It’s time for INSPIRATION! And that’s what I want to do now: get you inspired, fired up, around the idea of bringing the love back into your relationship. Making your relationship a more loving place.
Now I’ll be honest. This is hard for me. Not because I don’t believe in it, but because I don’t believe in bullshit, and so much inspiration is bullshit. “Anyone can become President! If you want to become President, go for it! Don’t let anything stop you! You can do it!” Well, I can’t sign my name to BS like that. For me, any inspiration that’s not realistic is just a one-way street to disappointment or to becoming addicted to more and more inspiring bullshit.
So one thing you can count on. The inspiration you find here: it’s real and solid.
Inspiration #1. Love is the most important thing. There is nothing better than having a life filled with love, a life with someone who loves you and whom you love back. And not just love as a fact, but love as a living thing, something you can feel, like a breeze flowing through your house. It’s worth paying almost any price for love.
Believe me.
Inspiration #2. Love is something you can make happen. Love is not made up of fairy dust and moonbeams. It’s made up of things we do. It’s like the yellow brick road. You put down one yellow brick after another, and next thing you know, you’re in the Land of Oz.
It’s the same with love. It’s literally built out of things you do and also say. Do and say those things—and avoid doing and saying the things that are not loving—and before you know it love has come fully alive again.
Day by day. Piece by piece.
Let’s say you want to write a novel. Too much!! you say. But there are whole books on how to write a novel in a year. But I’ll make it super simple:
Months 1 and 2: Planning and outlining. Figure out what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. Give yourself a rough chapter outline.
Months 3 through 10 (that’s 8 months, about 34 weeks): Write 2 pages a day for a 340 page short-ish novel, 3 pages a day if you want a longer one.
Months 11 and 12: Edit.
Aaaaand...you’re done. You’ve written your novel.
Just because you did novel-writing things for a whole year. With weekends off!!
You do the same kind of thing to create a relationship filled with love.
Inspiration #3: The things you need to do to make love happen are straightforward.
The simplest way I can say what these straightforward things are is,
More of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff.
Anything you can do that makes your partner feel better or makes your relationship better, do that. Anything that makes your partner feel worse or makes your relationship worse, don’t do that. I mean, that’s monkey simple!
I’m not saying it’s easy, mind you. I’m just saying it’s straightforward.
What else?
Well, you could sit down and ask each other what you’d each like more of and less of in the relationship.
Tell each other what makes you feel loved.
Tell each other how the other can make your life better.
That’s not even me telling you what to do! It’s you telling yourselves what would work to bring love back!
Then? You just have to do it. Love is ALL in the follow-through.
Now if you’ve gotten to a bad place of resentment and frustration and unmet needs, our new book Why Couples Fight will be a big help here. Some of our other books too. But while that’s true, telling someone to read a book isn’t inspiring—although there are amazing secrets in those books!—so pretend I didn’t just say it.
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