♥ Mature Love 8 ♥

♥ Mature love means taking responsibility
♥ There are so many things
♥ Please be responsible
♥ Responsibility can be so simple a task 
♥ When we are responsible

Mature love means taking responsibility for one’s own behavior and to stop making excuses. When we are in a relationship we have a responsibility to be dependable, the other partner shouldn’t have to worry about whether you’re going to keep your word. Your word should really mean something – when you say you’re going to do something – then do it. You’re not a child any more and blaming someone or something else when you break your word is not the action of a mature person.

There are so many things, so many people, so many instances where we cannot count on the outcome being as we planned it to be. Too many excuses, people lying, people not showing up when they said they would, people showing up late with some lame excuse, people cheating you, people selling you products they promise are of good or excellent quality – and end up being crap, governments that make promises they never intend to keep and the list goes on. Is it too much to ask that our partner be someone we can completely depend on?

Please be responsible, keep your word, don’t make promises you can’t or have no intention of keeping and please don’t use some made up excuse. If you mess up, be big enough to tell the truth about what happened, genuinely apologize and make up for it.

Responsibility can be so simple a task and can prevent so much frustration. One of the many things that I love about Brian is that he calls every time he is going to be late. I never have to worry about him if he is going to be held up, because he calls to let me know when he will be home. So many people I know never get that call; they wait, worry, get agitated and end up getting into an argument when a quick call could have eliminated all that hassle.

When we are responsible we not only help the other to develop trust in us – we feel better about ourselves too. If you can’t trust someone with the small things (like making a call when you’re going to be late, it makes it difficult to trust you with the bigger stuff. If you are not dependable, if you lie, make promises you are not going to keep, cheat, steal and do other dishonest things, don’t be surprised when you get hassled for it. Once you’re known for being dishonest it’s really difficult to get the trust of people again. So think twice before you decide to deceive someone again.

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♥ Mature Love 7 ♥

♥ Mature love understands the importance of forgiveness
♥ Finally, after years of having to be right
♥ Being “right” doesn’t benefit anyone
♥ Once the issue is sorted out

Mature love understands the importance of forgiveness and of knowing that being “right” has no business in a loving relationship. And yet we do this all the time. We just have to be right don’t we? If he says “black” – we say “white”, if he says “yes” – we say “no”, if he says “today” – we say “tomorrow”, ok so you get the message. The question is, “why do we do this?” Why doo we feel that we have to be right? We treat one another like we are at war and each argument as a little battle that has to be won, as if we get points for winning an argument.

Finally, after years of having to be right, I have come to a place where it just doesn’t matter anymore. What is really important now is coming to some kind of agreement- even if it is to agree to disagree. I’m really fussy about my clothes matching – even my underwear need to match my outerwear (how anal is that), not so with Brian. It drives me crazy – he just doesn’t get it – and I don’t get why he doesn’t get it. We finally came to a place where we had to agree to disagree. We are both adult individuals and have a right to dress as we choose to. To be honest though we still haven’t quite settled this one yet – I think the problem is that we see the way we dress as a reflection on the other and are both shallow enough to care what other people think.

Being “right” doesn’t benefit anyone because in the end – nobody really cares if you’re right or not – because everybody is too busy believing that they are right anyway. It’s ridiculous and ends up causing more conflicts. Sort out the issue and if you’re wrong – admit it – and please be big enough not to gloat if your partner ends up admitting that he is wrong. Make up, leave the issue behind and move on.

Once the issue is sorted out it should never crop up again. Just thank your lucky stars that it has been banished out of your lives for good – that should make your burdens lighter. And remember no one is perfect – including you. We all need to accept the others’ need to be who they are, if we see those things as imperfections, that is our problem – not theirs. Acceptance helps us to understand and to forgive more readily. It’s easier to face the issues at hand when we know we aren’t being judged for who we are.


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♥ Mature Love 6 ♥

♥ Mature love knows
♥ What I have discovered
♥ I have certainly learned
♥ I know a couple

Mature love knows that even if today was a horrible day, tomorrow can be better, the bad patches are just as beneficial to the relationship as the good times, and as a matter of fact they can often be a means to growth. This has certainly been true in my life and in my relationships. Bad times always frightened me in my relationships and mostly, what ever caused them in the first place, rarely got discussed. Eventually the same issues would crop up and because we didn’t have the maturity to deal with the stuff as it cropped up, each time would cause everything to snowball into things we could no longer deal with. Today I make sure to deal with any issues that crop up as quickly as possible. Even if the issue seems trivial – if it’s worth thinking about and causes discomfort – then I bring it to the table and it is discussed. Once the issue is discussed and each person is satisfied with the outcome, we move on. The issues mostly always dissolve and rarely, if ever, crop up again.

