The other day I was talking to my wife who I married almost 4 years ago. She asked me how come we don’t get tired of being together which I replied that being with your significan other is compared to driving the same car until it breaks.
I am writing this advice based on my own experience, advice from happy marreiges who have been married longer than thirty years, and advice from many books that I have read about how to keep your relationship successful and exciting. However, the analogy car is something I thought about to explain this advice.
Let me start by saying that I have been very dysfunctional with my relationships until I turned 28. That is when my life drastically changed after falling into depression. I learned that I did not respect women and I only care about my pleasure. So to begin with I had an addiction to sex and I did not know.
In sociaty sex is so prevelant, devalute and taken so lightly that we use it to have fun and fulfill our carnal desires. I come from a dysfunctional family where no one taught me how to respect women. As a matter of fact, the contrary was true, to sleep with as many women as possible.
I am not saying this as an excuse why I was addicted to sex and porn and for cheating on my partners, but it did affect the decisions I would make as an adult. All these traumas pushed me to become addicted to the pleasure of sex without seeing the consequences of the behavior that I won’t list here.
So in my depression I felt I talked to God and He showed me how dysfunctional I was becoming. There is when I decided to rehab and stop watching pornography and not have sex until I marry. I stayed without touching a woman for three years and I stopped watching pornagraphy until this day.
During thoes three years, I read books about many topics in life where I wanted to be successful and one of those topics was marriage and relationships. I learned how different women and men are, how to manage a marriage, how to discuss with your significant other, roles in family and how to keep the relationship exciting.
Needless to say that after those three years, I relapsed and had sex before my marraige. I had three realtionships where no matter how hard I tried to make the relationship, it did not work.
It was not until I met Kathleen Fors who pointed out that my relationships were a disaster because in each woman I was with I saw my mother and I wanted to rescue her…
Aftar that therapy sesions was when I met Jisela, my wife. We dated for a year and we have been married for almost four years and, honestly, this is the longest relationship I ever had where I am happy and putting all my knowledge into work.
Just like any other addiction, I am aware of my weakness and stay away from temptations, keep in mind the real reason why I rehab, hornor God, myself, my wife and my daughter, so I don’t relapse. Of course, not listing all the negative consequences of practicing these negative behaviors.
Now that you know some of my background of relationships, you can make the conclusion if my advice is valuable for you.
First thing that I learned is that love is not a feeling but a commitment…
When we have the chemical attration with the opposite sex, we fall into what we called in love, but then that feelings goes away in some point in the realtionship. So when you enter a realtionship is not enough just having the chemical attraction, but you also need to commit. This is the reason why sex before marriege is not recommended. Sex confuse us when we have premature sex, we are not sure if we want to be with the person because of who that person is or because we love the sex connection.
If we are not commited, but we continue with the realtionship investing our emotions. We know that if we fail, we can start another realtionship and the possibility of failing is higher because we have a foot in and another one out just in case something goes wrong. Commitment is to fight no matter what goes wrong.
Similar goes with a car. Many of us fall in love with a car because of some fitures, because of the look, performance or the way the salement make us feel about the car. But that does not mean that is that car we really love. We just go for the way we feel to buy the car as we do with someone else who we have sex with.
We know that later we can just get a different car if we are not convinced to drive the one we choose…
It is best for the relationship, for you and your partner for both of you to be functional and be open minded to improve as a couple. When you are looking for someone to start a realationship, she must meet your standards and you must meet her standards. With this in midn that does not mean that both of you are not going to have flaws. You are going to, but there are things where both of you can work as a team to improve for the relationship to work.
When you buy a car, you want to make sure, you are not seduced only by the look or the fitures or how it makes you feel. Make sure it meets all your needs. If you have a family and you like trips, does everyone fit in the car? if you are in a budget, can you afford the insurance, the gas mileage, repairs maintaince? Does it drive on snow if you live by the mountain? Is it your style? Can you look at it and be happy with the look? Does it have all the futures you need? Does the car meet all the requirements you need for the lifestyle you have?
Yes, your relationship requires maintenance just like a car…
Many times we go “hunting" and find the right woman and do our best to impress her. We go above and beyond on most everything we do, so she falls in love. But once we feel safe in the relationship and we feel everything is under control, we stop doing thoses special things. I learned that to keep a relationship fresh, details are very important. This includes but not limited to help wash the dishes, buying flowers, please her with the small request she ask for, having date nights, listening to her needs, giving her space, support her personal development, cleaning yourself and look nice, take care of your body, surprise her with details, having special days in mind.
Mataincing the relationship will make the relationship strong when discussions arice, misundetandings and disagreements. But not only that, it will also help make sex in the relationship more attractive. I learned that sex for women does not start physcally when touching like with men, but start emotionally with those details during the day.
For a car to be driven hundreds of miles, you need to maintain and repair anything that goes wrong. If you maintain your car in every way, you will have a car forever. I get compliments from friends that my cars are well taken care of. Honestly, the only thing I do for the cars to look good and perform great, I maintain them.
Stop maintenance on a car and the car will start breaking down. Stop maintaining your relationship and the same will happen.
Once you choose the right partner or the right car, find the good in them…
There is not a perfect human being there. Plus we all have our dysfuncionalities, traumas and beliefs in life. So there are going to be things, behaviors that you don’t like about your partner. Also your partner will have defects, but look at yourself first. You are not perfect by any means, and no matter how handsome or beautiful you are, you have flaws. So to start with, you should understand that you are choosing a whole package with your partner virtues and defects.
Don’t try to change your partner, accept those defects that you know you choose to live with or if you can’t handle those defects, finish the relationship and find someone else who has different downfalls who you can be with.
The point here is that you need to commit, stop judging each other and find all the good things, virtues your partner have and drastically increase your focus on those.
The same with a car. There is no perfect car out there. Some cars consume a lot of gasoline, are too big, are too small, are expensive, to stift, have a bad interior, bad design, are fragile, break often. There are so many flaws you can find.
Start thinking and focus on all the negative things you can find in your partner or in your car, soon enough when you finish with the list, you may want to find another partner or car. This is tru for everything, your country, city, apartment, pet and so on.
This is the reason why unconditional love and real love is about commitment. The real thing that makes a successful relationship strive is commitment and unconditional love...
To conclude, if you are addicted to sex or the feeling of starting a new realtionship, you are never going to be happy with your marriage. You need to accept that you need help. A marriage is not going to cure you from your desease.
Think also that you may be addicted to destructive relationships and you need to understand that and stop looking for what you are addicted to and consciously choose what is right for you instead of what is pleasureble.
Find the person who you know you can live with with all her defects and virtues, commit, learn how to maintain the relationship, do the hard work, keep the relationship fresh with surprises, grow together, focus on the virtues of each other and love unconditionally.
Note, of course, a car is only a material thing where you don’t invest your body or soul into it. With your partner you will. So I hope you already concluded that your relationship is way more important than your car.
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