Reminisce On the Love We Had

               Over the past few weeks or maybe even few months, I have seen an influx of announcements of marriages and divorces. It put me in a nostalgic state because I remember a time when I was or felt as though I was so in love that surely everything would work out just fine. Through the reading of different things, if I were honest with myself, I would say we were a recipe for disaster. I know it is a tough pill to swallow when you have to admit that you were the cause of something failing.

                It becomes easy to point the finger at others, especially when you have a bandwagon of people helping to validate your craziness. I have identified key signs that show whether or not you truly are in love or in love with the ideal of being in love:

1.   You are not willing to openly communicate your feelings to your significant other.

2.    You are more focus on being right than you are ahealthy compromise.

3.    You are more impressed with how your family, friends and church members feel about your relationship than how you feel about your relationship.

4.    You are always looking for the next mistake.

5.    You say clichés so that you can talk yourself into believing that everything is ok.

6.   You believe that having a piece of a person is better than have none of the person

7.  You avoid the signs of things spiraling out of control

8.   You are constantly defending your choices to others

9.   You are ok with not spending quality time with your significant other

10.  You think marriage will solve all the challenges your relationship has endured thus far

                Now the list has a common thread, and I want you to be honest and see what that is. If after reading you have not seen the common denominator, then let me help you. The problem in your relationship is YOU!

                When you spend most of your time only focusing on the YOU or how others view YOU, you will see demise in YOUR relationship. You see one important thing I learned from being in my relationship on and off again for 8 years, was that, if we truly wanted to work on the US, we had to work on the I. I could not be more important than the We. I could not be afraid to not be true. I could not be willing to give up in difficult times. I could not be easily swayed. If the I, in US, were truly strong, than the message that we had heard so many times before, of "let no man, take under what God has brought together", would have held true. You see, both people must be whole in a relationship. Not 50/50 but 100/100. When you have discovered that other 100 than you will have had found something worth waiting and working for.

Tactful Talk Tuesday with Taneka