L-E-A-R-N Step 3 Awareness is How We Recapture The Magic In Marriage

Awareness

Step three to recapturing the magic in your marriage has to do with creating a new awareness. A new awareness about yourself and about your spouse. 

Let’s start by taking a look at the meaning  of awareness:

Webster’s Definition of awareness

: the quality or state of being aware: knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists

promoting a heightened awareness of the problem seemed to have only a slight awareness of what was going on

an acute awareness of subtle differences

Let’s take the first definition and break it down:

• The quality or state of being aware. Knowledge and understanding that something is happening.

Creating a new awareness in our relationship means that in order to change the way we relate to our spouse we must become aware of the thoughts feelings and actions that lead us to push away from our partner begin to not trust them and to keep our feelings to ourselves because we don’t feel it is safe anymore to share them without being ridiculed or made wrong to feel that way.

We repeat the same scenario so many times it has become the new normal.

You may be hearing yourself say I don’t do those things, I am aware of my partner’s feelings and I’m not afraid to share them but we are more willing to share our thoughts and feelings with our friends but not our partner because our friends won’t respond the same way.

The best way I know how to explain is by sharing my own story.

Six years ago my wife Valerie came to me and told me she felt more like my roommate than My wife because we stopped dating, and doing fun things together, and even just cuddling. My first response was to become defensive, my second response was I began to make a list of all the things she did or did not do which only made things worse. 

What changed for me that allowed me to become more aware of Valerie’s needs and the negative thoughts, feelings and actions were when I started a course called the Master Key Experience in 2016.

The course consisted of daily homework which included a 15-minute meditation and the introduction to the course in week one revealed how our mind works and the effects our thoughts have on our feelings and actions. It revealed that by consistently thing and feeling a certain way they became so automatic and that is how our habits are formed. Those two things revealed to me how many times a day I had negative thoughts towards Valerie, how those thoughts created negative feelings and were followed by negative actions. 

It revealed how I created a negative persona of Valerie that propelled me to constantly collect evidence to prove my point.  Thought like “she doesn’t care”, But the most damaging part was that it was the persona that I created that caused the separation between us and it drowned out all the years of love and good times we have spent together.

Each day during the meditation as I analyzed the thoughts that ran through my mind I learned little by little how to substitute the negative thoughts for positive thoughts from our wedding, the adoption of our son Lonnie, and when we bought our first home my heart became so full of love again and as I continued to practice I became addicted to the positive feelings which lead me to take positive actions to show Valerie I loved her various ways, it gave me back the marriage I always wanted, the marriage I committed to 33 years ago and it inspired me to create a practice of watching our wedding video a couple of times a year to never forget why we fell love.  

Awareness breathes new life into a relationship, it allows you to remember why you fell in love with your partner. It reignites love and inspires you to keep entertaining the positive emotions and moves you to create traditions that keep the love alive.

For the last 50 years, researchers have used varying definitions of self-awareness. For example, some see it as the ability to monitor our inner world, whereas others label it as a temporary state of self-consciousness. Still others describe it as the difference between how we see ourselves and how others see us.  What self-awareness really is and how to cultivate it

Never forget what attracted you to your partner, the good times you had together, and the good time that you will create in the future.

If you would like to discuss this topic more with me please set up a 30-minute call at the following link. Meet with Mike