How To Love Your Loved One, Wife, Daughter, and Mom

It’s About Respect: 15 Signs He Treats You The Way You Truly Deserve

http://elitedaily.com/dating/he-treats-like-truly-deserve/1007416/

by Paul Hudson

April 21, 2015

The trick to a happy relationship is seeing each other as complete equals.

Now, before you all go on about how you treat all people as equals, especially your lover, let me say this: bullsh*t.

People don’t see all people as equals – in fact, we just about never see anyone else as an equal.

The only time we really do is when we love that individual. When we don’t love someone, we are basically saying he or she isn’t our equal and deserving of our love.

It’s difficult seeing other people as complete equals, as we are egocentric beings living a reality from a single perspective, a single point of view.

As far as we’re concerned, we’re really the only people in the world who matter.

Unless we’re in love. 

When we’re in love, the most magical thing happens: We find someone who we believe may be even more important than ourselves.

Ladies, this is the only sort of man for you. If he doesn’t see you as his equal, then he won’t be capable of treating you the way you deserve to be treated.

How do you know he’s treating you the way you deserve to be treated?

1. He gives you attention from the moment you wake up.

He’ll roll over, give you a hug or a kiss on the forehead. Or just plop his heavy arm over you, giving out a groan to show his disdain for the sunrise forcing him to wake from his dreams.

Whatever his morning routine, it involves him recognizing you’re laying there with him.

2. He feeds not just your body, but your mind.

He might buy you dinner; he might make it for you. A man who’s in love lives to satisfy his woman — and that’s equally through her stomach as it is through her passions and soul. He’ll just as easily buy you chocolates as he would books because he knows enriching you is his favorite hobby and it makes the both of you better.

3. He loves surprising you.

Maybe he’ll buy you little gifts. Maybe he’ll pick you some flowers. Maybe he’ll clean your apartment while you’re away at work or running errands. Maybe he’ll book you a trip around the world or simply pack the two of you a surprise picnic. When a man makes a point to surprise you, he understands the importance of keeping the excitement in a relationship alive.

4. He spends time with you because he wants to, not because he feels obligated to.

You don’t need to beg him to hang out, to see you, to spend time with you. In fact, he often finds himself having to hold back from seeing you too often, from coming off as overly eager.

He feels an urge to spend just about every waking moment with you, but he knows better. He gives you the space you need and takes the space he needs, but never fails to be there for you.

5. When he makes plans, you’re a part of them.

As far as he’s concerned, you are the plan. The life the two of you will create together is all the planning he needs. Everything else you’ll deal with when the time comes, together.

6. He consults you before he makes big decisions.

In a relationship, it’s important to share the decision-making. If the man you’re with treats you well, he’ll not only include you because he knows you want to be included, but because he values your opinions, your input.

7. He doesn’t lie to you because he doesn’t have anything he needs to lie about.

Not all men are scumbags. Not all men will lie to you, cheat on you and break your heart. Some, most even, certainly will. But not him. He refuses to treat you the same way every other assh*le in your life has treated you. He won’t lie to you, and he will never have a reason to.

How can he be so sure? Because it’s a choice, and it’s a choice he’s already decided to make.

8. He tells you that you’re beautiful when you feel your worst.

I’d say that to him, you’re always beautiful – which may very well be the case – but when you look like hell, you look like hell. It happens to the best of us. But do you know what? He refuses to tell you that you look like hell because he doesn’t want you thinking yourself to be anything but beautiful.

9. He tells you about his day and asks you about yours.

He wants to know about your life because he feels by knowing your day, he is, in a sense, becoming a bigger part of your life. He enjoys telling you about his day, telling you interesting stories or some issues he has been dealing with. He wants to share with you and wants you to share with him.

10. The only time he makes you cry is from happiness.

There should be nothing in the world that breaks his heart like watching you cry – really cry. He hates the thought of you feeling hurt and even goes as far as to share in your pain. It’s not that he’s trying to, although given the chance, he’d change places in an instance; it’s just that he can’t help it. He hurts when you hurt. It’s out of his control.

11. He tells you he loves you, but he doesn’t have to, because you already know it.

This is where most men – to be fair, women as well – make a big mistake. If you love someone, it matters less that you love that person than it matters that you make him or her feel loved.

People seem to have it backward. They are under the illusion that the way they themselves are feeling is how to best define love.

