Winning Strategies to Rekindle Your Love, Part 1
 
By Terry Real
 
Men don't want to work all that hard at romance, and women still think that an ideal lover "would just know" what she wants.
 
I can't tell you how many women I've heard say over the years, "If I have to tell him, it doesn't count."
 
You've got to ask yourself, how well is waiting for spontaneity working for you?
 
Of the countless people I've listened to in my practice and in workshops, only a tiny percentage proactively shape their relationships.

 

Most people - of either sex - do not do the work of sitting down, clearly identifying their relational wants and needs, figuring out how to best ask for them, going after them, and then - if the first attempt fails - regrouping, rethinking, and trying again.
 
Unfortunately, what both sexes seem to do equally (and remarkably well) is complain.
 
How to Clear the Path to Passion in Your Marriage
 
Shift from Complaint to Request
 
You might think that after the age of personal empowerment swept aside the traditional notion of acquiescence, that now people would have learned how to simply identify their desires and assert them. But you'd be wrong.
 
Instead of asserting themselves, both men and women seem to subscribe to the truly nutty idea than an effective strategy for getting more of what you want from your partner is to complain about not getting it after the fact. 
 
This is the worst behavior-modification program. It's like trying to train a dog to do a new trick, but shocking him each time his movements don't match your requirements instead of showing him how to do it or by rewarding him when he gets it right. The result is a profoundly confused, frustrated, and unmotivated dog. He quickly learns that the best thing for him to do is to lie still and lay low - a strategy adopted by a fair amount of men.
 
Complaining is such an utterly contorted way of trying to get what you want that it is almost perverse. Complaint is double negative thinking. Instead of saying, "I'd be really happy if I could have more of this positive thing," you try to get it by saying, "I would have been happy if only you hadn't done that negative thing."
 
When you use language like that, you box your partner in, leaving him or her no adequate way to respond.

 

He or she could apologize, but while an apology might be a good first step, you're still not going to get what you really want because you haven't asked for it!
 
The bottom line is that complaining masquerades as information, but it's actually nothing more than unbridled self-expression. Instead of focusing on what your partner has done wrong, discipline yourself - and it does take discipline --  to focus on what he/she could do now or later that would be right.
 
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Adapted from the bestselling book The New Rules of Marriage by Terry Real.

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