Is The Perfect Man Out There?!

Yes ladies... and gents, the perfect man is out there, but he is taken! I am married to him and thank goodness for that! haha JUST KIDDING (honey NO offence)!

I watched the movie The Vow last night, coupled with watching The Bachelor this season (I know! Don't judge me, I already do)! And the romance of it all got me thinking about the skewed perception of our culture about marriage, love and what a relationship "should" be like, or for that matter, what a man should be like.

I am married to the most perfect man for ME so that I can grow as a person. He, in no way, shape or form is "THE PERFECT MAN". "THE PRINCE CHARMING". "THE ONE AND ONLY WHO CAN FULFILL ALL MY NEEDS AND FANTASIES". Okay you get the point. I will say though, I am very, very much in love with my husband and I find him irresistible (most times) and I am so happy that I get to share all of my adventures with him. However, he is the man that God put in my 'ever-after' so that I would become a better person. NOT so that I would be happily ever after. My husband is the person who is going to rub me in all the wrong ways and bring out all the nasty little annoying habits of mine. He is also going to bring out the most beautiful things about me as well. Doug is the person that helps God shape me into the person I need to be!

Love isn't some fairy tale, or some romantic movie. Love is a choice that we have to make every day to keep that fire alive and to allow our partner in crime to help us be better NOT just happy. It is not realistic to be happy all the time.  It is so much responsibility for "the other half" to have to make us happy ALL of the time. Or fulfill us in ways that are really outside their realm. As much as I am saying my hubby isn't perfect, neither am I. I will repeat that statement, NEITHER am I! I bring out the best in my husband and I can certainly bring out the worst in him as well. A choice of love has to be made daily, in order to help each other out in life, because times will get rough. The vaavaavoom will exit the stage so to speak. The butterflies will go home and you are left with a choice to continue on with a relationship that is going to feel like it has fizzled out-but that is only the beginning of a much more fulfilling and intimate relationship with your mate!

No man is the perfect man. No woman is the perfect woman. If you have this notion, you're going to be left disappointed time and time again, jumping from relationship to relationship trying to find your prince charming... OR woman charming (this is the best I could come up with at this time! I know! lame...)

Find someone you share the most non-negotiable core values with and give it a go. Find the beauty in not placing so much responsibility onto a human being. Find the beauty in the vow of marriage. Find the beauty in the faults of your loved one. Cut them some slack. AND turn inward and see where YOU can become better. Strive to change yourself into a better person so that they will never regret choosing you  for their adventures in life.

Stay blessed and stay saucy!

-Libier

Save Your Relationship

     


I've been happily married for over three years now and my marriage is an amazing roller-coaster. Sometimes we are completely head-over-heals for each other and sometimes.... sometimes let's just say, it takes every ounce of my being not to Karate chop him in the throat! So many times I've wondered why oh why is my husband not giving me the love that I deserve!? And then we bought a book called Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs and I was able to understand 100% what was standing in the way of the love that I was yearning for. I'm not trying to have this act as cliff-notes for the book, I completely know I wouldn't do it justice, BUT I will give you the lib-notes. What I got out of the book per-say. Are you ready?

• Men and women are different (No duh)
• Men hear in blue and women in pink (thus we can say one thing and have two meanings behind it)
• Women love to love and love LOVE love to GET love. Men not so much concerned about the love thing-Here's where it get's INTERESTING... (MEN NEED AND WANT YOUR RESPECT!) SHAZAMMMMM! 
• There is a crazy cycle- If the woman doesn't get love then it's hard for her to give her hubby respect, and if the husband doesn't feel respected, it's difficult for him to display love.
• Don't fret, there is also something called the "Energizing Cycle"- With love she treats him with respect and with respect he treats HER with love. How'bout that!?

   I've been missing this concept my entire life, and now that I see it as plain as day it makes total sense! And trust me when I tell you that it has already saved Doug and I from some, pull your hair, I'm going to go get my nunchucks I'll be right back kind of fights! The catch though IS that someone always has to be the better person EVEN when they aren't getting what they "deserve". So for example one day we were having a heated discussion (well we were fighting, I just like the sounds of the other better). And I was able to not care about the fact that he was being unloving and asked him a very important question. "Honey what did I do that made you feel disrespected?"  Ohhhh my gosh! Boy oh boy do I wish I could do that every time. He told me why he felt like I was being rude to him and it all boiled down to miscommunication. And the argument was over faster than I could say ninja. But had I not had the courtesy to put my feelings aside for a minute to ask him the question, I would have been all mad and angry. Things would of just gotten out of control and before we know it we would have been fighting about something completely different five hours later.  

Since then there have been times when he's had to be the better person, and it makes me feel so loved when he gets interested in what I'm feeling. When he gives me unconditional love, it really MAKES me want to be respectful and loving to him. Try this little method out. And by respect I do NOT mean, be a doormat and never raise any questions or bring anything up for the sake of not arguing. I mean be respectful in the way you treat your man and enjoy all the beautiful LOVE that you'll get from him! 