On the contrary, love is defined by actions – not by emotions or theories. Unless he knows how to make you feel loved and does his best to do so, he’s being selfish and egocentric. How can that be love?

12. He’ll give you the bigger half.

It’s the little things. It’s those little moments when he thinks about you before he thinks about himself. It’s giving you the bigger half of the sandwich, the bigger half of the bed, the bigger half of the closet, the bigger half of his heart, the bigger half of his life.

People are egocentric by nature – they will always think about themselves and will think about themselves first, most of the time. It’s not something that can be helped.

Look out for these little acts of selflessness because they are, in true sense, proof of his love for you.

13. He makes you feel safe.

He may not be the tallest, the fittest, the fastest, the strongest guy in the world, but if push comes to shove, he will sooner die trying to save you than to allow you to be abused, hurt or harassed by another.

In your heart you feel he would risk his life to save yours, if it came down to it. And although you would never ask him to do that, pushing him out of the way as he protects you from the incoming bullet, knowing he would makes you feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

14. He keeps his promises.

He may not make many of them – if only to lessen the chances of having to break them – but when he makes a promise, he always delivers. He knows you trust him and have faith in him – he doesn’t want to disappoint you. He just wants you to be happy.

15. He makes you feel like a woman.

You may be his best friend. You may be his partner, his confidante, his advisor, his better half, but first and foremost, you are a woman – his woman. And he wants you to feel like a woman. He treats you with respect. He makes you feel sexy. He makes you feel loved.

He makes you feel like he wants you – every part of you – because he does.

*For More Of His Thoughts And Ramblings, Follow Paul Hudson On TwitterAnd Facebook.

Love, Loss and the Uncoupling of Our World

 

http://peterrollins.net/?p=3900

by Peter Rollins
September 2, 2012

I am currently reading Slavjo Zizek’s latest book Less Than Nothing. It is a profound and systematic work (though I must warn that if you don’t have a background in continental philosophy it is difficult). Anyway, the following reflections are directly inspired by his writing on Malebranche, Occasionalism and the Big Other found there.

 

Descartes famously theorised that the human being was made up of two different substances: a body and spirit/soul/mind. In order to understand how these interacted he postulated the existence of what he called the Pineal Gland. This was, for Descartes, the physical location where the two substances united.

 

The problem however was that these two substances were so different that the idea of a gland uniting the two made no sense. It simply acted as a type of black box solution. Somehow, something happened in the gland that meant our thoughts could impact our body and visa versa.

 

As a result of the problems raised by the idea of the Pineal Gland the philosopher Nicolas Malebranche argued that, for the mediation to occur between mind and body, a third (true) substance was required to intervene. For him this was God. The argument was that, at every moment, God was at work ensuring that whenever we went to pick up a glass, scratch our nose or smile the intention would correspond with the act. Without God intervening at every moment in this way our intentions would be revealed as ultimately impotent. Like experiencing anastasia awareness we would find ourselves locked inside an inert body, unable to do anything at all.

 

This philosophical idea was called “Occasionalism” and worked with the idea that what we take as immediate (the interaction between our intentions and acts) is really mediated by God, who listens tirelessly to what we want and manipulates our body seamlessly so that it would appear the two (intention and act) are one.

 

Bizarre and outdated as this philosophical idea might seem it can actually help us to make sense of a very human experience. Take the example of things that we might enjoy such as travelling, fine dinning, time with friends or certain sports. The enjoyment of these things is experienced as direct. Biting into a chocolate, for instance, and experiencing the pleasure of the taste is analogous to the connection we feel between intending toward a glass of water and the act of lifting it up. They are not felt to be two separate things, they are experienced as one.

 

However, if we lose the people we love, we discover the truth that the relationship between the act and its meaning were really coupled via a mediator: the presence of the beloved. Without them we experience a strange uncoupling of what previously seemed whole.

 

This can be a deeply traumatic event because of the way that we experience our hobbies as pleasurable in an immediate way. However, after the loss of someone who bestows our life with meaning things change. We might still go to a fine restaurant and eat some delicious food like before. But now the act is devoid of the seemingly innate pleasure it once possessed.

 

No matter how special the food, it has now been reduced to inert matter with no function other than a basic biological one. To experience the uncoupling of our acts from the seemingly implicit meaning they have is not unlike the experience of sleep paralysis, in which a person wakes up to find that their body no longer acts in conformity to their intentionality. The psychological impact of experiencing the uncoupling of such a whole is traumatic.

