Valentine’s Day—Again!

I think there must be something inherently wrong about being a love and relationship expert and not writing a blog on Valentine’s Day! So before I get an angry email, here goes!

On Valentine’s Day 1987—two weeks before our wedding—I gave Charley a beautiful bouquet along with several large balloons, each with words of love emblazoned on it.

Charley and me on a cruise ship about 12 years ago. Not one of those 10-story hotels on the water, but a lovely and sleek ship reminiscent of bygone days.

 Since I was working that day, I had the flower arrangement delivered to his office—very brazen of me, I think, because it put him in the possibly uncomfortable spot of having to explain what the hell was going on!  However, with great pride, he told everyone that the flowers were from me, and that if they didn’t already know, he and I were getting married as soon as we could pry ourselves loose from our respective jobs! So today is very special to us both. And yes, I did get him a bouquet and balloons to mark the occasion as I have done pretty much every Valentine’s Day since then.

All of which brings me to the point: A truly great love relationship is always fresh and new and something about which to be proud, happy, joyful and grateful. As I write more blogs and coach others, I’m finding that a lot of folks have a lack of reality as to just how great a relationship can be.

I hear people talk about how you have to “work” at it, and how each person must “compromise” for it to hang together over time. I don’t know about you, but when I think of the word “compromise,” I think of suffering and sacrifice–two people having to give up something in order to satisfy their partner’s wishes. And for lots of folks, the word “work” conjures up images of large amounts of effort just to get up in the morning as part of going to “work!” Not very inviting to me!

The happy couples that I’ve interviewed have all told me that there is very little effort in their relationships. They don’t struggle to “work” at it. They make very few compromises, instead working out mutually-beneficial solutions when problems arise. They tell me that there is a noticeable playfulness in their relationships, a strong and effortless desire to help their partners be happy and actively contributing to that happiness–again, without much if any eeefffooorrrttttttt.

Very soon I will be set up to do video interviews of extremely happy couples to show the world how great life–any life–can be with the right person by your side. We certainly see enough of how bad relationships work. It’s not that I’ve cornered the market on great relationships. But I would like to do my part toward creating a different and better reality.

Yours in love,

Tanii