In order to fully love another person, you must first have in place a strong committed love for yourself.
If you are trying to establish an intimate love relationship with another person, but you don’t love yourself, you are on the path to relationship failure. It is impossible to fully love another person if you don’t love yourself. On the other hand, the more you love yourself, the more capacity you’ll have to love another person.
The way you treat yourself will eventually become the way that you treat your partner. If you are critical and demeaning of yourself, you will eventually be critical and mean with your partner. If you are kind and patient with yourself, your automatic reaction will be to treat your partner with this same tenderness. The truth is that we treat those closest to us as appendages of ourselves.
One of the best things that you can do to prepare yourself for a loving marriage is to practice unconditionally loving yourself now. You do this by talking to yourself with kindness and encouragement, and treating yourself with utmost regard.
Loving yourself unconditionally means that you give love to yourself now, even while there are things about yourself that you don’t like. Some people withhold love from themselves because they don’t feel worthy. But this can be a disastrous habit, if you consider that how you treat yourself is how you will eventually treat your Beloved. Later when you discover things about your partner that don’t meet your expectations, withholding love will be your automatic reaction.
Love is more than a feeling, it is a choice. You’ll be more able to maintain unconditional love for another person after you become well-practiced in unconditionally loving yourself.
Create space for loving connection.
Most people want to have great love lives, but few do the first essential step that it takes to create a great love life, which is to carve out the time for it. We get so busy and preoccupied with all the demands of our lives, that before we know it, our calendars are all filled up and there’s no room for nourishing our romantic relationship.
I once heard a wise financial expert advise, “When you get your paycheck, before doing anything else, pay yourself 10%. Put that money away in savings. If you do this, you will always have the money for the things you really need and want in your life.”
I give this same advice to couples regarding their relationships. Before putting anything else on your calendars, first schedule in consistent blocks of high quality relationship time, and work everything else around these dates. I recommend at least once a week for at least 4 hours at the bare minimum. The more time you carve out for your relationship, the more your love will grow for each other.
This is a time for replenishing your relationship and renewing your positive association to each other. It is important that you put strong boundaries around this time, and not allow anyone or anything to take from it. Turn off your phones, tell people you won’t be available, and make sure your children are with someone you know will take good care of them. Schedule these dates for when you’ll have your best energy. Prepare ahead by making sure you are well rested, and that you have addressed and resolved problems that might hijack your focus from enjoying each other.
During this time don’t talk about problems, children, or responsibilities. This time is all about experiencing pleasure together. Pleasure is far too underrated in our culture. Pleasure is essential for bonding a couple together. The memory of pleasure is what makes us want something, or someone, again. You want your partner to associate you with pleasure, so during this time indulge in your senses. Give each other massages, eat delicious food, watch movies that turn you on, play, make love, laugh, and take that much needed recess from the stresses of your life together.
Some people squawk about calendaring out time for their romantic relationship. They say it feels too regimented and unnatural. They say they want their love lives to be more spontaneous, and less planned. To this I say, nonsense. If you look back on it, anytime that you experienced spontaneity in your relationship, it happened because you had a space of free time in which you came together. By calendaring relationship time, all you are doing is creating a space of free time for you and your Beloved to come together. Then within that protected time, be spontaneous. Go with what you feel in the moment. Be totally present with your partner, and remember keep your focus on pleasure.
Develop an effective process for resolving problems and creating win/win policies. 
All couples, even the most compatible of couples, will have problems that challenge and threaten the happiness of their relationship. It’s no wonder that many couples complain that they have fallen out of love after years of living together. In order for a couple to maintain a fresh association to each other, it’s crucial that they have a mechanism in place for processing through and resolving the problems that inevitably come up in established relationships. Unless addressed and cleared out, unresolved problems will pile up, creating walls between partners, distorting their perspective of each other, and blocking their intimate connection.
I recommend partners that are serious about maintaining a happy, vibrant marriage approach their marriage the way partners of multi-million dollar empires approach their businesses. Successful business partners anticipate that problems will come up and they have processes in place for creating effective policies to deal with and eliminate these problems.
Marriage is the most important business on earth, and successful partners must have the ability to create and apply effective policies to the problems that come up. I counsel couples to (1) learn and develop diplomatic communication, compassionate listening, and win/win problem solving skills, and (2) to set aside blocks of time for addressing problems and creating policies. Couples that do this will be able to more easily and effectively resolve problems, and will have freed up energy to apply to enjoying life together. To learn these vital relationship skills find a qualified professional certified in couple communication instruction.
About Colette Malan:
Colette Malan is an individual, marital, and family psychotherapist and an
AASECT certified sex therapist. She and her husband, Dr. Mark Kim Malan are the founders and co-directors of Malan Relationship Health Clinic in Ogden, Utah. They have been married for 31 years and have five children and seven grandchildren. Through individual and relationship counseling, groups, communication training, and couple retreats, they teach couples the skills and secrets for staying in love. For more information visit www.relationshiphealth.org.
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