 

Is this not what we witness in films such as Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers? Here we are presented with Don Johnston (Bill Murray) a man who undergoes this radial uncoupling in his own life after his girlfriend ends their relationship unexpectedly.

 

It is for this reason that many end up in psychoanalysis. Not because of some desire to change, but because the individual no longer really desires anything at all. They have entered into a surreal, Daliesque world in which things have become disconnected from themselves. It is as if we have just discovered that we inhabit a virtual reality world that, all of a sudden, is indifferent to our movements.

 

In Broken Flowers Johnston’s neighbour embodies the role of the analyst by helping Johnston try to find meaning once again (through the attempt to track down a son who he never knew he had).

 

It is in the loss of our mediators that we learn that what is worse tha[n] losing something that we desire is losing those who enabled us to desire.

 

 

 

 

Unfriended

 

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/relationships/unfriended#overlay-context=life/relationships/unfriended

 

By Preston Yancey
August 3, 2012

Preston Yancey is a blogger, painter and author of the forthcomingTables in the Wilderness: A Memoir of God Found, Lost, and Found Again (Rhizome Publishing). Visit Preston at www.seeprestonblog.com.

You used to be inseparable, but now you barely talk.

Exploring the sad reality of friendship erosion.

“We’ll keep in touch.”

This is the collegiate equivalent to writing HAGS! (Have a Great Summer!) or Don’t ever change! or I wish I had gotten to know you better! in someone’s yearbook when you graduate high school. It’s polite sentiment, acceptable intimacy, and commits us to everything we wish we could bring ourselves to feel without ever having to feel it.

As freshly minted young adults turned out from four years of college facing hiring options and reruns during the summer, checking our phones every few minutes to see if our once close friends still remembered that we’re breathing, we are left with the annoying anxiety that our lives weren’t supposed to end up like this.

We are left with the annoying anxiety that our lives weren’t supposed to end up like this.

If we believe the television—and many of us do—the ties we formed carefully over our collegiate career or any period of high-pressure intimacy, were supposed to ferry us into the embrace of adulthood and provide comfort when rent came due or break-ups snapped.

According to the movies, we all have a clever best friend who—no matter what time we called, pouring coffee out of a stainless steel french press and about to sit down to a dinner in good company, would wax long poetic to us when we mourned our bank statement before he offered a bit of cracking, wise insight as the music swelled (because in this world, we live set to a soundtrack scored by Ben Gibbard) and everything that had ever needed explaining would be majestically made clear. We would be reassured, and then we would have dessert.

Grey’s Anatomy lied to us. Meredith and Christina’s tight-knit friendship, which was identified most clearly by their reference to one another as each other’s person, is perhaps sustainable only in a world of 24 episode seasons an hour a week with hiatus during summer and midwinter. For outside of a carefully crafted script, we usually don’t end up having an actual person, let alone the poet friend waiting patiently and perennially by the phone.

In reality, our bank statement comes the moment we overdraft our debit card buying a cup of coffee we are positive we can both afford and also deserve after hours of interviewing for minimum wage jobs we are at once overqualified and under-qualified to hold. When we call our best friend from college to lament, his response on answering his phone is that he’s busy and will call back the next day. He does a week later, when we’re still overdrafting, buying more coffee, which we reason is cheaper than therapy, and he tells us that he’s still busy and he’ll call again soon.

HAGS!

What happened? Weren’t we supposed to have it all? Between Twitter and iPhones and Starbucks and Gap commercials and college degrees, weren’t we supposed to have our best life now? Weren’t all those people who told us at graduation that they would love us forever supposed to, perhaps, show that love in some tangible form?

It’s understandable that jobs, relationships, family and opportunity spring young people in all different directions. But after the parting of ways, shouldn’t friendship be more than a Facebook “Like” after three months of no contact?

In the summer following college, though some friends remained, geography’s cruel conspiracy springs friends in all different directions, and we are left with the waning of texts, emails and the occasional Skype conversation interrupted by lives lived beyond each other. We neglect a long overdue phone call with a friend, and so “Like” their Facebook status instead as proof of closeness. We all know how easy it is to neglect people when we don’t see them anymore, when we actually have to work to connect.

So, what do we do?

We are not now what we thought we would be then, back when we promised to always be there for each other, when we thought we’d always laugh at our secret jokes.

We lean into two hard places our hearts are not naturally inclined to embrace: perspective and grace.

We all haunt someone’s grace limit.

