Staying Positive in Relationships

I had the honor to receive an email from a man who loves to write blogs on relationships and the more positive sides of these relationships. We always have those relationships we hear about that are negative and quite a lot of times our media is over taken by stories like this form the rich and the famous. But when we get a glimmer of a positive relationship between anyone, we cling to it and enjoy it for what it’s worth, doing our best to ditch the stereotypical negative relationships. We of course will fight our loved one in any relationship and those fights do make us stronger, but when we look at a negative situation and help turn it into a positive one, then maybe our relationships will grow even stronger than if we just concentrate on the negative parts. So I was pleased when he approached me through my email asking for a story of mine that is positive and will hopefully help others and in turn I asked him a couple of questions so that we can get a glimpse into his mind as to why he wants to have blogs based around positive stories on relationships and couples. Here are not only his answers but his website so that you may go and read is remarkable blogs on couples and their positive relationships and how they are growing together with one another’s help.

And to the blogger Inspireyourmarriage, thank you again for wanting me to be a part of your blogs and for being a part of mine. I truly appreciate it.

What gave you the idea of having stories that are more positive in relationships?

The idea of having stories that are more positive in relationships came from hearing so much negativity and complaining about relationships and marriage. We need positive ways to deal with how to overcome problems in our relationships and positive stories on how other have dealt with a problem in their relationship.

We hear a lot of people complaining about their partner. Then to solve the problem, they resort to negative action. They get mad at their partner, complain, make demands, try to guilt them into meeting a need and resenting certain things about their partner. This frustration is justified, but those actions by themselves rarely solve the problem.

Then they go to their friends about the issue. First, it’s often just to complain or vent to get it off your chest. This is well-intentioned but not often helpful to the relationship and to solving the problem. When you complain about your partner to your friends, you go back to your partner with a sub-conscious negativity about them. Even if you’re just joking to your friends, you still have little negative thoughts about your partner when you see them again. This does not create closeness to them.

Second, if it’s an issue that they want help with, they will ask their friends’ advice on the situation. Their friends may be well-meaning, but can also often hurt the relationship more than help it. The reason is because their friends naturally want to take their side to show they support them. Simply taking their side doesn’t solve the problem. Also, friends don’t see a key ingredient to the marriage – your partner’s actions may simply be reactions to your actions. If your actions change, your spouse’s actions could change.

A classic example of this came from a recent story a wife sent to me. She made a negative assumption about her husband and didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt about something. This led to resentment on her part and negative behavior toward him from her, which only pushed him further away, both emotionally and physically. She tried to talk to her friends for help, which only made things worse. Her friends meant well, but they only received half of the story and vented their own relationship frustrations by taking her side without offering any way to solve the problem.

However, it all changed when she let go of the resentment and started acting more positively toward her husband. His reaction was quick and decisive – he started acting more positively toward her. They finally opened up and talked about what they each need from each other. They tried talking in the past, but because they had not been meeting each other’s needs, they both weren’t willing to budge.

Was it fair that one partner had to take the first step? Maybe not. But you can either be fair and possibly lead to divorce, or you can do what’s unfair and start the process of fixing the relationship.

So we need more stories like this of how couples have fixed problems in their relationship, rather than just venting about how bad their relationship is. Venting is ok once in a while, but don’t confuse venting with actually solving the issue in the relationship.

 

 

What made you want to inspire others through gathering stories of others and their relationships?

My motivation of inspiring relationships was for my own marriage. For years, my wife and I struggled to have a really happy and content marriage. There were a lot of ups and downs. We talked to friends, family, we read books, we went to counseling, and we tried to focus on religious teachings. We did everything and nothing worked. We didn’t have a terrible marriage, but there was just a layer of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in it.

Then I started reading a lot of various internet message boards of people asking for relationship advice. What slowly started to strike me was how people couldn’t see how their own actions were negatively affecting their relationship and likely negatively affecting their partner. We couldn’t see what their partner had to say about the situation, but it was clear their own actions often weren’t helpful to the situation.

It took a while, but I slowly started to see that my actions also weren’t helping my own marital situation. So to understand my own marriage better, I started to try to follow what people’s frustrations were in their relationship. I saw patterns of what their frustrations were. They had different scenarios and wording, but the problems started falling into distinct categories. This became the basis for the 10 Needs I developed.

The next thing that became clear was that people’s frustrations fell into 2 distinct areas. Either there was a lack of stability in the relationship, meaning they were still highly attracted to their partner, but their partner’s actions/behaviors were very frustrating to them and very unreliable. Or there was a lack of stimulation in the relationship, meaning they felt their life was steady with their partner, but the passionate desire wasn’t there any longer.

This revelation of the 10 Needs and 2 main types of needs led me to do a lot of thinking about my own marriage. The more I focused on fulfilling her needs that she wasn’t getting from me, the more she focused on my needs. Our marriage isn’t perfect now, but a lot of the frustrations we felt for years have mostly gone away.