What I have discovered is that most issues are caused by miscommunication and things get blown out of proportion. We generally learn a great deal about one another during these discussions and growth develops. We generally come out of these times feeling stronger as individuals and as a stronger couple.

I have certainly learned the lesson that a bad patch today can bring joy tomorrow. Don’t forget to use good communication skills when discussing issues. Screaming, name calling, insults, manipulation, and having an “I’m not going to listen or talk to you” attitude is not going to deal with the problem. Discuss with a mature attitude and the issue will get resolved in time.

I know a couple who have been married for 30 years or more and I have no idea how they can stay married to one another, she is especially sarcastic and down right mean. She can hold on to a grudge like nobody can, she insults him, puts him down and treats him very badly in front of other people, I cannot imagine how she must treat him when they are alone together. He, on the other hand, treats her like a queen. He takes her put downs with a grain of salt and still comes out smiling, I wonder how he really feels deep down inside. I cannot imagine being happy in this kind of relationship, but hey, to each his own. I would never recommend allowing anyone to treat someone like this, I believe this to be an abusive situation and the one being abused is enabling the other to do it.

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♥ Mature Love 5 ♥

♥ Mature love makes room for the other to grow
♥ By interests I don’t mean hanging out
♥ I have my own friends
♥ One of the things I love about our relationship

Mature love makes room for the other to grow and to have different interests from your own, and knowing that keeping someone in bondage will not make the other love you more. Having the strength to allow the other some freedom will inevitably help the relationship to grow. As we mature as individuals it is truly important to recognize that as couples we cannot expect each person to have the exact same interests. Just because we are couples does not mean that we suddenly stop growing and/or stop having interests outside the relationship.

By interests I don’t mean hanging out with the guys and gals at the local bar. I do mean for instance that one or the other may be involved in sports or something like that. Hanging on to that persons’ every move and trying to stop him/her from pursuing that interest by using manipulation will not help the relationship to grow. By allowing them the freedom it sends a message of trust to the other and leaves room for the other half to do what they want to do. If not allowing the other to pursue their own interest is about a lack of trust on your part and you have no reason for not trusting, then you have an issue and you need to fix it up, if the other is not worthy of your trust, then, what are you doing with that person in the first place?

I have my own friends and I love to hang out with them when I have the opportunity to do so. When we go to our summer place on PEI, Canada, I spend as much time as I can with my friends over there; at the same time it gives Brian an opportunity to visit family and friends of his own. Typically, however, we spend most of our time together and do not ignore each others needs; we both come first before our families and friends.

One of the things I love about our relationship is that we do spend most of our free time together. I’m not big on doing things outside of our relationship nor is Brian. Some couples seem to be this way and there isn’t anything wrong with that, as long as both people are happy with it that way. Had I thought that he was the type to do a lot of alone stuff I probably wouldn’t have involved myself with him. Perhaps this is something to consider when you are getting involved with someone, ask yourself, “Does this person need a lot of alone time, is he/she involved with sports or other things that will keep him/her away from home, and if so, how will I feel about it?” Answer honestly because if you think you’re going to manipulate that person into changing after you get totally involved, forget it, you are only going to make the pair of you miserable.

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♥ Mature Love 4 ♥

♥ Mature love is about having realistic expectations
♥ Many of us believed he could take care of us
♥ Too many of us act like little children
♥ I truly believe
♥ Many of us had too many unrealistic expectations

Mature love is about having realistic expectations of the other; he/she is not there to keep you happy all the time. And expecting from one another we did, we both assumed the other knew what we expected from him/her, we figured the expectations were the same – but that wasn’t true. We wanted him/us to keep us happy, to want to be settled down, to want to have children; he on the other hand, wanted to keep playing and having fun like we did when we were single, he wasn’t expecting to have babies so quickly.

Many of us believed he could take care of us and the children like our dad took care of our mom, our siblings and us. But it wasn’t that easy, taking care of a household, wife and children was way different in our parents’ day than in our day. The costs of paying rent or buying a house, a car, furniture, food, clothing and all of the rest of it was a huge burden on him. In my case, we had discussed me not working after we got married and had agreed to it, however, the reality of it came crashing down on us both and we weren’t ready for it. So I went to work to help out but ended up pregnant too early in the marriage, I couldn’t cope with going out to work, taking care of the household, the babies that ensued, I got tired, we fought, and things started to fall apart. I wasn’t mature enough to handle all that came my way; I made a mess of everything. We were not ready for marriage, for all of the responsibilities it entailed.

