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About Us
How to Have Valentine's Day Every Day
If love is as valuable as everyone says, then Amy and my-self are two of the richest people on the planet. I say this knowing that it is going to seem insensitive and pompous to those who either doubt the truth of what I say or believe it but resent me for "shoving it in their face."
Amy and I want EVERYONE to be as happy as we are, even if it means risking the above and putting EVERYONE in the position that we are in, i.e., that every day we wake up thankful to be alive and with each other and little Zane, our shaman cat, and every day we know that we may be one day closer to experiencing a loss of devastating consequences. But until that day, we're going to be thankful and we're going to tell EVERYONE about our love for the simple reason that we don't know ANYONE who has as good a relationship as we do and neither does ANYONE we know. When you have a great gift, which is what we consider our life together to be, then you have a great responsibility, both to each other and to the world who so desperately needs to know that true love is possible for EVERYONE.
We have shared our secrets in a book we are very proud of called "Love, Light, and Laughter: Relationship Secrets of the Enchanted Couple," which you can buy here on our website or BarnesAndNoble.com or Amazon.com or from your favorite book seller. By the way, I just noticed you can get it for like $5 on Amazon, so if you've been wanting to bring love into your life or improve an existing relationship you now have our book of secrets available for next to nothing. And if you think that even its list price of $24.95 is too much to pay for a book that can really bring love into your life or improve an existing relationship, then allow me to give you a free diagnosis of your problem - you're too cheap!
It's not in the current edition of LLL, as we call it, but it will be in the paperback edition we're working on with our publisher, Red Wheel/Weiser/Conari Press: If someone is cheap with money then they are cheap with love. Period. It never fails to be true. Love doesn't flourish from a mind-set of lack, which is what gives rise to cheapness. Holding on to what YOU have is the antidote to love. Love requires that you share what you have and do what you can to make your beloved happy.
OK, it's Valentine's Day and I'd like to give the men out there a little tip about love. But since it is women who are usually the one's smart enough to be interested in articles like this, then ladies please show this blog to your man or just tell them what I'm about to say and tell them you made it up; I give you my permission to do so.
Guys, the time where a man becomes a hero to his beloved by slaying a dragon is still with us - and it never left! The Dragon every woman wants her man to slay for her is the dragon of his own craziness, his own irresponsibility, his own insensitiveness. The list goes on. These are the dragons that truly need to be slayed by every man before he can live happily ever after.
Here's a little taste of our book, but I'm not cutting and pasting, I'm writing from memory because this is one of the most important points in LLL. When our friends bought Red Wheel/Weiser they said to us, "Now you can write that book sharing your relationship secrets with the world." We said, truthfully, "We don't have any secrets to why we love each other so." And they replied "Well, you'd better get some secrets because we're going to publish that book!"
So when I sat down to write LLL it hit me: The reason our relationship has grown to be the gorgeous achievment crowning our lives is because we put our relationship first. Period. That's it. If you do that, you're going to have a great relationship.
That means, you don't put your family, your friends, your job, your hobbies, your old ways, your new ways, your dreams, your fears, your craziness - you don't put ANYTHING ahead of your relationship. The love that the two of you share is the carrot that gets you to move off your ass and get away from being the selfish loner you used to be. You cannot take your bachelorhood with you into a relationship. Your bachelor friends will have to either accept the new you or accept that they won't be seeing you much anymore.
How can you tell if you love someone? In my case, I fell in love with Amy's voice over the phone and the wisdom she imparted to me - it ddin't hurt that I love the way she looks, too! We met in October 1974 and moved in together here in this very house in May of 1975 and I quickly found that I just love the way she lives. I liked watching her live. I like my life with her and I don't like to be without her. Am I co-dependent? What the hell does that mean? I will listen to the advice of any therapist who has a relationship as good as I do. What's that I hear? The silence is deafening. Every therapist I know or know of either doesn't have as good a relationship as we do or is on their second, third or fourth marriage. Don't take money advice from a poor person and don't take relationship advice from someone incapable (so far) of having a great relationship.
So, to sum up, if you are with someone and you want the relationship to improve, then don't be cheap and put the relationship first. That means ahead of you children, too! I'm sort of violating my own rule here because I don't have children but I know this to be true - children want their parents to love each other and be a unit that even their children can't break apart. They try all the time to play their parents but my research has shown that parents who put their relationship ahead of their kids have better relationships with their children. Children can handle being in second place to their parents loving relationship. Their are too many divorces in families that put the children first and that is very bad for the children. I'm a child of divorce and it is not a good thing, no matter how common it is now. A plague is common to many people but that doesn't make it good or acceptable.
Amy and I are hopeful that one day soon love will sweep over the planet like a plague and counteract all the fear and greed and selfishness and egotism that are consuming so many people who ought to know better. What's really terrible is how their actions hurt so many other people. For a long time I have written that the problems between nations and their peoples is a reflection of the problems between men and women, women and women, men and men, and the other combinations that comprise the relationships of this world.
I don't know everything but I know a lot about love. It works best when both partners are committed to growing individually as people, dealing with their individual problems with the loving support of their partner. Remember, you either grow together or you'll grow apart.
Amy and I wish you love, light and laughter all ways and always! Have a happy, healthy and safe Valentine's Day.
Monte Farber & Amy Zerner |
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