Love One Another

Women have a difficult time releasing their desire for control at times.  Many women fear if they let go of their need to control a situation, their worst fears will come true, especially when it comes to their relationship with their husbands/boyfriends.  However, by tightening the grip you have on the situation, you are only making your partner want to squeeze out and get as far away as possible from you.  This goes for men as well as women.  It is extremely difficult, but we need to learn to let go.  The best way for a relationship or marriage to succeed is by only having two things:  love and respect.  All the other things a marriage needs such as loyalty, honesty, compassion, care, come with loving and respecting one another.  The number one thing to remember if you fear letting go is that if you give your partner the freedom to make their own decisions, they will see your efforts, and in turn respect you more.  If they don’t, you will finally be able to see what the real problems are in your relationship and hopefully begin to work them out.

For example:  Let’s say we have a wife who is trying to prevent her husband from leaving the house for fear he is cheating on her.  She tries to say it is her right to prevent him from leaving the house because he is not doing the right thing.  This does not matter.  The first thing she needs to do is recognize it is his right to leave the house and go out whenever he wants.  He is an adult capable of making his own decisions.  If he does happen to go to bars until 4 in the morning and cheat on her, then that is the problem you have to deal with by making sure to let them know this is not okay, and unacceptable behavior.  But you can’t try to control or smother a partner from making their own decisions.  This is the kind of problem that comes from mistrust in a relationship.  The point is that putting your trust in someone does make them want to please you.  If she had instead said, “Have fun with your friends” when he left instead of trying to prevent him from leaving, he would probably want to live up to her expectations.  Not only that, but he may also seek to live up to her preferred wishes, like that he shouldn’t go out for very long and not to do anything bad and come home at a decent time.  

If you want to control the situation, you are saying you don’t trust your partner.  If you don’t trust your partner, you don’t want to add problems to your relationship by smothering them.  If you don’t trust your partner because they are doing something bad, you REALLY don’t want to add trouble to your relationship by smothering them.  Deal with the real issue you are facing instead of trying to control it yourself.  You can’t fix someone else.  They have to fix themselves, and maybe they would want to if you let go.

When I try to control a situation, I personally am usually trying to fix a problem that I don’t want to talk about.  I’m trying to see if I can get away with fixing the problem by myself without discussing it with my partner.  This has never worked out for me.  Also, it is not respectful or loving.  Your partner may not be respectful or loving to you with their actions, but you will only make things worse by behaving the same way, getting angry, throwing insults, or punishing them.  Why try to fix a problem by making it worse?  It keeps on coming back to love and respect.  

This is not the “end all” to all problems.  Sometimes, you love, respect, give your partner all the freedom they need, and they still break your trust, hurt you, or disrespect you.  That is when things really get tough.  You may seek counseling at this point, or ultimately an end.  But then, you may also just keep loving and trying.  Don’t give up without a fight.  If you are a Christian, I encourage you to go here to remind yourself of what the Bible says about how we should treat each other in a marriage.  Many other religions have similar standards and they also all come down to loving and respecting.


I have gotten a bit behind on my projects, since I am working on so many at once.  However, that’s a good thing because it’s something I enjoy doing.  I am currently working on probably the simplest thing you’ll ever learn to knit:  a scarf.  Cast on around 15 stitches, but really however many you want for desired width.  Knit back and forth til you reach a desired length.  I am switching colors along the way.  Here is one I made for a friend in December (since my current one is not finished).  She’s also wearing a hat I made (which is a bit more complicated, so I’ll focus on the scarf today)..   

"You lonelily let him push under your bones...."

I have had my own issues with temptation.  I've been faced with it in the form of real offers from men I once loved.  In my short marriage, I had to draw clear lines early on.  The first thing I turned to to figure out where my lines should be was google (lol).  I read experiences ranging from "open marriages" to "just being tempted is a sin," and everything inbetween.  The best source I have found on this issue is a blog I found http://star-crossed-hearts.blogspot.com/ .  This is a normal, middle-class Christian woman, wife, and mother discussing her story of having an "affair of the heart" and how it effected her marriage, how she dealt with it, and what she learned from it.  I highly recommend reading it.

Women tend to commit "affairs of the heart" more than men.  Yes, I realize it takes two, let me rephrase that.  Married women tend to commit "affairs of the heart" more than married men; they are commiting those affairs typically with unmarried men.  Men have more actual physical affairs that involve physical/sexual transgressions.  No, I'm not going to talk at length over which one is better or worse.  I will say that a marriage can with greater ease recover from a sexual affair than it can when a spouse has fallen in love with someone outside the marriage.

I don't know if this is true or not but I've heard that Johnny Depp once said, "If you are in love with two people at the same time, go with the second.  Cause you wouldn't have fallen for them if you still loved the first one."  I love Johnny Depp, but I disagree with that sentiment.  You can truly and deeply love lots of people at once.  You can love them for different reasons and they may be different people, but you can love two people at once.  Your love may be true, but that doesn't make it right. 

The number one reason these affairs occur, especially in women is a need for emotional validation.  When you have a bad day, your husband is working, or you feel neglected by him, it feels nice for that other guy to tell you how beautiful you are and how much they want you.  After being married, you don't get to experience that "crush" feeling so much and it feels nice. 

So you ask yourself "What is cheating?"  You say, "Flirting isn't cheating; giving someone a compliment isn't cheating."  Don't try to skirt the line to see how close you can come to cheating without it actually happening.  Just think, "Would my partner be upset if he/she knew I was doing this?"  That is the question to ask to figure out if what you are doing is right or wrong.  Sure, that text telling your ex-boyfriend how good he looks and how much you miss him is not cheating.  But would your husband be upset if he knew you said that?  I can tell you what your husband would be thinking.  Things like, "She never says that to me" or "I remember when she used to say those things about me."  It's things like that that lower their self worth and make them trust you less. 

In short, my line is set.  Being tempted is not sinful, but giving in to it is.  If it hurts my husband, it's not worth it, not matter what "exciting" feeling it may give me for five seconds.  This guy may be a fun crush, but it's my husband I love.

If you don't sew or knit, but you want to make one of my projects of the day, I have an easier one tonight.   It is a "homemade" candle.  I say homemade, because it is made at home, but from other candles.  You can melt down candles you already have or buy.  Melt these with caution in their containers, in a pan on the stove, on medium heat.  Pick out the wick and washer with tweezers or tongs.  Pour melted candle(s) into a new glass container with a homemade wick.  I used a washer and yarn (it burns faster than store bought candles, but it's homemade).  The way you can get creative with this is by combining colors or adding ingredients.  I had a vanilla candle melting and I added cinnamon to it to make it a cinnamon vanilla candle.  If you want a "rainbow" candle, you can pour in a little of one color, wait until that hardens, then pour on the next color, et cetera.  Here is one I made recently:



My "Homemade" Candle (Cinnamon Vanilla)



I'm a sucker for song lyrics, so here is a pretty good song, albeit a sad one, about a relationship ruined by affairs.  Just click the cut to.....