Too many of us act like little children, we rush into marriage thinking it will bring instant gratification. We don’t allow the relationship to grow before we get married and since we aren’t properly prepared for the choices we have to make after the marriage, we just don’t have time to nourish the relationship. We can’t finish what we start because we are not mature enough to have started anything to begin with. Had some of us waited a year or two before jumping in with both feet and allowed our relationship to develop, we probably would have made it.

I truly believe that in my case, as shabby and as immature as we both were, we did love each other, we were probably meant to be together, but because we were unwilling to give ourselves a year or two to build a solid foundation, the relationship fell apart. We suffered, but most of all our children suffered because we just couldn’t grow up and come to an agreement about anything.

Many of us have too many unrealistic expectations of our partners, we expect them to keep us happy but marriage and the realities of life take over and the worst of it is, we eventually realize that we are responsible for our own happiness. Some never, ever learn that lesson, we own our feelings and it is up to each individual to keep themselves happy, no one else can do that for us, no, not even our spouse. I hear it all the time, the excuse people use for splitting up, “he/she doesn’t make me happy anymore”. That, my dear friends, is an immature excuse for splitting up, and getting married because he/she makes you happy, is an even shabbier excuse for getting married.

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♥ Mature Love 3 ♥

♥ Mature love comes with responsibility
♥ We eventually grow out of our teens
♥ All of it was easy to fall for
♥ We eventually got married
♥ I have seen this same scenario

Mature love comes with responsibility, to have both the other and yourself know these responsibilities, for example; what happens if we get pregnant? Love requires maturity to know what to do when things go wrong; we also need to have realistic expectations of the other, to know how the other will behave in the different situations that will arise in a relationship.

We eventually grow out of our teens and into adulthood, but many of us still didn’t get it, love was still about attraction to nice, cute, doing things like drinking, having sex, and relying on our emotions to establish whether we were in love or not. Love was often about need to be accepted, our need to be accepted and loved and we often did what we thought we needed to do to get that love. We believed all of the lies and fell for flattery, we also fell for the stories we heard and were told about, how glorious it was to be in a relationship, to be living with someone or being married.

All of it was easy to fall for, after all, all some of us had to do was look at our parents to see how wonderful marriage was, and we wanted more than anything to have what they had. The maturity and responsibilities they had when they got married never factored into the equation – we figured we were as mature as they were when they were married. Some of us were and ended up in long lasting relationships that worked out very well, however, too many of us were not mature enough and ended up in relationship hell.

We eventually got married because we believed we were in love. We expected the other to make us happy and to keep us that way. We had no idea that happiness comes from within and that our state of mind is our own responsibility. We figured we were in it for the long haul- long haul all right- we had no idea how long misery could last. We wanted to settle into being homemakers, wives and mothers – he wasn’t ready for that stuff, he wasn’t ready to give up having fun with his buddies – so we were off on the wrong foot and didn’t even have the maturity to talk about these differences, thinking they would all go away in time. We couldn’t even build a foundation none- the- less a solid house – so we built our dreams on sand, and the relationship came crashing down, crumpling into dust.

I have seen this same scenario played out in so many lives. There were plenty of girls who believed in independence and wanted nothing but a career; husbands and babies the furthest thing from their minds. Typically however, thousands of us grew up believing in the Cinderella story; we would grow up, fall in love with our prince charming, have babies and live happily ever after. Only thing is we never get to see what happens after Cinderella gets married, it may have worked out, but it may have fallen apart soon after just like up to 50% of all marriages do. Statistics drop however, as the age of the people who marry increases; they also depend on where people marry, different countries, different states etc. Teen marriages have a 1 in 3 chance of survival, understandable and sad.

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♥ Mature Love 2 ♥

♥ Mature love is not based on feelings alone
♥ We got a bit older
♥ Some of these people were getting married
♥ I also knew plenty of girls

Mature love is not based on feelings alone, but on a decision to love. As we matured a bit more in our teen years our ideas of being in love didn’t change a whole lot. We still figured if he was kind to us, if he was cute, and if we had all of the right feelings, then we believed, we must be in love. So we listened to more music, we read romance novels/magazines, watched a lot of TV, watched as other teens had babies and ran to the alter to get married, in effect we based our ideas of love on fantasy.