Yes, Grey’s Anatomy lied, and the people we thought would be our people weren’t always who we had wished they would be. As blogger Carlos Whittaker says, “We all haunt someone’s grace limit.” Though it would be fair to say that we can’t be in the wrong all the time and if we feel slightly abandoned by those we love, there is likely some truth in it, it is also true that there is someone, somewhere we are presently neglecting in our own lives. Someone probably thinks we’re their person and a pretty bad one at that. We stopped calling, we didn’t text back, and while we sit watching reruns and frustrated that our person isn’t calling us back, this someone else is feeling the same about us. Maybe we should take out our phones, roll through the last month of texts and emails, and ask the hard question of if we’ve been Christ to those we did not reply to.

Further, there is something we love about grace when it means that all we need to do is to sit back and pray for the person in question to repent. We are less fond when grace means that we keep loving and keep extending even when we receive nothing in return. But this returns us to Christ. We have been entrusted with a feast, the abundance of a God who has and continues to give, and by His Spirit equips us to feed from our storehouses. Grace would have us keep feeding, even during the rerun watching, and would expect us to stop expecting what others, perhaps, do not have in their storehouse to give.

So between all the falsehood of saying, “We’ll keep in touch,” perhaps there is a truth we speak when we say it. A hope. Perhaps a sort of promise. It is the audacious commitment that as Christ never withdrew His touch from those around Him, from the leper, from the sick, from the wealthy, from the poor, so too can we respond to the phone call from our once good friend who is just too busy with a simple, honest, and charitable, “I understand.”

Maybe then we’ll really have it all. In this way of grace, we’ll have all we need.

The Blessings of Christian Friendships

Celebrating a Marriage

Very recently friends came to visit as they do twice, sometime three times a year, at one another's homes, all in good humor and fun, to share personal stories of families, past people we had known, new discoveries made, and especially their walk with God. The most curious thing about this group is that it holds within it a nucleus of those who have been life-long friends since our early college days AND have been involved in some form of Christian service since graduation. Some of which are public and held in high regard in the cities, towns, and Lakeshore communities that we live, if not nationally and globally for one of the members of our group involved with a children's adoption group.

When we get together I always like to hear how our friends have been blessed in their ministries and how God has been using them when filtered through their unique personalities that can be goofy and outrageously funny one moment and deeply somber the next. These are friends whom we have grown old with and have been with us since the collegiate days of youth when we were first single-and-unmarried at a local Christian university - one that I attended late in my college experience when transferring from a state university. My wife, on the other hand, had also attended the same campus but not while I was there, and had met this same set of friends a couple of years earlier in her freshman and sophomore years. Later, she and I met each other in a non-church setting years afterwards and eventually discovered the coincidences of our experiences.

Unlike our own experience, others in our college fellowship group had actually met their spouses directly through college itself, or within church ministries connected to the campus. Moreover, many then went on into Christian ministries so that we fondly call ourselves the "Cornerstone group" after the school we've attended and which held such a significant impact upon our faith, our ministries, and our lives personally, maritally, and vocationally.

Through the years we have developed life-long friendships that have remained steady and been a blessing to each of us in a Christian tradition that has interplayed itself within our lives, and bisected our hearts and thoughts in very significant, and deeply personal, ways. As the years have passed we have played competitive sports against each other on hot dusty softball fields in the heat of summer. Gone on hunting trips with each other in Michigan's lost northern woods. Camped together on a few occasions in the early days of our children's youths. Worked together. Prayed together. Witnessed each other's joy and delight at the birth and raising of beloved newborns through to the teen years and onwards to joyous marriages many years later. Listened and shared all the nuances of insight that come with raising children, living with spouses, and the trials and joys of family life. During the last several years we have shared the care given to aging parents that have eventual passed away within the safe keeping of their children's sorrow and love. Or, in my case, the suicidal passing of a brother suffering from untreated bipolar disorder, and my dad's subsequent heart attacks that came shortly thereafter as a result of the tragic loss of his son, now coupled with his additional personal burden of Parkinson's that slowly is consuming his body.

Through these difficult times my friends have kept me company in the car as I have driven to my next client appointment all the while listening to their ministry on the radio. Or have blessed my wife and I in church as they have preached from the pulpit warm messages of God's love and grace - and then gladly witnessed both husband and wife warmly greeting each of their parishioners afterwards. And because of another friend's involvement in the guidance of a global Christian agency, Compassion International, my own daughter supports an impoverished child from Africa named Joseph who writes to us every several months of his life's experiences, trials and joys.