Women, trust me. If you have a husband or boyfriend who isn't treating you with the love that you deserve, give him that unconditional respect he needs. Be enamored by him and praise him for the man that he is. Remind him that you are not sickened by the person he's become.  Make him feel like you feel PROUD to be his woman and you'll be dumbfounded by how he will in-turn treat YOU. 

Men, trust me. If you have a wife or girlfriend who doesn't treat you with the honor and respect that you crave, give her unconditional love. Don't think that everything she says is to piss you off, or to make you miserable. She is just saying "I'm not feeling loved right now, please love me!"  If you seek to understand HER and in everything make it known that you love who she is, she WILL respect who you are! 

I know it's very difficult to be in a relationship sometimes. BUT it can be done.  To the point that you end up having an intimate relationship that no earthly thing can break.  

Stay blessed and stay saucy everyone!! 

Marriage

This week I’ve been blessed in celebrating my 2 year wedding anniversary with my main squeeze. I took a waddle down memory lane and reminisced the path that my husband and I have been on for the past 3 years. From the moment that Doug and I met I knew that I’d be in for a wild ride since on our first meeting he walked in my heels, made silly jokes, and farted while saying bye to me! Surprisingly, before asking me to be his girlfriend Doug sat me down and talked to me as if we were business partners on the verge of a very important transaction. He told me that he kinda liked me, but he didn’t want to waste his time. He was ready for something serious and that he didn’t want to mess around. Dang , dang, dang ohhh DANG! The business proposal consisted of three very important “non-negotiables” that I had to agree with in order to be his girlfriend, thank you very much! I of course chuckled in my head and thought , “Is this guy for real?!” Well, after glancing at his very serious expression I quickly knew he wasn’t messin’ and that I should probably listen. No one else in my “dating” world had ever been so upfront with me, I suddenly got an overwhelming feeling that this was something different, something better.

Drum roll please… The three “non-negotiables” in order of importance were: 1. He needed a woman who would put God first above everything else 2. A woman that always communicated with him no matter what and 3. A woman that didn’t smoke. I had to quit smoking!! EEEEKKKKKKK. I agreed to the first two right away and said that I would do my best with number 3, (LITTLE did he know that my “best” took me a year and some gumballs to accomplish. He must have really liked me, not just kinda, in order to deal with my “trying” to quit for so long). From the very beginning of our relationship I knew this was no ordinary partnership. I have felt so blessed to have found someone that knows absolutely everything about me and that can still love me in spite of all my flaws, my past, and how oddly shaped my head is. Someone that makes me grow in such amazing ways and that lets me help him grow in his path as well. I can’t begin to tell you how stubborn and “independent” I had to be in my growing up in order to survive. So when I started my relationship as a wife with Doug it was very hard for me to allow myself to share myself with him in every decision of our lives. That was a big struggle with me, completely submitting to him because my whole life I thought that was a bad thing. I thought WHY should you need to submit yourself to your mate?! I know now that it’s actually a very important thing in marriage or in a relationship for that matter, so long as the submission is from both sides. I know there is a struggle when you make the decision to share your life with someone else for the rest of your lives. You might feel as if you’re being stripped from your identity. IT’s NOT , you are about to embark in one of the most wonderful challenges of your life, learning the balance of being yourself, while growing into the person that your love makes you be. So it is imperative that you choose a partner that makes you grow and change into a better you. Allowing yourself to morph into the best partner you can be for them. Like learning to like the other persons music , or learning about sports because you know it’s important to them. These changes are not a measure of weakness, they are a measure of strength. Strength that you have for loving someone so much that you are willing to adapt your life so that they are happy and trust that they will do the same for you. I’ve had so much fun in my marriage discovering different facets of our relationship, different sides of myself, of Doug. I’ve had fun working through the rough times (and trust me there have been rough times)! It has been such an amazing experience because we know that after the storm has calmed and we’ve thoroughly worked a problem out, we have learned so much more about each other individually and as a couple. And we have the certainty that we can overcome the rough times by always putting God first in every situation. It’s been interesting to find out how different marriage is from what I THOUGHT it would be. It’s nowhere near what I thought. It’s a hundred times as wonderful and it can be a hundred times as challenging as I had imagined. But when the day ends and night falls we are left just us two alone, it’s as if the world disappears and we were made for each other laying there knowing that we have a buddy for a never ending sleepover until death due as part. Making the choice to love this one person for the rest of our life and continue to help them, and make them fall in love with us time and time again is a daily quest you much partake in. Love is a strange thing when you stop thinking about it as they show it in the movies. Love in its raw form is the most amazing thing any human being could ever experience, but you have to open your heart and go into it blindly in order to experience the full effect. No walls, no filters, no thinking “I don’t want to get hurt”. Because that you will. But the hurt will make the good times feels oh so much better. Enjoy your love very much for a loving relationship can be the most rewarding thing you can cultivate in a life time.

Stay saucy!