Happy Music Monday! This week closes out the Love Letters playlist. We hope you've followed along and listened to some fantastic love songs. The final five songs feature artists such as Elton John, Coldplay and Eric Clapton. And yes, we cheated a bit on the last song, but it will be well worth it. Promise. Enjoy the tunes and share the love on this glorious Music Monday <3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9AFMVMl9qE http://open.spotify.com/user/128785371/playlist/54rS9n5epej5p0tfWhr9RN
Kissing is good for you. Go do it! Seriously... go...
Ever wonder what it's like to bring a human into this world? Watch as one of life's most beautiful moments is captured for a beautiful couple in a stunningly beautiful way. Check out Armosa Studios for more phenomenal videos like this one.
River Asher from Armosa Studios on Vimeo.
In this video, Garth constructed an elaborate plan to surprise Tess, his girlfriend, with the question of a lifetime. Check out the video below to see how it went, or this link for more details on the relationship:
Kiss me if I'm wrong... but dinosaurs still exist, right?
Sexuality can be a touchy subject. There are those who are extremely conservative when it comes to sex and consider the hint that humans are sexual beings a taboo... and then there's Howard Stern. We all fall somewhere on the spectrum of what we're willing to talk about, and how we want to teach our children about sex and sexuality.
One thing is for sure, demonizing sexuality and instilling fear of ones own desires and body is never a healthy approach. This article beautifully addresses the issue. Read it. Seriously. It was phenomenal.
Popular culture sets up this idea that men are sexual predators who need to resort to trickery and cologne to fulfill their one and only mission, which is sticking their penis in a girl.
It’s sad. It’s insulting. And it’s damaging.
This way of looking at male sexuality conflates sexuality with predation. It means that he who possesses sexuality is assumed a predator.
A great comic via Simple Marriage that illustrates a feeling that is only too real.
[jbox title="Thanks for Reading!" border="5" radius="15"] This Week In Love is a weekly collection of all things love published every Sunday. If you've seen/read/created something you'd like to see featured on This Week In Love, just drop us a line![/jbox]
In this interview, we meet a man whose wife of 40 years underwent brain surgery and came out a different person. He's remained a faithful husband for over 30 years in spite of the challenges posed by this difficult situation. It's his commitment to the woman he loved, his personal integrity, patience, selflessness, and his faith that keep him going.
The Love Letters playlist is coming to an end. Next week we will finish it up with V through Z (should be a piece of cake). But this week,enjoy the musical stylings of Cat Power, David Gray, the legendary Righteous Brothers and more. From soft piano notes to lightly sweeping synths to jubilant banjo, this Monday's five additions encompass a little bit of everything. Leave your love song suggestions for V through Z below. We could certainly use some help! Looking forward to your suggestions and hope everyone enjoys the music. Happy Music Monday and share the love <3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdmGxuCEHrk
http://open.spotify.com/user/128785371/playlist/54rS9n5epej5p0tfWhr9RN
This video is just the right amount of adorable:
This article is more tailored to the ladies, and contains some lovely advice. Read it. Talk about it with your significant other. What can you do better? What are your "team rules"?
All the crap you read in magazines about honesty, sense of humor, communication, sensitivity, date nights, couples weekends, blah blah blah can be trumped by one word: loyalty. You and your spouse are a team of two. It is you against the world. No one else is allowed on the team, and no one else will ever understand the team’s rules.
There are a lot of things you need to get across this universe. Warp drive... wormhole refractors... you know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold.
Here's a link to the article. It's a fantastic read. Here's one of my favorite excerpts. I have totally felt this way before:
I’m intensely certain that nothing in life has ever made me more angry, frustrated or annoyed than my wife. Inevitably, just when I think I’ve given all I can possibly give, she somehow finds a way to ask for more.
The worst part of it all is that her demands aren’t unreasonable. One day she expects me to stay emotionally engaged. The next, she's looking for me to validate the way that she feels. The list goes on—but never ventures far from things she perfectly well deserves as a wife.
No "Best Of" post is complete without a GIF... and this one is priceless.
