and saves so many relationships and marriages: Begin to put effort into your relationship by doing all the little things you used to do when you first started dating, and then continue doing them until you both die. That?s it.

I?d love to see comments on great ideas on how to celebrate your relationship. Maybe some people can even give Laura and I a few new tricks!

Categories: In A Relationship, Latest, Practical Advice, Relationship Concepts
Tags: anniversaries, celebrating love, happy relationship

Source: http://twoinfps.com/2012/11/03/commandment-9-celebrate-your-love/

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