It has been a unique group and one that has become latent with close friendships and godly support as I reflect on the many blessings that God has brought to us through those early days of unformed college friendships. And with that I wish to give thanks and encouragement to each-and-every reader here that pursues one another in the strength and lifelong joys that can come with obtaining a steady fellowship group given to caring for one another while serving the Lord together from whatever corner of the earth that we live and worship. Praise God for godly friendships "strong-and-wise" brought into our meager lives to behold and share God's glories!

R.E. Slater

January 15, 2012

Cornerstone University Campus - http://www.cornerstone.edu/edu_home.aspx?id=531
Distance Learning Online Education - http://online.cornerstone.edu/

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Friendship Verses

http://christianity.about.com/od/prayersverses/qt/friendshipbibleverses.htm

"When we consider the blessings of God—the gifts that add beauty and joy to our lives, that enable us to keep going through stretches of boredom and even suffering—friendship is very near the top."

—Donald W. McCullough, Mastering Personal Growth

Friendship Bible Verses

This collection of friendship Bible verses celebrates the blessings of God in the gift of true friendship.

True and Lasting Friendship Can Occur Suddenly

1 Samuel 18:1–3

After David had finished talking with Saul, he met Jonathan, the king’s son. There was an immediate bond between them, for Jonathan loved David. From that day on Saul kept David with him and wouldn't let him return home. And Jonathan made a solemn pact with David, because he loved him as he loved himself. (NLT)

Proverbs 12:26

(NLT)

Gossip Separates Best Friends

Proverbs 16:28

A troublemaker plants seeds of strife; gossip separates the best of friends. (NLT)

Loyal Friends Love Through Difficult Times

Proverbs 17:17

A friend is always loyal, and a brother is born to help in time of need.NLT)

Faithful Friends are a Rare Treasure

Proverbs 18:24

There are “friends” who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother.(NLT)

Reliable Friends are Hard to Find

Proverbs 20:6

Many will say they are loyal friends, but who can find one who is truly reliable?(NLT)

Purity and Integrity Gain the Friendship of Kings

Proverbs 22:11

Whoever loves a pure heart and gracious speech will have the king as a friend.(NLT)

The Wrong Friends Can Have a Negative Influence

Proverbs 22:24–25

Don’t befriend angry people or associate with hot-tempered people, or you will learn to be like them and endanger your soul.(NLT)

Sincere Friends Speak the Truth in Love, Even When it Hurts

Proverbs 27:5-6

An open rebuke is better than hidden love! Wounds from a sincere friend are better than many kisses from an enemy. (NLT)

Counsel from a Friend is Pleasing

Proverbs 27:9

The heartfelt counsel of a friend is as sweet as perfume and incense. (NLT)

Friends Shape and Sharpen One Another

Proverbs 27:17

As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. (NLT)

True Friends Strengthen and Help Each Other

Ecclesiastes 4:9–12

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. (NLT)

Friendship is Marked by Sacrifice

John 15:13–15

There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn't confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. (NLT)

The Lord is a Friend to the Godly

Proverbs 3:32

Such wicked people are detestable to the LORD, but he offers his friendship to the godly. (NLT)

Believers Enjoy Friendship with God

Romans 5:10

For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. (NLT)

Friendship with the World Makes You an Enemy of God

James 4:4

You adulterers! Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God. (NLT)

Examples of Good Friends in the Bible

David and Jonathan (1 Samuel 18:1-3, 20:17, 42; 2 Samuel 1:26)

David and Abiathar (1 Samuel 22:23)

David and Nahash (2 Samuel 10:2)

David and Hushai (2 Samuel 15:32–37)

Elijah and Elisha (2 Kings 2:2)

Job's Friends (Job 2:11)

Ruth and Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17)

Paul’s Ministry Friends (Romans 16:3-5; 2 Corinthians 2:12-13; Philippians 2:25; Colossians 4:7, 14; 2 Timothy 1:2-4; 1 Philemon)

• Bible Verses by Topic (Index)

• Sign Up for Verse of the Day (Receive a Daily Bible Verse & Inspirational Thought by Email)

More Friendship Verses

• 5 Traits of True Christian Friends

• Love & Friendship Bible Verses

• Tribute to Friendship - Poem

• Friendship and Family Frames

• Friendship Quotations