Relationship Success

I have a feeling that this ugly Covid19 situation is going to be either really good for personal relationships, or really bad. It’s just a theory I have. If you’re relationship with your spouse is kind of shaky anyway, and now you’re faced with all the trouble caused by the Coronavirus, your relationship could easily fall apart. But if you’re relationship is really strong to begin with, chances are problems are only going to bring the two of you together as you tackle your troubles as a team.  That theory got me thinking about my own marriage.

It’s late Sunday evening and I’m struggling to I get this story ready for Monday morning. However, tomorrow is my wife’s birthday and I am totally stressed out! First, you have to understand that I absolutely adore my wife, so I always want to show her my love on her birthday by taking her shopping and letting her pick out really nice gifts. She always fights me on it, but over the years, I’ve managed to talk her into things like a diamond necklace, earrings, and even a vacation to Hawaii.

But that was back when times were good and there was no world-wide pandemic going on. So, I’m stressed now because I can’t go shopping like normal and I can’t even take her on a nice vacation. Plus, she keeps insisting that I don’t spend money on her this year because money is tighter than ever. But that’s also one of the reasons I love her so much. She never thinks about herself because she is always too busy doing nice things for other people. So how do I demonstrate my love to someone so deserving when I can’t take her shopping like normal?

Then it hit me - relationships are all about communication! In fact, I believe that communication is the single most important factor for creating a successful relationship. So maybe I can’t celebrate her birthday as I normally do, but I can definitely communicate my love to her… in writing! I know it might not be as fun as a vacation, but it will certainly last longer and possibly mean more. Truth is I’ve written her lots of love letters, but this year with how difficult everything has been, she deserves my absolute best effort. So, I poured my heart out to her using my very best prose and I’m hoping it will brighten her day tomorrow. And I thought, “What if there’s another guy out there struggling with communication?” If that’s you, take a look at the “Love Letter Template” attached. Maybe it will give you some ideas… that will lead you to relationship success!  

Love must be as much a light as a flame.

~ Henry David Thoreau

LOVE LETTER TEMPLATE

 

My Dearest _______ (Fill in your cutest pet name for her) ___________,

Thinking about you reminds me that I have someone in my life that I love very much who actually loves me back. Which is quite the miracle! Our love is very ___ (special, unique, tempestuous) ___ , for you express your love very clearly to me every single day. And I am always trying to show you my love as well through my daily _____ (words, deeds, mistakes) _______.

We’ve been together now, hand in hand, truly in love, truly and fully committed to each other, for ___ (20 years, 20 months, 20 minutes) ____.  There have been far more good times than bad, far more happy moments than problems. And yet even during the toughest times, I have always known your heart and you have always known mine, and our love has grown stronger with each passing _____ (year, day, minute) _____. For that I feel very blessed!

Is it crazy that my eyes still light up and my heart still skips a beat, every time you ____ (enter the room, leave the room) ____? Is it crazy that I can’t be away from you for even a few hours without missing you and wishing you were by my side? Is it crazy that I am willing to confide my deepest thoughts and silliest fears to you, despite always wanting to impress you with my ____ (strength, courage, hot dog eating ability) ____? Is it crazy that I am willing to share my sensitive side with you, and yet know fully and without a doubt that I would give my life without hesitation for you in a heartbeat? It’s not crazy, it’s called true love!

      ·         I love it when we sleep ___ (in together, through movies, in separate rooms) ___.

·         I love it when we go for bike rides and talk about ___ (our love, our in-laws, nothing) ___.

·         I love it when we spend time together with ___ (our children, neighbors, the police) ___.

·         I love it when we ____ (hold each other, kiss each other, smack each other) ____.

·         I love it when I go to sleep with my __ (arms, legs, lips) ___wrapped so tightly around you.

·         I love our love, for it is like no other.

As your ___ (husband, lover, boyfriend, best friend, best friend’s husband) ___, I promise to try hard to be everything you want and need me to be. I will try to remember that you have your own personal struggles, your own pains and worries, and make sure you get my best attitude and my best love every single day. And I want you to know that this will not be a hard promise to keep because I enjoy it very much. But then again, isn’t that what true love is truly all about.

Thank you for your love and for all the sacrifices you continuously make for me!

 

All my Love,

                                                                                                     

Your __ (Fill in the name you wish she would call you) ___                                                

                                                                                                  

 

 

Fear Less

My wife and I ride our bicycles up and down Beach Road almost every day. We have been doing that ever since the Coronavirus hit. We can’t really go places like we used to and we can’t visit with family and friends like we love to do, so instead we go for bike rides and talk a lot. And we have these really great talks, about life, about love, about our hopes and dreams and fears. I joke that we try to solve the world’s problems during our bike rides. And I do so wish we could!

Unfortunately, we can’t. But the one thing we can do, is we can stop worrying about things and stop being afraid… but yet still be smart! At first, we were really fearful of getting the virus and/or spreading it and that’s normal. We were scared for our children, our parents, our friends, ourselves. But over time we’ve come to realize that worry is a wasted emotion and  fear is simply weakness. So we’ve switched from being afraid to simply understanding what we can and can’t do and make it a point to be careful, wear a mask, and social distance at all times… while still making the most of life.

