When you first start out in relationship, everything is new and exciting.
It’s an infinitely fresh journey of exploration with your significant other.
As you grow together, the relationship goes through many phases, challenges, and triumphs.
After you’ve been together for many years, it’s hard not to take your partner for granted.
Generally speaking, as we get older, we become more mature and emotionally deeper.
We can allow ourselves to be more vulnerable.
As much as we are able to come closer in relationship, other factors can cause us to drift apart: mismatched sex drives, physical difficulties with sex as we age, hormone shifts, medications causing reactions, problems with communication, changes in our relationships, and insecurity as our appearance changes.
While our physical bodies can be a challenge, the emotions of getting older can be harder to deal with.
In our culture of worshipping youthfulness, maturity isn’t always considered beautiful. In such a tender, vulnerable arena, my first guiding words are: patience, love, and kindness.
There are so many solutions to creating a partnership that will be fulfilling for you.
Here are 3 secrets to a loving and lasting partnership:
It starts with you. At the end of the day it’s always about your relationship with yourself and how much love your can bring to your own life. Loving yourself will allow you to experience the love you deserve in your life. If you are struggling with your partner, start by being the first to bring more love, the first to forgive, the first to be more vulnerable.
As we age we can feel less attractive. Weight gain, wrinkles, and sagging body parts affect our ability to feel desirable. While it may be a struggle, we end up having to accept and surrender to aging. The struggle of fighting against it can actually make you look and feel older. By surrendering you don’t have to give up on looking as good as possible.
There has to be an acceptance of the fact that our bodies are changing. I encourage you to take ownership of who you are and step into the beauty of aging. When you are able to surrender and accept your new self, a different kind of beauty arises.
Make an effort to do special things for each other. Write love notes. Make a date a couple times a month, away from every day life.
Share your heart with your partner. If you’re having problems and can’t communicate, it’s time to get help. Often couples that are not having sex are usually having some kind of communication problem that hasn’t been cleared up.
We often tend to define ourselves by the person we are with. What aging can do, especially in the often challenging middle years, is to call on us to define ourselves by ourselves. It is an opportunity to discover more deeply who we are. Our inner strength is just waiting to come forth.
Read more posts by Shiroko Sokitch, MD, here. Dr. Sokitch is a contributing blogger for JenningsWire, located here.
