Mastering the Art of Love

Love isn't just a sporadic burst of emotions; it's an art, a skill demanding dedication and finesse. In the heartwarming embrace of February, we explore the multiple layers that make up the true essence of love, particularly within the sanctity of marriage and family. I share tales close to my heart, revealing moments where respect, kindness, and honor outshone the fleeting nature of passion, gracefully guiding us toward a deeper understanding of affection. Relationship expert Jennifer Finlayson-Fife lends her profound insights, highlighting the transformative power of honesty and the courage it takes to look inward, rather than casting blame. Embrace the journey of enhancing your relationships by nurturing love as a potent skill that can be thoughtfully developed over time.

Gratitude overflows as I reach out to you, my cherished listeners, who have walked with me through the intricate dance of life post-adversity. Your unwavering support has been the bedrock of our growing community, one that thrives on the shared pursuit of joy and personal growth. As we meander through the myriad experiences of living fully, your engagement breathes life into our collective narrative. I extend a heartfelt invitation for you to join the conversation, whether through social media, by subscribing to our email list, or by sharing your reflections in reviews and ratings. Together, let's celebrate the uncharted day ahead, filled with promise and the warm glow of connection.

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Chapters

• 0:10 Love as a Skill and Meaning
• 17:21 Promoting a Podcast and Life Coaching

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

Hi friends, welcome to Happily. Even After I'm Life Coach Jen, a certified life coach that specializes in relationships. I'm a mom of four awesome kids and one amazing senora, a home decorator, a remodeler, a shopper, a scrabler and a snuggler. I want to help you with your relationships, mainly the relationship you have with yourself and your family and God. Thanks for listening and letting me share the tools I have learned that can help you live happily even after some of life's greatest challenges. Hey, friends, welcome to today's podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:43

So, if you don't know this about me, february is my favorite month. I love Valentine's Day, I love love and it's also my birthday, and so not today, but in February, and so I just have always loved February and I love hearts, even the color purple. That's my burst stone and it's my favorite color. So there's lots of things about February that I love and it's also the shortest month of the year. Lots of good things about February. But today I want to talk about love, and I don't know if you've ever thought about love as a skill, but it really is, and, as I've reflected on my marriage and my divorce, different things that I've learned since then about love, and I think, as we get married. Of course we're in love, we're infatuated, we can't even, you know, we think about the person 24 seven. But then babies come and we love the babies, and it's not that we'd stop loving our spouse, it just our dynamics change, right, and I think society has done us a disservice because of all the movies out there and that love needs to be like 24 seven passionate sex. You know all the things like if we get mad at each other, they do something that bugs us. That that's not love. We're disrespecting them and I just think we get fooled and caught up in all that. And so I'm just going to talk about some different quotes, that I found, some different information and share that with you, and you guys can determine what you think about love.

Speaker 1: 2:29

What is the true meaning of true love? In true love, both partners recognize and value each other's individuality, opinions and feelings. They listen without judgment and show consideration for each other's needs and wishes. Respect in true love means treating each other with kindness and honor, even in disagreements. So I want you to think about that. I don't know who wrote that, it was just something I Googled and I really liked it. But is that how you are in your marriage? Is that how you are in your relationship with your kids? But I mostly want you to think about your marriage and if you're not in a marriage, think about your ex. Was that something that you had in your marriage? Did you really have love? And if any of these things that I talked about I love kindness and honor, even in disagreements I think that's hard right.

Speaker 1: 3:33

And so if you heard some of this that I said and you're like, oh, I don't really feel that or that's not figure out why and instead of pointing to your spouse well, he doesn't do that or she doesn't do that Look inward, because the only person that you can change is yourself, and I know everyone listening is like well, I can tell you the 10 things that my husband does wrong and I want to fix that. It's impossible, it's a losing battle. So, instead of focusing on their 10 things, look inside and look at your 10 things, and don't look at 10, look at one. Just start with one, because that becomes overwhelming right. Look at the one thing that maybe you could start doing differently. That would show up more in love. And I think marriage is one of our greatest teachers of how to love another person and how to love ourselves.

