
Below I've gleaned a few things from a great resource on how to bring romance into your relationship "1001 Ways to Be Romantic" by Gregory Godek. A great read and a worthwhile investment in your love relationship!
SOME DEFINITIONS
Romantic love - is the desire for emotional and physical intimacy with another person. The attraction and desire that's filled with excitement and mystery for someone.
To be romantic is to bring these kinds of feelings into the relationship. Helping to remind the one you love that what you have can be at times, extraordinary. Even though relationships have burdens it is possible to enjoy the excitement and mystery of loving the one your with.
Any long-term relationship there is routine, boredom, and disappointment. How can there not? Allowing yourself to take your intimate partner for granted puts the relationship at risk and leads to further dissatisfaction. By creating romance you remind one another the passion you can have for each other.
Romance is what makes your intimate partner different from your first family relationships (parents, siblings) and your relationships with your friends or children.
Being romantic is available to anyone even if you don't know how, or feel you can't, or have simply lost hope of every having it again.
WHAT ROMANCE IS NOT
Romance is not counseling. Garbage, dishes, and laundry are not romantic. Yet no romance is possible when basic commitments are not honored. Know the duties of shared living and take time to make the agreements that make living together possible.
Romance is not able to produce feelings that were never there or have long since died out. It is based on attraction and desire already established and positive feelings having been nurtured at some level.
Cards, Candy, & Flowers. These are only the most basic of tools of the romantic. Cards and the other tokens of love must always be given on holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries and meeting that requirement is not being romantic. That is the bare minimum behavior if you ever want to foster affection in your mate. Forgetting these are like forgetting to pick up the children from the school!
ROMANTIC IDEAS
Demonstrate passion by taking what you'd normally do and make it extraordinary.
This takes some creativity and with some thought you can do it. This means you don't have to reinvent your romantic ideas from scratch. You can add something extra, make it different, and it moves from an ordinary token of love to an extraordinary, big, creative romantic gesture.
It doesn't mean elaborate or expensive, but it can be. If you want to fly roundtrip to Paris just to have lunch--wow! That's romantic! But you can also just do what Gregory Godek shares in his book, "1001 Ways to be romantic": Give your lover a dozen roses--and do it with a creative twist. Give eleven red roses and one white rose. Attach a note reads, "In every bunch there's one who stands out--that's you".
TEN IDEAS FROM "1001 WAYS TO BE ROMANTIC"
- Make a BIG card--out of an appliance box.
- Fake a power outage 9throw the breaker) with no TV, computer, or furnace, you'll have no distractions and can enjoy candles fireplace and cuddling.
- Long-stemmed chocolate roses
- Buy the entire product line of your partner's favorite fragrance: soaps, crèmes, candles, perfume.
- Be prepared by creating a gift drawer--guy gifts ahead of time. On sale, off-season, discounted quantities, and just on a whim. Now you are prepared!
- Create romantic to-do checklists: Daily (kisses, complements, 20 min. uninterrupted time together), Weekly (small unexpected gift, two insights you learned this week, one little love note), Monthly (one romantic surprise, restock gift card stash, rent two romantic movies), and Yearly (plan next anniversary, think of unusual ways to celebrate partners birthday, make plans for next Valentines Day in advance).
- Consider gift-of-the-month clubs: Beer, Romantic restaurant, New Ice Cream Flavor, Stuffed Animal, Back Rub; you get the idea.
- Women can send flowers to their partner at work.
- Practice "telepathy romance". When apart, agree to stop and think of each other at the same time for one uninterrupted minute.
- Go outside in the morning and warm up her car.
What all this really means is that to stave off normal boredom and disappointment of everyday life together, you must intentionally work hard at your love relationship and make it an important priority in your life.
The metaphor of a plant is useful here. It needs sunshine; water, nutrients, and warmth, or it may die. It might not; it may just look weak and withered. Or it could die. And once dead, it may be simply impossible to make it live again no mater how much you want it to.
Relationships are alive and need your care because once they die; they rarely come back to life. It's up to you to prevent this and romance is a start.
How has someone created romance in you life?
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