We got a bit older and realized our some of our friends and other people we knew were doing drugs, drinking, and having sex. We figured we had to do the same, so that we wouldn’t be excluded from the crowd, some looked like they were in love and we wanted those things too, so we did the same as everyone else was doing. We were so immature and so foolish; we made mistake after mistake, and still believed we knew it all. We sometimes got into a whole lot of trouble, some of us getting used by people we thought cared for us, I knew several girls who were raped and nothing was ever done about it. We lost respect for ourselves, on the other hand some were getting along just fine, and many were making a complete mess of their lives. It was a learning process and we had to go through it in order to grow up.

Some of these people were getting married straight out of high school- some no older than 16, I know of at least 3 of those people, one of those marriages stood the test of time, how, I have no idea, I doubt maturity played much of a role in it, but hey, they did it. I agree some were very mature for their age, but mostly they were not. Guess this one couple got lucky, I’m proud of them to say the least; marriage isn’t easy even when you are old enough and mature enough to take the plunge. Knowing what it takes for a marriage to succeed in this age, I am baffled as to how these two pimpled faced teens made it through their first 6 months, non-the-less 36 years. I suppose they grew up together and learned the rules along the way. I never see these people so I have no idea what kind of a relationship they have. Many people I know who have been married this long are absolutely miserable, however, some in their glory and wouldn’t have it any other way. So this couple could be in blissful heaven for all I know.

I also knew plenty of girls who ended up pregnant and alone. Most of these girls ended up going through an unwanted pregnancy on their own, often having to live either at home so mom and dad could help raise their children, ended up giving their babies up for adoption, or ended up having an abortion. I knew plenty of girls who were raped and ended up having to live with it for the rest of their lives. In any case I was in good company with girls who ended up with more on their plates than they bargained for. From what I can see things haven’t changed too much in the past 30 years. Even though the pill is widely utilized, unwanted pregnancies abound, many raise their babies, and some do an amazing job, better than some so called mature individuals, but many are still aborted. It seems the girls in this situation are younger, some 12 and 13 years old, 30 years ago most of the girls I knew who ended up pregnant were between 17 and 21.

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♥ Mature Love 1 ♥

 ♥ Mature love knows

 ♥ When we were just little girls

 ♥ As we grow into our teen years

 ♥ That crush wasn’t developed

 

Mature love knows that “love” does not happen over night (at least mostly never). Mature love takes time to develop, Attraction plays a huge roll in the process, pheromones play a roll, our frame of mind, and where we are physically, meaning location in the world or our environment, all play a roll on the road to love. A whole lot of things are going on in and around us when we become attracted to someone.

  

                                                                 

When we were just little girls we were generally attracted to kindness, if someone was kind to us we would sometimes think we had a crush on that person, and these crushes were not always for the opposite sex. Our idea of being in love was therefore based on kindness alone. Most of us were lucky and we were not harmed by someone taking advantage of our immature feelings for them, some of us would have followed our love interests anywhere and done anything for them. Because of their kindness toward us, we believed they loved us too and it never entered our minds that they would ever harm us. I am not too clear on how little boys developed crushes at that tender age, but I assume they probably had some of the same experiences with deep feelings such as ours. I had my first real crush at 6 years of age, and I’ll never forget it, he sure was a cutie pie.

As we grow into our teen years our ideas of love were primarily based on looks. If we found some guy we thought was both kind and cute and felt attracted, we were pretty well hooked, even if it was only for a few days. Perhaps we fell for a favorite teacher, a doctor or some other person who influenced us as we were growing up.This is what my mom called “puppy love” and usually made comments about how silly I was, which wasn't a very smart move on her part. It may not be a mature kind of love, however it is serious enough to affect us and parents should considered those feelings and not poke fun. We got our ideas about love by watching our parents interact, by listening to music and making decisions based on the lyrics that we heard day after day, we read books and watched TV, believing that what we read and saw was for real. We probably assumed that when we developed a crush on someone who affected us so much that we couldn’t think about anything else couldn’t concentrate on anything else and couldn’t sleep, then we must be in love.

 

That crush wasn’t developed because of a wonderful personality or on integrity; it was more about looks and popularity. How many of us had crushes on TV and movie personalities or musicians we heard on radio? All that truly mattered was that our emotions were in charge, but emotions are not enough to base love upon.

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