Speaker 1: 4:32

Someone else that I just love is Jennifer Finlayson-Vife, and if you don't follow her, I would highly recommend following her. She has a she does a lot of podcasts. She doesn't have her own podcast per se. She's on lots of other people's podcasts, so she has so much great content out there, but she does have a private podcast that it is worth. I think it's like $99 a year and she coaches couples on the podcast. I'm not even married and I listen to it and I think, oh my gosh, like it's just really amazing to listen to her coach couples in their struggles and kind of look at yourself and think, oh, I did that. I just think it's a great thing. It's worth $100. We spend money all the time on random things we don't need. I think this would be a great way to spend $100.

Speaker 1: 5:28

A quote she put on Instagram said you can't have love without honesty, and if a love relationship is based on something dishonest, it isn't love. And, of course, this struck me super hard because I think my entire marriage was based on a lot of lying and a lot of dishonesty, and so it makes sense why I was always not feeling a lot of love, like I, in general, in my nature, in my being, I'm a lover. I love love. Right, I like to tell my kids and I still do to this day, every day, I tell them, I love them, I show them, I love them, I do things. I'm very mindful of that and I felt like I was doing that in my marriage, but it just there was always like a black hole that I couldn't figure out. And now I know what it is.

Speaker 1: 6:30

But you have to be honest in your marriage and I think sometimes men like to use the excuse. Well, I don't wanna hurt my wife's feelings. Well, you should have thought about that before you started having the affair right? Women just wanna be told the truth. Humans wanna be told the truth. We don't want lying. We can't fix lying right. We can't. If we feel like there's lying, it's just this, I don't know black hole of the unknown. And so, being honest, even if it's hard to say, and if you can't say it, write a letter.

Speaker 1: 7:10

This movie I've been watching. It's called A Good Grief and it's my second time of watching it. It's on Netflix, it's with Dan Levy, it's amazing. I cried like a baby in the movie. It is so powerful and I'm not gonna give it away. But he writes him a letter and it's a heartbreaking letter and you'll see that if you do go and watch the movie.

Speaker 1: 7:38

But if you don't have the courage to say it, write a letter, send a text, do something, because the lies are not creating love and closeness in your marriage. And you're gonna think the affair partner oh, they love me so much because you're being honest with them, but actually probably not. You're probably saying like, oh, my wife and I are in the verge of getting divorced, even though the divorce word has never come up in your marriage. You're gonna be lying to them and lying to your wife, and so there's just lying all over the place, and that isn't love. If you want true love I don't know what that is, but that is not love, it's lust. I guess.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Another quote that Jennifer said was if it's conditional, it isn't love. There is no such thing as conditional love. It's either love or conditional approval. And I love this too, because if you're putting a condition on your spouse, if you do this, then I'll love you, if you do that, then I'll love you or your kids. That is not love. I think a lot of times we get these confused, and love is just you give it without any condition, and so many of us don't have that skill, and so that's why love is a skill. Some of us, it's easy. It's easy for me to love people, certain people, some people are harder loved than others, but in general, it is not everyone has that skill. So practice it, and sometimes I have to practice loving people that are harder for me to love and figuring out ways to do that.

Speaker 1: 9:27

Another book that I love, that I think highlights love so well, is by Bernay Brown, atlas of the Heart, and she has a lot of great quotes, and so I'm going to just read a few, if that's okay, because I think they just are good. They're ones that you can like, just think about and see if you can relate to any of them or not. Love is not something we give or get. It is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can be cultivated between two people only when it exists within each one of them. We can love others only as much as we love ourselves.

Speaker 1: 10:07

So I love this, too, because there's a period of my life that I did not love myself, because I was basing loving myself on my husband's actions towards me and thinking if he wasn't loving me then maybe I wasn't lovable. But that was totally false and totally untrue. His actions by having an affair had nothing to do with me and no one's spouse that's. Having an affair. It's not about you, it is 100% about them. What's going on with them, their insecurities, their weaknesses, their issues, and so we are all lovable. But we have to practice loving ourselves first, and I think that is the greatest gift.

