When I care about someone I want to love them and make them happy. These are both very important parts of any long-lasting friendship or intimate relationship but they’re not the same thing. There are some major differences between the two and understanding these differences is really important.

We all want to be happy and happiness a lot of times is the main thing people are seeking in their lives. Just take a look at all of the self-help-how-can-I-be-happy books that are out in the market and it should give you an idea of how much we all want to feel that way. Keeping someone happy is easy and it means you’re doing what you can to make sure they’re pleased or content. If you please them then they will be happy but pleasing someone isn’t loving them.

I see loving someone as being much different than keeping them happy and pleasing them. Love can mean a couple of things. Initially, love is a strong affection for someone else due to attraction or common interest. This is how most relationships (both intimate and not) start out. You feel an attraction, the more you see the more you like and you want more of it. This stage of love usually involves trying to keep the other person as happy as possible. You’ll change your plans for them, buy them dinner and do whatever you need to do in order to spend time with them. It’s a fun type of love and it feels amazing.

But eventually if you stick with it this first stage love turns into the real deal love. This real deal love is an unselfish, loyal and true concern for the good of another person and this is much more than simply being attracted to someone and keeping them happy. This is when love turns into something much more. This type of love is awesome but it’s really, really hard.

This type of love involves strong communication of things that are easy to talk about and things that are hard. This type of love involves confronting things when you have that feeling in the pit of your stomach, even if you know it will upset the other person. This type of love involves understanding your own weaknesses and being willing to work on them for the sake of your relationship. This type of love involves keeping the love alive even when it seems like there’s nothing left. This type of love involves fighting for each other when you have to. This type of love is a crazy commitment. This type of love isn’t convenient.

So for this Valentine’s day be sure to keep the person you love happy but don’t forget to love them, too.

photo credit: Byways.org

When it comes to having good communication in a relationship there are so many things to think about it can become a little overwhelming. When to say something, what to say and deciding whether it was the right thing to say once you’ve said it. Like I said, there’s a lot to think about. There’s a fine line between being aware of how you’re communicating and overthinking it but more times than not it’s good to know how you’re coming across to others.

Something I’ve been thinking through along these lines is when to accept, when to be patient and when to confront. I feel like this is one of the hardest decisions to make when you’re building a relationship with someone you really care about. We all have our own preconceptions about how things should be done and I know it doesn’t take much to annoy me if I’m around someone who isn’t aligning with my thoughts and feelings.

Dealing with this type of conflict, both big and small, is something I need to get much better at which is why I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it. I guess thinking through it is the first step to figuring it out and it’s something that I’ll get a better handle on as time goes on.

To make this thought process a little more clear, here’s what I mean when I say when to accept, when to be patient and when to confront.

When To Accept

When in relationship there are going to be things that annoy you or that you don’t necessarily agree with or see the same way as the other person. Some of these things need to change and some of these don’t, it’s just the way the other the person is and it’s up to you to accept them.

If your husband is an insane football fan and you don’t even know what a first down is then you’re most likely not going to feel the same way. Instead of pushing against the harmless things that he really enjoys you should choose to accept it ever though you’re never going to feel the same way he does. You might not ever want to get tickets to a playoff game, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hook him up with some if you have the opportunity.

When To Be Patient

There are other things that either you or the person you’re in a relationship will need to change eventually. These are what I would bucket into things that are worth being patient for. Most of the time these tend be smaller issues or habits that have been learned over time due to the environment someone has been a part of in the past.

Usually these types of things aren’t causing major immediate problems and wouldn’t be considered a deal-breaker but they need to change in order for you to have a healthy, loving and long-lasting connection to each other. Think of these as the annoying things that just aren’t going to be acceptable for the long term.

A good example of this is having a bad temper or not being willing to help with responsibilities that need to be taken care of in the relationship. With enough time they have the chance to be a big problem, but with a little patience and some open communication about them they can be taken care of before they become unbearable.

When To Confront

The last and most aggressive option is to confront something that needs to be talked about and openly addressed in a relationship. This is by far the hardest one for me and something I’ve been focusing on in my life. It’s not easy to confront the people you care about but it’s important to do it when the situation calls for it. This could be a one-off situation that you’re very uncomfortable with or something you’ve been patient about in the past that’s not going to change without confronting it.

Confrontation doesn’t mean you have to be mean or aggressive. Confronting something is more about getting something out into the open so it can be talked about instead of ignoring it for an unhealthy amount of time.

When it comes to confronting someone just be sure to take some time to think through what you’re feeling and what you want to communicate before you say it. Don’t bring in sarcasm and belittle the other person just to make them feel bad. Just tell them how what they’re doing makes you feel and how you would like them to change in order to make you feel more comfortable. It sounds kind of cheesy and isn’t as exciting as a full-out argument, but if done the right way inviting confrontation into your relationship can be a healthy way to communicate the things that are most important to you.

With the right mix of accepting, being patient and confronting relationships can move in the right direction and grow in all the right ways. It’s not easy but one thing I’ve learned is that it’s worth figuring out, even if it doesn’t come naturally to you. If you’re like me, it’s going to take a while to get the hang of it but I feel like just keeping these in mind helps a lot. Good luck and if you have any thoughts on this for me, I’d love to hear them (I could always use the help).

image credit: dailypositivequotes.com

New habits (both good and bad) all start out as feeling awkward or unnatural and we’re born with abilities that make some easier to acquire than others. The rest of the habits we end up developing throughout our lives happen due some type or motivation and require repetition, time and effort.

Habits are forced, but they’re forced for a reason. Some reasons are personal and affect us individually. Others are meant to affect those outside of ourselves and have a wider impact on lives other than our own.

