Growing Roses in your Relationship: Your Guide to a Healthy, Supportive, and Passionate Partnership

life

INTRODUCTION

Is your relationship blooming? Is it full of passion, trust, respect and excitement? Because it should be. It should be blossoming like a beautiful rose, and if it isn’t, then it’s time you fixed that. Relationships, like growing roses, take care, nourishment and time.

If you want to grow roses, you will need to follow some basic guidelines, you’re not going to just throw some seeds in the dirt, walk away and expect a garden. You’ll want to learn a quick thing or two about gardening first. But once you understand the basic guidelines for growing roses, the process is pretty simple; it usually comes down to the right amount of soil, water and sun. If you want roses to be blossoming in your relationship, you will also have to follow certain guidelines, then you will be able to take charge of your relationship and care for it, nurture it and coax it into the partnership you’ve always wanted.

We all desire successful relationships. Our relationships are reflections of our lives, revealing to us both the good and bad attributes within us. If your relationship is struggling, it is showing you that there is some part in your individual life where you are having the same struggle. If communication is an issue in your relationship, then somewhere in you is the very seed of this problem. This is why your relationship is your greatest teacher. Your own personal imbalances will be magnified by your relationship. Any seed of distrust, attachment, sadness or anger, regardless of how small or hidden they may be in your personality, will find its way into your relationship. The same goes for your positive traits; they too will shine in your relationship giving you the most valuable self-insight. This is why actively taking care of your relationship is so essential. The relationship will mirror your life’s current strengths and weaknesses, but it is up to each of us to use that information for self-improvement. It is through your relationship that you learn to grow into a better person, and as you grow, so does your relationship. As you find success in your own strength, the relationship finds success in partnership.

For each person, the image of a successful relationship will be slightly different. One person’s ideal might contrast with another’s, but everyone will want their relationship to be positively contributing to their own happiness and well-being. It is an equal sense of joy and appreciation for the companionship by both partners that defines a healthy relationship. And just like growing roses requires learning a few simple guidelines to stay on track, creating the relationship that you desire also requires learning a few simple guidelines. Once you understand these principles, the partnership of your dreams is waiting for you; all you have to do is take the first step.

Discovering the garden

I have seen couples bring home a beautiful flowering plant to decorate their home; the plant brightens up their lives and brings them joy. At first, they give the plant their attention: they check the soil, they water it, and they supply it with the right amount of sunlight. Whenever they enter the room, the beautiful blossoms grab their attention and bring them a sense of gratification. But as time passes, the plant ceases to stand out from everything else in their home. They still see it, but the importance the plant once held has diminished; their minds have become consumed with other thoughts. Soon they forget about the plant as they tend to their busy lives; they can actually walk right past the plant without even noticing it. Only when they realize that the flowers on the plant are wilting do they take notice. They then check the soil and determine that the plant needs water and sunshine. They want the plant to be healthy so they give it an abundance of water and sunshine hoping to make up for their past neglect. The plant responds to the attention given to it and begins to thrive again, but once the plant starts looking strong again the couple gets distracted with their lives and forgets to care for the plant. Once more the plant begins to starve, and only when it is dry and malnourished does the couple realize the neglect and make the effort again to nurse it back to health. But this process takes a toll on the plant; there is so much stress in being starved and then fed, neglected and then nourished, that the plant makes an effort to protect itself. It begins to conserve its energy in fear of being starved again and the first thing that happens is that it ceases to produce the beautiful flowers that attracted the couple to it in the first place. The plant is still green and alive, but the blossoms that it once produced are no longer there. This is because the flowers that blossom on a plant only manifest when there is an abundance of energy amongst the roots, the stems, and the leaves. When the plant is abundant with health the excess energy manifests in the blossoming of beautiful flowers. But if the plant is stressed and malnourished then there will be no excess energy to encourage the growth of flowers. Soon the couple has a plant that no longer produces blossoming flowers. The couple can then choose to neglect the plant further, perhaps even until it dies, or they can work at nursing the plant back to a place of health and beauty. They remember the beautiful flowers that decorated their lives when they first brought the plant home, but often they accept that the plant’s fate was just part of life: something that was outside of their control.