Hearing all of this is what ultimately lead me to want to inspire other relationships. I felt the best way to do that was to post stories from people who had overcome issues in their relationship. I wanted to be a source of showing people how to overcome their own problems in their relationship.

The interesting thing is that it’s very easy to correlate how they overcome an issue with the 10 Need I developed on my website and my book at https://www.inspireyourmarriage.com/.

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Strength Not Included

Walking down the aisle can change the life of any woman who decides to marry the love of her life. But what if that also meant moving to a new state in order to live, marry, and be a part of the military life? I was still in love with my high school sweetheart, even after we went our separate ways once we had graduated from HS back in 2001. And it seemed that fate had plans for us to be together even while I lived in California working and going to college to get my BA in Liberal Studies and Ryan was stationed out in Florida since he was a part of the Navy. We dated long distance, only communicating on the phone or through e-mails and on messenger. We had our ups and downs in our relationship but we wouldn’t let a thing like distance stop us from being together. We knew in our hearts that we belonged together. Before I graduated college, Ryan flew out to surprise me, my parents having been in on the plan the entire time and having tricked me into believing that we had to pick up my godparents at the airport. Apparently on one of his prior visits, he had asked my parents if he could ask for my hand in marriage, which I believe to be a romantic gesture. When I aw that we were picking up Ryan from the airport and not my godparents, I was truly excited to see him and a bit annoyed at my parents for having keeping this a secret from me. But the next day, he took me to his favorite spot in La Jolla on the beach, sat me down on a rock not too close to the crashing waves but close enough to make it beautiful, got down on one knee as he spoke of always wanting me in his life and always loving me, pulled out the box, and popped the question. I told him yes, kissed him deeply after he had placed the ring on my finger, and couldn’t be happier.

Ryan Gordon is a smart, loving man and I couldn’t wait to become Mrs. Gordon. What I didn’t know and was a bit nervous about was would I be strong enough to not only be his wife but a part of the military life? All I had ever known was my life in Poway, California and living with my parents while working at a Preschool and attending to college. I had never lived on my own, never dealt with bills or having to buy my own furniture or anything like that. Now here I was graduating from college and not only stepping out into the real world but also moving the day before my birthday in July of 2007 to be with him.

I wasn’t just moving out of my parents’ house either, I was moving across the ocean to live on the beautiful island of Oahu, Hawai’i. Nervous was the understatement of the year of how I was feeling when I said my last good bye to my crying parents and stepped through the metal detectors at the airport. I took in a deep breath, wiped away my own tears, and made my way to my gate with my shoulders back and my head held high. I had made my choice and I was going to go through with it no matter how scared I was or how uncomfortable flying made me because waiting for me was a very special guy. I remember watching planes landing or taking off and growing more and more scared mixed with excitement until it was time to board. My heart began to hammer inside my chest but I walked onto the plane, took my seat, and clung to the armrest.

I was finally on my way to not only my new life but my new world, the world of moving from state to state with a smile on my face and support and love in my heart for my busy military husband. Ryan picked me up at the bustling airport and once I laid eyes on him, I couldn’t help myself. Buckets of tears spilled from my eyes and all he did was hold me close, kiss the top of my head, and told me that no matter what happens in our life together, he will always be by my side. We made our way through the unfamiliar streets of Oahu, though I had been there once before with my parents but that had been back in 2001 after I had graduated high school, and then a second time in order to visit Ryan before he popped the question, and went to our first apartment together. Ryan had already made plans to rent a house in another part of Oahu so that we would have more room but it was a nice apartment at the time. I moved my things in, unpacked since we would live there until we married in September, and I plopped down on the couch, staring around at me quite flustered since I still wasn’t sure I was ready for such a huge step at the age of 23, the next day turning 24. The biggest decision I had ever made was going to college in order to become a teacher and now I was in a new state with my future husband, jobless, and scared.

I began to send out my resume right away because not even two weeks after I moved and settled into my new life, Ryan had to go out on the ship that he was attached to for training. When he told me this, my heart felt as if it were going to stop completely and kill me right then and there. But I took in a deep breath and told myself, ‘I can do this. He will only be gone for a little over a month, more like a month and a half but you can still do this. Just concentrate on your writing and finding a job.’

For my birthday, we had gone to the humane society and we adopted our first kitten together, a sweet tortoiseshell named Sasha. She would keep me company while he was deployed and I couldn’t be any happier. I adopted another kitten later in our marriage that I named Shadow before he came home form deployment in July/August 2008 after I had emailed him and asked of course. I didn’t want to do anything without Ryan’s consent first because I wanted him to be happy and in the know as well even if he was so far away.

