How do you repair a relationship?
When there has been damage done in a relationship, how do you get things back to that juicy, joyful place?
Damage can happen from all sorts of things: dishonesty, meanness, lack of integrity, taking someone for granted.
The main killer is simply removing the relationship as a priority in your life.
Instead of looking at it as a power source that feeds you, just like food, water and air, you begin to act as though it can survive without attention.
It can’t.
It not only needs attention, but it needs a lot of love.
It’s often said that love is a verb.
We can love someone in our minds and hearts, but if we aren’t constantly demonstrating that love and acting with love, it’s a moot point.
So what happens if you’ve reached the point of chasm?
You can feel the distance, the distance has impacted your libidos, and you no longer treat each other with love.
You’ve become guarded and no longer trust the good intentions of the other person.
And if you want to continue the relationship, and pull out of the downward spiral you’ve found yourselves in, you revert back to love.
Love is the great Windex (or ozone, if you make choices like me) that can wipe away the stains of the past.
You begin acting with more love. You speak with love behind your words. You choose words that are loving.
Someone has to go first. And maintain the new intention.
And it will be contagious.
If you feel hampered by guilt, the best thing you can do is make amends.
You make amends by “amending” your behaviour.
Guilt is a dangerous distraction because it can keep you in inaction. And wallowing.
Amends put you in motion and start to delete the past and replace it with love.
So bypass the guilt and go straight to the amends.
It might take a while to rebuild, to recreate a platform of tenderness and trust.
You can though.
Pablo Neruda once used the phrase, “the never-ending simple tenderness” in a poem and it always stuck with me as the key (or one of them) to maintaining love.
It is the constant choice to be loving and kind.
The loving kindness reinforces:
It is safe for me to trust you.
You see me.
You cherish me.
I can open to you.
The more you open, the more you can’t keep your hands off each other.
So if the hands have stopped their magnetic pull, you know that you aren’t open anymore.
The frenzied, kitchen-counter top sex can return.
Once you commit to being and living in more love.
Kxx