Speaker 1: 10:57

If you're like I don't really love myself, figure out why. Is there something you've done? Do you need to like apologize to someone? Is there something outside of you that maybe it's possible? But also forgiving yourself that is this year has been one of my greatest things. I didn't think I'd get emotional, but the greatest gift I've given myself is forgiving myself for staying married to someone that treated me so poorly, that was willing to have affairs and do things and learning to forgive myself, and I'm so grateful that I recognized that I needed to do that because I wasn't loving myself like I could and like that I wanted to and being that person. And so if you struggle with loving yourself, know that it's going to be hard for other people to love you if you don't love yourself first. And we all know the people, right, some of us are those people that are just it's like, oh, they're really hard to love. But just have compassion for them because maybe they've gone through something really hard and try to look at them with different eyes than with judgment.

Speaker 1: 12:23

Let me continue my quote. Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can survive these injuries only if they're acknowledged, healed and rare. And so if these things are probably in everyone's marriage maybe not betrayal, but I think shame and blame that's part of marriage, right? And if we can learn to get out of the shame, blame trap, learning that tool is invaluable. And disrespect Chances are. We're disrespecting because we're not respecting ourselves, we're not showing up in the way that we want to show up, but this is killing your marriage, it's killing your. We'll say garden right and you can revive it. It's possible, but you're going to have to dig down deep and start watering the heck out of it and feeding it the right types of food and figuring out what inside of you is causing these things to happen, because we can't point fingers at our spouse, even if they are doing a million things wrong, right, but we have to come to a common ground if we want to have genuine love in our relationship, in our marriage.

Speaker 1: 13:45

So, with love, I think it starts with yourself first. If you're finding and looking at yourself like I don't really love myself, figure out why Do some introspection. Figure out what's going on for you. What do you need? Because so often I think, as women and I know I for sure did this let me just ignore everything I need and want and focus on trying to give, jump through hoops, give my husband everything he needs and wants, because maybe then he won't have an affair. Maybe I can prevent him from doing that, thinking it had anything to do with me. It had nothing to do with me, it was all about him. And so focus on yourself first. Then figure out have a conversation. You're gonna have to have some hard conversations. I know we tend to avoid hard conversations. Create the safe place and I know sometimes our marriages don't feel safe. But if you can create safety within you and have that courage and if you can't say it, write it down Get the conversation going.

Speaker 1: 14:55

And if you're married to someone that acts like they're five and are emotionally immature and cannot have the conversation and cannot tolerate it and can only blame you decide do I wanna stay in a marriage like that? Do I wanna be married to this person? Focus on yourself, and how do you wanna show up in love? How do you love yourself and then show love to your spouse? And I know the five love languages and all of that, and I think those are helpful, but they're not everything right, because we have to stay who we are. We can't twist ourselves into something that we aren't. Just because that's the love language. They need to hear us say, like, that's up to them too, that's up to you.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Like, if you need to have gifts, buy yourself something every now and again and stop waiting for your husband to buy something, or be very specific hey, babe, this is what I want. This is the website, this is where you get it. If you end up not buying it for me, I'm just gonna buy it for myself, so I'm gonna give you the opportunity to get it. Great, if you forget or didn't, I'm not gonna make that mean anything about me. I'm still gonna get that, but I would love it if you bought that for me.

Speaker 1: 16:14

And I think we just need a lot more honesty and clarity in our marriages because we're all just trying to figure out. Okay, what are they thinking? What does that mean? And we make every negative thing mean something about us and everything positive mean something probably about our spouse. I don't know. We get caught up in what Hollywood says love is, but love isn't easy, and I think we think, oh, it should be super easy to love people. No, it's not easy to love people. Sometimes it's really hard to love them, but that's what this life is about, and learning that skill is so important and it's gonna bless your life, your family's life, your kid's life, your grandkids' life, and so I hope that you can take something from what I said today and implement it in your life and look at yourself and figure out how can I love better, how can I show up and love more, and I promise that's gonna help you have a more amazing life.

Speaker 1: 17:21

Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoy listening to my podcast, please tell all your friends and family about it. Leave me a review. That's how people find me. Give me a rating. Hopefully it's five stars. If not, that's okay, just give me a rating so other people can find my podcast and listen to me. Thanks so much. Have a beautiful, amazing day. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjenn with onencom. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after coach. Let's work together to create your happily even after.