Yesterday, as we rode our bikes, we talked about how living through this pandemic has changed our lives. Not all of it has been for the worse. It has made us smarter and stronger. And we’ve learned some really important life lessons. Mainly that we don’t have to live in fear, we simply need to be smart about how we live, while protecting other lives at the same time.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood and now more than ever is the time to understand more, so that we fear less.

~ Marie Curie, Physicist, 1920

Passion Play

Growing up I attended Fallbrook High School in San Diego County, so over time I became a huge fan of the San Diego Chargers. My friends and I attended a lot of games at “Jack Murphy Stadium” and the San Diego Fans were super loyal and insanely passionate about their team. The San Diego Padres were the other team that we all rooted for and I’ll never forget how fun it was getting together with good friends and good food around a big screen TV to watch the games, yelling, screaming, and living vicariously through our favorite players.

Later on, after briefly attending Cal Berkeley, I moved to Orange County because College turned out to be something I didn’t really have a passion for. So I started trying to build a new life for myself with a new job, new friends, and new sports teams to root for. I guess I was hoping to finally find my passion and finally… come alive! I immediately fell in love with The Angels and went nuts when they won the World Series in ‘02. We didn’t have a local football team back then, but we do now. In fact, we two LA Football teams to root for. How great is that! Except, as much as I love my sports teams, and as much as I love the players, I totally live and die with each and every game. Being a Chargers Fan meant never getting to see my team win a Super Bowl. The Chargers only went once and were blown out by the 49ers. Being a Padres fan meant never seeing my team when a World Series either. The Padres did make it to the WS twice but were blown out by the Detroit Tigers in 1984 and the Yankees in 1998.

Which got me thinking… The problem with loving sports and being passionate about a team, or passionate about anything for that matter, is that you can often get your heart ripped out. Kind of reminds me of the pitfalls of life in general. You know that you can never count on things going the way you want them to, but yet you hope they do, and then you have to live and die with the good and the bad.  Basically, being passionate about anything is like being on an emotional roller coaster.

But is that such a bad thing? Yesterday, something happened in my world that has never happened in all my 65 years of living. The San Diego Padres had to play a double header against the SF Giants and won both games! The Angels had to go up against the Colorado Rockies in Colorado and yet got the win when Albert Pujols hit his 660^th career home run! The San Diego (I mean Los Angeles) Chargers started their first game of the season with a brand-new quarterback and surprised everyone with a 16-13 victory! And the Los Angeles Rams, who started their season in a brand-new stadium against a very tough Dallas Cowboys Team, also got themselves a sweet victory! Incredibly, every single team I rooted for yesterday won their game!

So what am I saying… Being passionate may have its ups and downs, but life without having passion for anyone or anything, is no kind of life at all.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive? And then go out and do that. Because what the world needs is people with passion who have come alive.

~ Howard Thurman

He Work Hard

I have always admired and respected people who work hard. It might have started with my Grandpa Joe who had a distinguished military career, enlisting out of High School and making it to the rank of Major. Even after he retired, he kept working, mainly as a Sunday School teacher at a church near his home in San Diego. I will always remember how scarily impressive he looked in his Marine Corps uniform and yet how kind he always was to me. When I was young, he would let me sit on the arm of his big recliner and rub his bald head while we watched old-time western movies together. He was always smiling and giving me good advice about working hard and treating everyone you meet with respect.

The importance of having good work ethic that Grandpa Joe swore by made sense to me. So when I started my first company I looked for people with solid work ethic. Once a quarter, my wife and I would even send around an employee questionnaire, asking them to nominate the best employee for that quarter. I’ll never forget one questionnaire that was filled out by an employee whose job was to dig trenches for underground conduit. Nazario didn’t speak much English, so he handed his questionnaire in to me personally. It only had three words on it. He was voting for his fellow ditch digger, Crispin Gonzalez, and it simply said, “He Work Hard”. And Nazario was right about that!

I was reminded of Nazario and Crispin this past weekend when the temperatures soared, and our A/C went out. We had our A/C checked a month prior and the technician, who only spent 20 minutes on it, said nothing was wrong with it. He was right, it worked fine while he was there, but it went out again 5 minutes after he left. When we tried to get him to come back out, he made excuses, said he was really busy, and that he couldn’t come back until the end of September. So I called a different company this weekend who said they would send a man out the very next day.

When Saul arrived, he was very professional. He wore a mask and politely asked me where he should park. When I explained that our A/C unit was on the rear upper deck and that he couldn’t come through the house due to the Coronavirus, he said, “Then I will go over the roof with my ladders and drop down onto the deck from above with my tools.” And off he went, just another day climbing ladders in 100 degrees heat. Saul spent 30 minutes diagnosing the problem and then explained to me that our unit couldn’t be fixed due to multiple bad inverters. But he also said, “Let me see if I can at least get it working temporarily for you.” After another solid hour of effort, Saul explained that it wasn’t going to be possible to get the unit working, but that he wouldn’t charge me for any of the extra time he put in.

After Saul climbed down from the roof and brought down all his tools, he only charged me the standard $95.00 diagnostic fee. I gave Saul the $95.00 and then I handed him a crisp new $100 bill as a thank you for his strong effort. Actually, the reason I gave him the tip…. He Work Hard!

Without labor nothing prospers.

~ Sophocles