All Things Love: The Romance Bubble

I'm going to be candid. I am not in the mood to blog about love today. Honestly. That man that I love really just burnt my bacon last night and as much as I want to tell you to grab a frying pan and hit your man over the head with it, I shan't. Because violence ain't cool, yo. That is the opposite of what I am going for during this here All Things Love week.


I suppose that the above is another type of love. It's doing things you don't want to do for the person you love. It's showing grace and love throughout the hard times. It's keeping on when life gets hard and you are in a valley so vast that you can't see a hill in sight.


So, this post will be about showing love in spite of circumstance. Even if you feel disconnected from a loved one, even if your husband hasn't paid any real attention to you or even if your wife hasn't flirted with you lately, you should not use this as an excuse to bottle up your love. Quit being stingy. What ends up happening is that this widens the gap between you when a simple act of love could bring you two closer together. You just have to be the one to take the leap.


That can be scary. Loving someone and feeling disconnected from them but not wanting to be so vulnerable that you put your heart out there IS scary. I can tell you that feeling this way is completely reasonable but highly unproductive. What do you have to lose? If they are already with you, then there is a reason for it. Remind them of it. If they aren't with you, then you don't have them to begin with. Trying will only help the situation, I say.


Instead of going on and on to convince you do to something, I'm going to consider you convinced! Congrats! You made the right choice. Now you are wondering what to do to reconnect. Aren't you? Tomorrow, we'll get in to examples of things you can do. Today, we need to gain a bit more knowledge before to understand where we're at in our relationships. Where we are at will help determine where we need to go.


(Cue Star Wars theme here.)

I've thought about this for a really long time. I've been in multiple relationships, had three great loves in my short time here on earth and have broken hearts and gotten my heart broken. For the past month I've been thinking about my history and all of the romance I have experienced and I have broken it down to be easily understood. This is what I have found.

In every relationship, there is a romance bubble. This romance bubble is the foundation of romance. I call that foundation, Dutiful Love. From dutiful love, there are four types of romances. The love-blast, the love dimmer, the love spurt, and the love branch. Please refer to my highly accurate scientific visual graph. 

Now that I think about it, I don't know why I chose Star Wars. It no longer seems appropriate but it did while I was typing/embedding it.

Back to the point. Here are the Meganifitions. (Get it? It's like a definition, but since I made this all up, I call it Meganifitions. I know. I love me, too.) Let's start from the base of romance and work our way around.

Dutiful Love

Dutiful love encompasses all of the things that a person in a relationship must do in order to keep the relationship going. It includes but is not limited too, all forms of basic communication, planning basic hang-out time, going to family functions, support through general life issues, taking out the trash, financial support, etc.

Love-Blast

A love-blast is also known as a grand gesture. It is when someone assaults their loved one with a blast of love and generally happens few and far between. It is the ultimate peak when you are in the depths of a valley. It gives you a great high and after its gone it gives you a great low. 

Love Dimmer

A love dimmer is basically someone that grows cold or warm without warning. It's like a switch is flipped. One day they act so in love with you, the next day they are kind of indifferent about you and the next day you feel out of place beside them. It's like a dimmer. Just because its on doesn't mean there is a lot of light shining.


Love Spurts
Love spurts are the same concept of a love dimmer but on a much grander scale. A person in the relationship can go months and months without giving much effort into a relationship and then all of a sudden you get a sudden spurt of the person you fell in love with or the friend that you knew in the beginning of your friendship.


Love Branch
The love branch is the most effective of all the romance relationships. It has a strong, sturdy base of dutiful love, layered with acts of grace, kindness and attention. And every once in a while another large branch breaks off which represents a large act of romance. In between those are random small twigs that signify small gestures of love.


Looking at the above Meganifications, (Who thinks she's funny?) don't those sound like the basic levels of romance? Do you see where your relationship falls? This is how you should always approach where you are in a relationship. Use these romance bubble break-off's to try to find what you bring to the table in that relationship. Do you blast a friend with a grand gesture? Do you cultivate and maintain a relationship with your spouse or friend and are you deliberate in your relationship? What should they expect when they see you next? Are you going to trick them into getting comfortable and feeling like everything is the way it should be only randomly to drop out of the relationship emotionally? What signals are you sending?


Do you feel like there is room for improvement in your relationship? Is so, I have a motto that you should adopt.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Have you ever ran? I have. I suck at it for two reasons. 1. I have bad knees. 2. I am uber athletically challenged. I'm not even making that up. I have been known though, to think that running will solve all my problems and not kill me, so I give it a try. If I start too fast, I end up burning out halfway through my run. If I run in spurts, fast, then slow, fast then slow, I end up tiring myself out and my running turns into jogging (with a soft 'J', of course). But, when I decide to go for a run and I pace myself, when I tune myself into my breathing and my steps, I always go farther and end up with a quality work out. 

Many people get comfortable in their relationships and they forget that in order to maintain a healthy, happy relationship they have to make deliberate decisions to help the relationship survive. They have to continually give effort for the entire duration of their relationship. Sometimes, making these decisions are effortless. Other times, you have to make it a priority to put this effort into your relationship.


So, tomorrow we'll be getting down to the FUN stuff. Since we've figured out where we are in our relationship, we need to figure out what we need to do to get to where we want to be!  I cannot wait!