Sometimes the best way to be successful is to know where the pitfalls are, and how to avoid them. This study goes over the science of relationships and evaluates some of the most common the signs of divorce.
Some great tips to keep things interesting, and avoid allowing your relationship to go stale.
Don’t be the “That’s Not My Thing” guy. That guy is a total dick and a shitty husband to boot. And please feel free to flip genders here, ’cause the same hostile adjectives apply to the wife who thinks dressing up like fucking Chewbacca at Comic Con is stupid, every bit as much as it does for the dude who refuses to ever sit down in front of a scrapbook. Don’t be a macho dick. Don’t be a mean bitch. It’s all the same in the end. And it’ll ruin a relationship.
[jbox title="Thanks for Reading!" border="5" radius="15"] This Week In Love is going to be a regular thing here on The Loveumentary. If you've seen/read/created something you'd like to see featured on This Week In Love, just drop us a line![/jbox]
I meet and counsel with couples every single day. Each couple has their own problems and struggles. I've realized that, there's a huge issue now that didn't exist 5 years ago.
Advancements in technology now allow us to be in constant communication with someone just by typing in words on a phone, sitting down at a computer, or using an iPad. We have forgotten about the importance of spending time one-on-one with our significant others.
When you text someone or call someone when you're with your significant other - whether you’re meaning to or not - you’re telling the person you’re in a relationship that what you’re doing can’t wait. I’ve seen people cheat emotionally and physically, not because they wanted to, but because they couldn’t put their phone down. Texts and Facebook are just too damn important.
Here’s my advice... you don’t have to follow it:
When you’re with someone you care about, put your damn phone away! Make sure your partner is the most important person in the room, and make sure they know it!
If you want to text someone or call someone don’t hide your phone, do it right in front of her so she can see the screen. If you want to check Twitter or Facebook, look at it together. If he wants to look at your phone let him. Don’t get in the habit of deleting messages, texts or emails.
Be fully trusting of each other, and put the phone away.
I swear, if people could follow this advice there would be so many less problems and so much less heartbreak.
To further reiterate the point, watch this video:
[jbox title="Pro Tip!" border="5" radius="15"]
If you are having a hard time putting your damn phone away, check out The Phonkerchief. Wrap up your cellular device, and give your partner a visual reminder that they are your number one priority.[/jbox]
The leaders of every generation continuously set out to become better than the generation of their fathers. We stive to improve upon their failures and shortcomings. We want to provide our children with more opportunity and a better education, shield our families from the pains we suffered, be more attentive, patient, involved, supportive, healthy, eco-friendly, and tolerant and less bigoted, work-obsessed, over-protective, close-minded, and all the other hyphenated words you can imagine up.
The pressure we put on ourselves and each other to rise above and build upon what we've been given is daunting.
I don't know about you, but I was never given a manual or a training course for how to be an ideal spouse or father. This makes taking the obvious next step in my life an incredibly intimidating one. I mean, if you fail a class in your youth, you can beg for extra credit, or worst-case scenario, retake it. Lose your job? Good thing you're still a dependent of your parents.
There's no real safety net as an adult. Get married and find out you're a crappy spouse? Or worse... find out you're married to one? Tough luck. Work it out, or be branded with the mark of divorce.
Don't spend enough time with your kids? Spend too much time being a helicopter parent? Don't give them enough opportunity? Overwhelm them with too many extra-curriculars? Discipline them too much? Don't provide them enough freedom to act as individuals?
Too bad. You can't un-make your decisions. You can only do the best you can with what experience you've been handed and the resources you have available.
So, what do you do to overcome that fear? How do you come to terms with the fact that your best may not be good enough? How do you stare failure in the face every day, and conquer it?
[Video Transcript] "She's something that we both created. We both still marvel at her. It's most obvious on a song called Jay Z Blue. And it deals with, you know, like, my pop left when I was young, so he didn't teach me how to be a man nor how to raise a child or treat a woman. So of course, with my karma, they're the two things I don't have, right? And I have a daughter. It's the paranoia of not being a great dad."
I’ve helped a lot of incredible people fix frustrating problems in their marriage, and learn the skills to create a relationship more incredible than they thought was possible. Here’s what just a few of them have said:
