Tag Archives: love

Love and Respect

There are so many mixed emotions swirling around the need for respect and love. People are always looking for both and ending up with one or none. Why is that? Well, for one thing, love is often given without thought, whereas respect has to be earned. How many times have you heard someone say, “I don’t know why I love so and so because I don’t even like him or her?” Then there’s the confusion between love and lust. There …

I Love You, Love You, Love You

When you’re in a new relationship, or in a relationship that hasn’t had time to mature, the three hardest words to say to your partner is often, “I love you.” Most people don’t like putting themselves on the line. They want to wait until their partner says those words first. And if they do gather up the courage to say those words first, they want to hear them in return right after that. There’s nothing quite like holding your breath …

Why Unloved Children Stick Around

One of the most amazing things I’ve witnessed is the way children still love parents who don’t show them love. I have seen it bestowed on the most unworthy parents, the ones who abuse their children either by benign neglect or by physical, mental, emotional, or sexual abuse. There are many reasons why a child may not run away from home, particularly if he is of age. One of them could be that he feels responsible for his younger siblings …

Be Your Own Savior

After watching generations of women give up their dreams of a career and success in favor of marriage, and then watching them struggle for survival after a messy divorce, when I got into the counseling field, I decided to tell women to concentrate on their career before they looked for a life partner. I wanted to make sure they always had a way to earn a living no matter what curve balls were thrown at them. When you’re young, in …

How to Get and Keep Your Lover

Most of the articles I’ve read about relationships center on how to get a girl to like you, how to get a guy to like you, how to attract a girl or a guy, how to get a girl or guy back. But the one thing that I don’t see often, if at all, is how to keep your guy or gal interested in you for the rest of his or her life. This may sound a little too ambitious …

Do We Expect Too Much from a Relationship?

Too many women have been told that they expect the kind of partner they read about in romance novels or see on a movie screen. They’ve also been told that real relationships aren’t like that. And we’re not even talking about the guys in romance books who are six feet, four inches, with broad shoulders, perfect abs, and drop dead gorgeous faces and bodies. We’re talking about the kind of guy who is wonderful husband material. I have to differ …

Co-parenting – No Messy Love Involved

When I first heard the term, co-parenting, I immediately thought of couples who were divorced and were sharing custody of their children. I was wrong; that’s shared custody, not co-parenting. Then I thought of gay and lesbian couples who wanted children and that wasn’t right, either, because they were in a sexual relationship with each other so they didn’t qualify as co-parents. Then I thought of my client who wanted a child with her lover, but she didn’t want to …

You Love Him More Than You Love Me

Sibling rivalry is perhaps the most difficult thing for a child to experience and for a parent to handle. No matter how often a parent tries to reassure a child that she loves all her children equally, that’s not necessarily what the child feels. Think of it this way . . . you have several friends and you all hang out together frequently. You may feel more comfortable with one of your friends whom you regard as a kindred spirit. …

After the Breakup

Can a couple go from a romantic, passionate relationship to a nonsexual friendship after the breakup? Some can, and some can’t. It usually depends on the level of emotional involvement and how much time has elapsed after the breakup. Although most couples will tell you that their love and emotional involvement were very deep, that may not be completely accurate. It may be that their emotions were more attached to their sex life, than to the relationship itself. When sex …

You Can’t Make Someone Love You

One of the most heartbreaking things to witness is the person who tries desperately to get someone to love her or him or to get people to be his or her friend. There is a quality of desperation about it that makes people run the other way, yet the person who is putting out those vibrations refuses to see it. You either want to be someone’s friend or you don’t want to be that person’s friend. You either love someone …

Connie H. Deutsch