PLUS Relationships

Put some snap in your Valentine’s Day Gift with a Love Basket created just for your favorite Sweetheart! You’ll enjoy the results, and your lover will know you mean it when she hears those three precious words. Love Baskets are created once and used for a lifetime. Just start with a medium sized basket, lid is optional, but the handle is necessary. You’ll want a nice sturdy handle!

Step #1 - Line your Love Basket

The liner is important, because you’ll use the liner often for other purposes. One of the best liner choices is a patterned cloth in a smooth weave with a hemmed edge. This can be one layer or reversible, but you’ll want something nice and soft. Remember your lover’s tastes when choosing the pattern, but think romance.

Step #2 - Love Basket Essentials

A set of crystal goblets meant for two. If by some chance you have a set from your wedding, you can use those. Or if not, buy a nice set of stemmed and fluted goblets from the store and tie a pretty ribbon around the stem. Add a bottle of your favorite bubbly (non-alcoholic grape juice is a nice alternative) and some white linen napkins. You now have the essentials for your basket, everything from this point on is optional, but you’ll want to consider filling it up.

Step #3 - Setting the Scene

Table service and flatware for two is always a nice additional touch. You never know when that scene might include a wonderful menu to share. There are some nice simple dishes you could add to your basket at any discount center, just select the ones you find most appealing, add silverware and a sharp knife with a cover and you’re set for almost any dining experience.

Step #4 - Ambiance?

Candles are a wonderful touch. Scented candles in a glass jar add an extra special ambiance to your love basket. Perhaps you’d like to include an aroma that brings back memories of your first night together. I’d almost bet it’s vanilla. Take a chance! Add in bath beads, salts, and bubbles if you expect to make a romantic evening of your Love Basket experience.

Step #5 - Frivolous Accessories

A slinky negligee for her, perhaps some boxers for him? Matching silk robes? Perhaps you’ll want to skip the clothing and just get matching top hats? Whatever accessories you might choose, consider your personal choices and think from your lover’s perspective. What might she appreciate?

Step #6 - Yummies

These can be anything from a full five course meal to decadent snacks, but I’d recommend for the first basket, you consider chocolates, gourmet foods, or delicate confections. Consider your plans for the evening and buy goodies accordingly. Perhaps dried fruits dipped in chocolate with an accompaniment of cheese and bread? Be original, be decadent, be romantic.

Step #7 - The Gift

Diamonds are nice. Sapphires twinkle. Rubies and Emeralds leave a lasting impression. If you haven’t thought of the gift for your favorite love, this is the moment to seriously consider the gift you’ll include in the Love Basket. No, the basket itself is the wrapping, not the ultimate gift. Wow your lady with diamonds!

If you haven’t decided what to give your love for Valentine’s Day yet, this is an awesome and reusable gift. Just refill for special evenings all year long. The Love Basket might even become a romantic tradition.

Jan Verhoeff enjoys promoting business, but there’s always a moment to take a day or a weekend off. Visit http://janverhoeff.com and sign up for Jan’s News and Updates for FREE marketing and promotional ideas.

Are you still playing the field but want a monogamous relationship? With the number of divorced women over forty, you may think they don’t want to be married, or they don’t want monogamous, but the reality is they don’t want demanding irrational relationships that don’t last. And, SURPRISE, men over forty want the same thing.

Over forty relationships will be successful with mature, capable individuals who want to share life together and each have viable lives of their own. Are you ready for some solid sound advice on meeting your one and only over 40?

1. Be real.

Nobody expects you to be perfect. You can actually have a few personality flaws, a belly, or a butt and your over 40 partner will not only accept you with it, but love you for it. If you’re not perfect, they can be real too.

2. Don’t compete.

Who wants competition? What ever happened to just being comfortable within your own skin? Can you honestly say you want to compete with Barbie or Ken? If you’re comfortable with who you are then your date can just relax and enjoy the evening without feeling the need to compete with who you want to be.

3. Know what you want.

If you agree to a date with a city boy knowing nothing less than Farmer John Brown will satisfy you, you’ve got a problem from the beginning. Select people you have something in common with, but acknowledge that you don’t have to be joined at the hip.

4. Accept independence.

Find some mutual interests, but understand that you both have a past and you both have a future. Be willing to share the future but realize you can’t and won’t want to share everything. Accept the differences as benefits and appreciate your time alone or with friends too.

5. Quality.

After you reach 40 you’re allowed to expect quality from the person on the other side of the table. You should be able to carry a conversation, understand basic concepts, and comprehend current events. Intelligence and Values are part of the package, if you don’t have them, you won’t obtain them in the future.

6. Past.

You both have a past, you have children, family, and friends, and you should be able to mutually share those without having to compete over whose family is better, or loves them more. You just have them, and you share them. Period.

7. Religion, Politics, and Sex.

Yes, dear, these are topics of conversation and you’re expected to participate as a mature adult with an opinion, not a temper tantrum. If you can’t discuss these topics and keep a cool head, you might want to find out why and have that part of your anatomy surgically removed.

Disillusioned by Marriage Relationship Phases

Every relationship goes through specific phases of existence. As your relationship slips from the honeymoon phase into the comfortable recognition of differences and then on to the phase of painful compromise and negotiation, you may not realize these are normal steps. You may feel vulnerable and at risk, perhaps you don’t recognize the sign, only the feeling that something is wrong.