Discover the garden in your life. Imagine your own relationship if it were a flower being shared between you and your partner. Visualize what it looks like and how it is cared for. This metaphor of the flowering plant is symbolic of many relationships. When two people first begin a relationship it is usually full of blossoming flowers; all the passion, excitement, and romance is there. These positive qualities of this new relationship usually bring beauty and joy into that couple’s world. And the more attention and care each person brings to the relationship the stronger these flowers tend to grow. At the beginning, a couple’s focus is usually on caring for the relationship they are developing, but in time, as the couple gets complacent, they start to focus their attention elsewhere. Soon the relationship begins to starve, and like a plant, the soil starts to dry and the pedals start to wilt. The couple notices this and places lots of attention on the relationship as fast as they can—they over feed it lots of energy hoping to revive it. But once the relationship regains its strength the pattern is repeated. In time, the relationship ceases to manifest the beautiful flowers it had in the beginning. The relationship exists, but there is no spark, there is no magic. And when this happens, the couple often accepts that it was a natural and unfortunate part of fate, that circumstances outside of their control were responsible for the loss of their spark, for the death of the magic that first brought them together.

Believing that a relationship is only exciting and passionate in the beginning is the same as believing that a flowering plant will only retain its blossoms in the beginning, as if it will then be sentenced to become a flowerless plant, alive and green, but without the blossoms of its youth. This belief is so popular amongst relationships that the term honeymoon phase has been coined to describe the blossoming flowers of attraction and excitement that permeate the beginning of a relationship. And when those blossoms cease to be present between a couple they tell themselves that it is natural—they tell themselves that the honeymoon phase is over and it’s time to get serious and have a normal relationship. But somewhere inside of them, somewhere down the road, they know this is not true, and they yearn to rekindle the charm and romance that brought them together in the beginning. The honeymoon phase is a sorry justification for a time when a couple takes care of their relationship, and the acceptance of its end is a tragic justification for a time when a couple begins to neglect their relationship. Just as there are gardeners that maintain beautifully blossoming flowers year round, there are couples that maintain the magic of their romance for the rest of their lives.

It isn’t about fate or circumstance, it is about care and nourishment, and the same lack of knowledge that inhibits a person from maintaining a lush and beautiful garden of flowers is the same lack of knowledge that inhibits a couple from maintaining a healthy and romantic relationship. Imagine if you had a plant but had no idea what it needed to live, as if you didn’t know that it’s survival required specific amounts of sun, water, and soil. If you didn’t know this and just hoped it would survive on your love alone, then you are likely to be disappointed. Like sun, water and soil, your relationship has basic requirements to grow. By learning how to apply these principles, you can transform your current relationship into the relationship of your dreams.

LESSON 1: BE THE HERO OF YOUR OWN RELATIONSHIP

Creating confidence

Relationships don’t begin badly. If a relationship was dysfunctional from the start it would never last long enough to become a significant part of your life. Relationships start off good and they either grow into something that is even better, or they begin to deteriorate into something worse. If you find that the relationship you are in has become challenging or unfulfilling or worse… then it is up to you to turn things around. Most people that suffer from unhappy relationships seem to think that the circumstances that are causing the suffering are out of their control. They tend to perceive their relationships as products of fate or bad luck, as opposed to being a direct result of their actions and inactions. And when these relationships finally collapse, they tend to look back on them and think that the problem was due to some general misfortune instead of being a direct result of something that they were doing or failing to do. Relationship problems don’t come out of nowhere, instead they grow like weeds: slowly, unnoticeably, and relentlessly. If you ignore these weeds when they are small they will grow and eventually they will strangle the life out of your relationship. These weeds are negative patterns that develop in the way you and your partner interact with each other. These negative patterns don’t feel good when they first occur, but they also don’t feel significant enough for either one of you to make a big deal about it, so your partner and you will often ignore the uncomfortable energy between you, knowing that it will soon pass. But these seemingly insignificant moments of negativity will grow into a reoccurring pattern that will eventually rob your relationship of the magic and positivity that originally brought you two together. It is so important for couples to realize that they can regain control of their relationships by learning to recognize the negative patterns that have developed between them and replace them with the positive patterns that originally brought them together in the first place.