September 22, 2007 was such a beautiful day! Not many clouds in the stunning blue sky and the beach that we were on was so peaceful that I couldn’t believe that we were on Oahu. My parents, brother, his friend Brandon, and my godparents flew out to help us celebrate our day. Then once the festivities had finished and they had left, a few months later, right after thanksgiving actually, he was deployed again though this time it was for 7 long months. I remember him asking if I would want to go back to California but I said no, that I wanted to stay there. I had just accepted a teaching job and I wasn’t going to let my loneliness or the fear of being by myself with just Sasha, and later Shadow, get the best of me. The day I had to say good-bye to my brand new husband I could feel myself change inside more. My heart pounded in my chest again, tears welled up in my eyes, but I felt different, stronger and I knew then that I was ready to face this challenge head on.

First, I had to leave my parents and friends behind, and then I had to stay behind to work and live on an island with no friends and a few family members that I had never met before and barely knew but I was going to take on this life head on with flames in my eyes and confidence in my heart. The 7 months rolled by, not as fast as I would have liked, but he came home and we could live together happily. We moved after that, back to California and were stationed more up north since he was working in Long Beach. We lived first in Anaheim then moved down to Oceanside since he would be taking orders down in San Diego after Long Beach. Originally we were going to have to move to Illinois but those orders fell through so in California we stayed.

It’s not easy moving and finding work but I did it with the help of my wonderful husband. Then while living in California, heartache and sadness came into our lives as we decided to try to start our family. We wanted our happy two to become an even happier three. But it was very hard, and I mean heart crushing hard, as I battled to carry a baby full term. Before the military doctors stepped in to help we had to try for a year and we did, suffering with two miscarriages. I felt my strength that I had been collecting over the years slowly slipping away along with my hope of ever becoming a mother. We talked to the infertility doctor finally and I was put on shots that I had to give myself at home as well as taking Clomid in order to help me but it wasn’t working the way I had hoped. I was considered a mystery infertile as the doctors had branded it since they had no answers as to why I couldn’t carry full term. After the third attempt on the medication and IUI, I did become pregnant but it ended in another miscarriage. THREE miscarriages that I couldn’t control nor could my heart or his heart take but even through it all Ryan kept up hope.

Everyone was distraught for me and I just wanted to give up; my strength was deflating fast. But Ryan wouldn’t allow it and a couple of months after my third miscarriage; we found out that I was pregnant again. I feared for the worse since I had already lost three other babies but on December 28, 2013 we gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Kierra.

After picking new orders, we sold the condo we had bought a few years before in Oceanside, and made our trek across country to Ryan’s new duty station in Virginia Beach, Virginia. And when I said we made our trek cross country, I meant it. We drove from California to Virginia, only stopping to eat, use the restroom, sleep, and to sometimes comfort our not even 1-year-old daughter when she became upset. We rented a house in Virginia, that didn’t turn out so well so we rented a different house with a new better manager, and truthfully even with the cold weather and snow, all three of us loved it out there. Kierra was able to grow into a social butterfly thanks to her going to MyGym as well as staying in childcare whenever Ryan and I attended Military events or functions. We lived there for three years and enjoyed every minute of it, doing new things, hiking more, and having a great time as a family. We made a few friends with those who worked with Ryan and we still chat on Facebook but I definitely miss being able to see them in person. And truthfully I miss taking our daughter to Ryan’s work where she can run around and chatted with the other people working, making them smile and have a better day. Before we left for new orders, we had tried again for another baby but that ended in a fourth miscarriage, more talk with infertility, and a plan to just wait since we didn’t want to go through the treatments right before we had to move for new orders.

But then the time came for new orders to be picked and we are back in California, back close to our family and friends, and we even welcomed our second miracle rainbow baby, another daughter we named Cara. We may be sleep deprived but we are making it work and we love that our little three is now a family of four. Even Kierra is excited to have a little sister and has been such a big helper for us.

My life has been quite a roller coaster, still is with me getting back into writing my stories and pushing forward with getting published, but I wouldn’t have my life any other way because I have at my side the kindest, gentlest, most wonderfully loving man as my husband and father to my children. I may want to change a few things and had done some things differently but the one thing I would never change is getting back together with Ryan and marrying him. He is my love, my friend, and my strength and I hope that I can return that favor in being his strength whenever he needs it. Life isn’t easy and never will be easy but that challenge I face head on with my own strength that I had never known I had before I married Ryan and the strength from my husband and my family and friends.

When we are born as babies, strength for hardship isn’t included; we only come equipped with the strength to live. We have to grow up and gather that strength for the hardships to come and let it mix with the strength to live in order to make life worth living. My life is worth living because of my family and friends but even more so because of my best friend, my husband, Ryan. I love him with my whole entire being and soul and wouldn’t be where I am without him. I will continue my trek in the world of writing and getting published even though I am afraid but knowing that I have Ryan beside me, readily giving me strength, I won’t give up until I can see my published books on shelves in bookstores and for sale on Amazon. And I can’t wait to see where else life takes us as we walk hand in hand together with not just each other now but also with our two beautiful daughters.