Destruction of Intimacy and Connection

As you slip beyond the early phases of comfort zone your relationship slides down the slippery slope of avoidance, where you step away from failure by avoiding issues that must be dealt with, allowing them to erode intimacy and cause you to feel lonely. A feeling of being avoided by your spouse may leave you susceptible to another person whose interest in your feelings appears deeper.

Passion Fades to Mundane Tolerance

The intensity of burning passion becomes glowing embers of smoldering frustration as the light fades from the relationship you remember. Passion naturally levels off, and you may find the practical aspects of loving another person aren’t as charming as the romance you first knew. When spontaneity is replaced with drudgery and responsibility, your relationship may not have enough strength to keep you burning bright, so what do you do then? Your vulnerability becomes pessimism that it’s all over.

Friendships Begin to Fulfill Emotional Needs

You’d rather spend your time with those ‘special friends’ than with your spouse. Your friend provides for your emotional needs, giving you the warm fuzzies your spouse used to provide. All your recreation time is spent with that friend, and you begin to feel closer to the friend than to your spouse. Your spouse has been replaced by a friend who no longer compliments your relationship with your spouse. The charge you get from being with your friend is greater than the time you spend with your spouse and you know you’re vulnerable.

Your Relationship Triggers Negative Responses

You may be surrounded by negative relationships, empty and void of loyalty, commitment, and fidelity. Your experience of life may have changed and there are more divorced couples in your life than married. Your spouse or you may have single friends, and your single friends probably outnumber your married friends. Couple time diminishes and you find you’re spending your time out with single friends looking for openings and opportunities. You’re at risk for marital failure.

Where can you turn, if not to your spouse?

William Clarke III takes infidelity seriously in his relationship practice. If you’re looking for answers, visit his site at http://billclarkedbaplus.com/relationships  and claim your FREE Copy of Opposites Attract: Relationships for REAL People.

No, it isn’t the same as commitment. While you make a dedicated commitment to your marriage, that is still not the same as being dedicated to your spouse. Just as you chose commitment, you must choose to dedicate yourself to your spouse. Once you do, all other priorities in your life step back and your spouse is your priority in all things. You’ll be thinking regularly, “does this improve my relationship with my spouse?” The answer will determine whether you continue with that activity.

Love

Love is a verb. It’s an active thing you do for your spouse and if it isn’t done in a way your spouse understands, you’ll have missed the focus of what love is all about. Every person has specific love needs and if those love needs are met by their spouse, the ties become stronger. If not, the person is forever seeking to have those needs met.

A dear friend desires heart string connections with the love of her life, who doesn’t have a clue. She loves him and is dedicated to him, but he never seems to make the effort to connect with her heart. His interest is in getting things done, organizing, and meeting her physical needs. He does a great job of that. However, the one thing she desires, he can’t understand a need for, which ultimately means he doesn’t try to fulfill her need. While she hasn’t strayed, she often looks to see if her needs might be met by another man better. The answer is yes, at some point her needs could be met by another man, and she may stray.Know your spouses love needs and meet those needs.

Joyful Exuberance

Promote that deep intimate feeling of joyful exuberance with your spouse. It may be a distant memory at the moment, but you can revive that intimacy that comes from knowing your spouse intimately and sharing the feelings you felt when your relationship was new. Give yourself a day to remember what it was like falling in love with your spouse, write those feelings down. What did you do to share those feelings with your spouse? Do them again. ALL of them, every day of your life together. Make a commitment to do all the things you did in the early days every day.

Safe Haven

One of the biggest reasons a partner strays is because they no longer feel safe in the arms of the one who loves them. They no longer feel secure and loved. That feeling of insecurity will send them out seeking a safe place to fall faster than any other feeling they experience. Give your partner a safe haven from the world. Provide a safe place to fall. No matter what happens outside in the world, remember that you are partners, not enemies and your arms are safe territory. If you have differences, solve them outside the bedroom, and outside your loving embrace. Provide a safe place for your spouse.

Do you want a relationship that lasts forever?

Claim your FREE Copy of Opposites Attract: Relationships for REAL People.  Sign into our Relationship Guide above for your FREE copy.

As we recognize our own insufficiencies we can appreciate those who provide solutions. The most significant differences may offer the most comfort in a marriage. As a single person, you may have lacked the ability to manage money, but your spouse may have a knack for saving cash. You may not have the ability inside you to parent children and love them proficiently, but your spouse may have that deep love for children.

Foundation

Together you make the perfect foundation for a family, and yet alone you may not have the ability to stand solid against the winds of time. Find your source within the dynamics of the relationship, what are your strengths and how does your spouse strengthen you?

Structure

How is your fabric woven together with your spouse. You may be going opposite directions, but the strongest fabrics have fibers woven perpendicular to each other. Is that your strength? Are you able to pull together to make a stronger life than you are able to live apart?As you begin to acknowledge and celebrate your differences, the connections may come together for strength, foundation, and connection. The structure of your lives may provide the strength necessary to build a relationship that keeps you both moving forward. Your common ground may be the strength of your differences.

Have you considered how you might focus on what you have together rather than what you’d have separate?

What are your common grounds for marriage?

William Clarke III takes infidelity seriously in his relationship practice. If you’re looking for answers, visit his site at http://plusrelationships.com/relationships  and claim your FREE Copy of Opposites Attract: Relationships for REAL People.