Personally I’m building a habit to run and to get in shape for the upcoming San Francisco marathon. On the other hand I’m building habits to be a better employee at work and they won’t only affect me, but my co-workers, investors, customers and others. I’m also building habits that will help me be a better husband and they will affect my wife and others who are invested in our relationship. Some groups get more affected than others, but you get the idea.

Habits are learned and although foreign to us initially they quickly become part of our routine. While we’re in the process of creating the new habits we aren’t being a fake or robotic version of ourselves, it’s more than that. We’re showing that we’re willing to invest the time and effort to change or improve something we’ve recognized we need.

With your significant other, building the right habits shows you’re willing to change for the benefit of the relationship. That’s something that should never be overlooked or taken for granted.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that love isn’t a habit, but the habits you create or change to support love really shows how much you care. Some of the habits aren’t going to feel natural for a while, but the fact that they’re being built specifically for the relationship shows more love than you might realize.

Love is learned and yes, love can be awkward but the struggles over time and the willingness to build habits for love are what will make it last forever.

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Do you have any thoughts/experience on building habits for love? Share your brilliant knowledge with us in the comments below.

You know I’m married when I’m writing about things like this. Who would of ever thought that I would be giving relationship advice? Mr. non-committal himself has now turned into Dr. Phil. Awesome.

But there is something to be said about having experience with a fully committed relationship and the things you learn from it. I’ve been married for almost three years now and our relationship is far from perfect (believe me, we have our moments) but I’ve learned a lot of things along the way that I think could be helpful for those of you who are still looking for that Mr. or Mrs. Right.

Here are a few things I’ve learned up to this point. I’m by no means an expert but I do feel like I know a lot more than I did a few years ago. Take it or leave it and who knows, it might just be what you need to hear.

We’re All Selfish

This is a simple fact of life and part of being a human. We’re all programmed to take care of #1 before all else and to make things worse our culture is always telling us this over and over again. We can take care of ourselves, we don’t need anyone else’s help and I want what I want when I want it (or else). In a relationship you’re going to have to chip away at this little by little and eventually you’ll need to get to the point to where you’re giving more of yourself than you ever imagined possible. This might sound like a scary thing, but it’s actually a great place to find yourself if you can make it there.

The things in your life that you think make you who you are will need to become less important, which is going to be a hard pill to swallow. Your workouts will be harder to squeeze in, your work will have a beginning and an end time and you’ll find yourself doing things that your significant other cares about that you never paid attention to or ever wanted to do before. Oh, and you’re going to be communicating more than you ever have in your entire life. Sounds awesome, huh? (it actually is if you can get it all figured out)

Are you losing who you are? No. You’re just becoming the person you never knew you could be.

Relationships Take Work

This sounds really bad when you say it to someone who’s single but anyone who’s been married for longer than a year will tell you that there’s a lot of work needed to keep a relationship going. A lot of people think that things will just happen the way they should in a relationship, but that’s just not the case. Can it move along smoothly for a while without too much effort? Sure, but that’s going to eventually fade away and then it’s time to get to work on what you really want.

This isn’t the traditional roll-up-your-sleeves kind of work. This is being aware of what you need in a relationship and communicating it to others in a way that can be understood. It’s also understanding what the other person in your relationship needs and how to make sure they’re getting what they need in a way that’s healthy for your relationship as a whole. It takes planning, forethought, being intentional and communicating in a way that the other person in your relationship understands (not just in a way that you do).

This work shouldn’t scare you away from being in a relationship but it should help you set some expectations so you’re not completely blindsided by what it takes to keep one going in the right direction. Communicate on a ridiculous level to each other even when it feels so awkward you want to throw up. That feeling is you being molded into someone who can help build something special with another person. Embrace the work and it will pay off, just don’t shy away from it or avoid it. It’s the easy way out and it’s tempting, but you’re better than that.

Don’t Be Who You Think They Want, Be Who You Are

One of the early mistakes I made in my marriage and even in some of my earlier relationships was becoming who I thought someone else wanted me to be and not who I actually was. With the other relationships it was just an easy way to keep things smooth, exciting and moving along at a pace I liked but it can only last so long and it was exhausting.

This isn’t necessarily being a completely different person when you’re around someone else — it can simply be not speaking up about things you feel you should talk about or avoiding conflict for the sake of not upsetting someone else. This is something I dealt with in my relationships with women, my close friends and even family and I still struggle with it today. I feel like this topic could be an entire series of posts for me, but we’ll leave it at that for now.

I think the reason why I always did this was simple, it got me what I wanted quicker. Whether it was getting a girl or a group of people I just met to like me faster, it just made things easy. I could turn on the charm and it would fast track me to where I wanted to be. I still find myself doing this in certain situations and to be honest it’s a great quality of mine but it’s only good for getting people’s attention should never be a long term way to manage my relationships (great for networking events, traveling, etc.). I’m figuring all of this out even today and it’s exciting to learn more about myself and how I create, build and manage my relationships with my wife, family, friends and co-workers. I’m learning to be who I am and to be ok with it. More and more I’m finding my identity in my faith, which is another topic I’ll write more about in the future.

If you’re going to be in a relationship that lasts you need to be who you really are — the good, the bad and the ugly. You can change some of the things that need some improvement, but you need to do that together. That’s part of the messiness and what will bring you closer to whoever you’re sharing these types of things with. Someone once said that people admire you when you seem perfect but they love and respect you when you’re open with your own weaknesses. None of us are perfect and I think they might be right.

I’m not sure if all of this makes sense but it does to me and I’m realized that whatever I’ve gone through others have or are going through the same things, too. If you’re someone who needs to hear what I’m saying I hope it helps and if you have any comments for me I’d love to hear ’em.