Fixing a broken relationship

When it comes to fixing a broken relationship, one must ask themselves, "how much work am I prepared to do to put the pieces back together again?"

If you find yourself pondering that question for any length of time, there may be nothing you can do. Why? Because a relationship, or more importantly, strengthening a relationship, should not be viewed upon as work.


I know all the experts say that relationships take work, and in fact, the majority of them do. But you must remind yourself of a time when your relationship was new and how you felt during the first blossoming of that powerful emotion, LOVE.

At that time, how much work were you actually doing in the relationship? The answer is, absolutely none.

Think about if for a moment. If it required work to fall in love, how many of us would actually set about doing it? The answer is, no one would.

Here is a list of the first ten synonyms listed for the word work in the most comprehensive Thesaurus in print today: Labor, toil, exertion, effort, slavery, sweat, drudgery, grind, travail, chore

Not my idea of falling in love. Here's my recollection of how I felt when I fell in love for the first time: Warmth, passion, excitement, longing, delight, attachment, desire

You do not work towards any of those feelings and emotions, and, if you no longer think of these things when you look into your partners eyes, it may be to late to salvage what once was.

If, however, the once passionate fire has died down but there is still evidence of an ember or a spark or two, it is not to late to fan the flames of desire back into a towering inferno of love!

Pardon the metaphors, but I want you to get a sense of the emotions that have to be involved for a relationship to actually, dare I say it, work.

I want you to try an exercise for me and I want you to answer the following question with as much honesty as you can muster:

When you think about your partner, what are the first eight defining words that come to mind?

Go ahead, take a moment or two and write down the first words that come to mind when you ask yourself that question. It's important not to "think" to hard about this because your rational mind will try and make excuses for what you may actually be feeling and you will be left with an inaccurate picture of your relationship.

Now, look at the words you have written down and put them into one of two categories. Good feelings and emotions or Bad feelings and emotions.

I think you have some idea already of how you feel about your relationship and if you have more words in the Bad column than you do in the Good column, I would consider long and hard just why you are still in the relationship. It is extremely difficult to work at "feeling" differently and your fire may have long since died out.

If however, you still have many good things to say about you partner and you can recognize that it just may be your life that's getting in the way of love, happiness and fulfillment, you actually have a great chance at rekindling that love.

You need help though. Even the most passionate relationships can use a splash of fuel from time to time to keep the fires burning. There are many resources and experts out there that you can choose from to provide you and your partner with high octane ideas that will help keep your relationship hot and steamy.