Most of us really want to attract and maintain a positive relationship in our lives, but few of us understand how to properly care for and nourish a relationship for the long run. Because of this lack of understanding, most relationships that start off strong tend to deteriorate as time passes, and unfortunately, most people accept this as a natural occurrence. But relationships are meant to improve with time. They are meant to become more exciting, more passionate, and more fulfilling as the connection between you and your partner deepens. Yet, our society has begun to accept the belief that relationships get dull, boring, and dysfunctional as time passes. Nothing is further from the truth. A relationship only begins to deteriorate when the partners involved forget how to care for it, how to influence it, and how to encourage it. A dysfunctional relationship exists because of how it has been cared for by the two people involved. Even the healthiest of relationships can begin to collapse if they are neglected.

If you have found yourself in a completely dysfunctional relationship, there is no reason to give up, because any relationship that was once positive can be mended, healed, and improved. Creating a healthy and positive relationship in your life is actually not that hard to do if you understand the guidelines the relationship needs to follow. The hardest part about the whole process is the transition you must make personally from passenger to driver. Once you understand the true nature of relationships, you won’t be able to sit back and let the relationship drift on its own. You’ll be too aware of what areas in the relationship are abundant and what areas are lacking, and you’ll know what to do to improve the relationship before negative patterns have time to develop. You’ll find that the more you know about creating successful partnerships the harder it will be to sit back and let your relationships just coast aimlessly. On the contrary, you’ll find yourself compelled to take charge. When you realize that you are in control, you will not hesitate to grab the wheel and steer your life into a place of joy and positivity.

Taking responsibility

The very first step to achieving the relationship of your dreams begins with you. You must make a commitment to yourself to take full control and responsibility for the direction your relationship is headed. There is no reason for you to accept being in an unfulfilling relationship. You deserve to have a relationship that fills you with positivity and enthusiasm for life. You deserve to be appreciated and loved. You deserve to have passion and romance in your life. But you can’t sit on your butt and wait for these things to miraculously appear, you must take action to fight for the things that you deserve. If your current relationship or relationship history is filled with disappointments, then you need to change the patterns within you that have been sabotaging your life. The reason people have trouble developing the type of relationship that they want is that they don’t see the patterns that they are creating until it is too late. Every interaction they share with their partner contributes either positively or negatively to the relationship; this is because every action either nurtures or inhibits the positive growth of the relationship. Relationships have rules—guidelines that unfortunately most people never fully realize. People often have no idea when they are either starving or drowning their own relationship until the damage has been done. They often don’t realize when they are teaching their relationship really bad habits, habits that might seem tolerable at first, but habits that in time will start forcing them and their partner apart.

You can begin improving any relationship in your life by being totally clear on what kind of relationship you and your partner want, by learning the methods to guide your relationship in that direction, and by making the effort to create the positive patterns that will help you and your partner achieve that relationship. This book is dedicated to taking you on that journey. It is a path of self-discovery and empowerment as much as it is a path towards understanding the true nature of your relationships with other people. When you learn to improve all of your relationships, you learn to improve your entire life. The very first step towards achieving the relationship of your dreams is the most crucial; you must take responsibility for whatever relationship you are in, whether you are in a bad relationship, single, or trying to ensure that a good relationship lasts, it is essential that you put yourself in the driver’s seat. You must make a pact with yourself to take charge of achieving your own happiness and sense of fulfillment. You must not look to others to do it for you; instead, you must take control of your own life! This book is designed to show you how.

LESSON 2: THE SECRET OF APPRECIATION

The mindset of the gardener

Cultivating positive relationships requires a very specific mindset. The garden itself is in many ways a mirror of the gardener and a relationship is in many ways a reflection of the couple sharing it. So if your goal is to cultivate a healthy and positive relationship then you should begin by adopting a healthy and positive mindset.

I was so impressed when I first saw my friend’s flower garden. How do you do it? I asked, because every flower seemed to be in full bloom, vibrant and powerful. Trial and error, and a lot of luck, she said.

But you must have a formula; everything looks too perfectly landscaped to be a product of luck.

Well, experience. You learn things along the way, she said.

You mean like tricks of the trade?

Sure, there are certain techniques that one learns, but those are of less importance in the beginning. You must first learn to adopt the mindset of the gardener.

The mindset of the gardener? I asked.

"Indeed, otherwise you’ll be fighting circumstance. You’ll be trying to force your will upon the garden, and