Words To L.I.V By

After many years of people’ing’, relationship analytics and personal experience, it is my opinion that our most significant relationships require the following 3 criteria to thrive, survive and run smoothly.  Your partner should make you:

Feel Loved

Feel Important

Feel Validated

Let me explain…

LOVED

We need love.  We all need to feel loved.  There is no rule book for this.  You either feel loved by your significant other or you do not.  Everyone requires different things to feel loved.  Certainly, your ability to love yourself plays a very big part in your capacity to receive love (this is an entirely different blog post) from your partner.  However, this ‘feeling’ of being loved comes from an intuitive place where you have accumulated and stored your history with this person and all these experiences have helped shape your perception of what feeling loved is for you.  You know it if you feel it.

IMPORTANT

We need to feel important.  It’s in a look, it’s in a giggle, it’s in the degree of interest they show when you talk, share and vent.  It’s how your significant other talks about you.  It’s how they talk to you.  It’s how they carve out time for you.  It is the degree to which you feel respected and significant.

VALIDATED

The importance of validation in any relationship and especially our primary relationships cannot be emphasized enough.  All humans need to feel heard.  Our innermost fears, longings, regrets, aspirations, shortcomings and successes need to be heard.  All of the ‘stuff’ that makes us who we are (the good the bad and the ugly) needs validation and acknowledgment.  The value of , “I hear you, I understand you, I get what you’re saying” is immeasurable in our relationships.  Showing empathy and compassion in times of sadness and frustration and waving our pom-poms and cheerleading in times of success and achievement helps to build a nourishing relationship of contentment and safety for our loved ones.  This allows them to grow…allows us to grow…invites us each to reciprocate the sentiment.

Chances are if these 3 variables are pulsating throughout your relationships, things are pretty ok.  

Take a peek at your relationships and see if these are words you L.I.V by.

Peace