You Appreciate Them. But Do You Show Your Appreciation?

It's not hard to love someone wholeheartedly. The problem is we forget too soon. We forget what made us love them in the first place, we forget when we fell in love with them and that spark becomes old and tends to be ignored. The only thing that should change overtime with love is the increased amount of it. Not the way we treat our lover, not the way we see our lover and most importantly not the loving gestures we bestow upon our partner. If it does then was it ever really love? 

We are all victims of it; we court our partners in the beginning, we fall in love with them and overtime our love becomes more of a business. We marry, we have children and the loving gestures and all of the things we did to win our loves become outdated.  We become victims of time. Time and the fortunate feeling of having someone to come home to hardens us and tricks our minds into believing the promise of tomorrow when really there is no promise of tomorrow.

This leads me to writing this blog article- in hopes that the lovers may understand the importance of showing their appreciation to their partners everyday. Love has no days off and if it needs any days off then you need to reevaluate your definition of love.  Love yearns for presence. It does not need presence but it yearns for it continuously. If the presence of your lover overtime becomes unnecessary then you too have become a victim of time.

Time has a funny way of sucking the gratitude from our hearts. We become drenched in routine. If you and your partner have children you become used to waking up, making them breakfast, getting them to school and you off to work on time. We forget when we wake up to roll over and simply kiss our loved one good morning because we have been blessed to wake up another day next to them. We forget to stare at our loved ones as they sleep and realize how lucky we are to have someone to go to sleep with. This is how time defeats us; it drags us into repetition and we begin to take everything for granted because it is familiar to us.

It is not until something is lost, unusual, or caused in pain that we truly appreciate it. Why is this? And why does it take an unfortunate event in love for us to realize our negligence towards our partners and our lack of showing appreciation to them? Why does it take tragedy, unfaithfulness, or hurtful words to wake us up and realize we need to love our partner better?

Long distance relationships are becoming very familiar in our society and you would think that these would be the individuals who were appreciative of their love more than those loving in presence. However, those in long distance relationships also fall victim to time. The video chats become unnecessary because both parties become “too comfortable”. The sweet phone calls during the day become forgotten because a Facebook status told them exactly what their partner was doing.  Flower deliveries, sweet emails, and long Skype dates become obsolete because the courting is no longer applicable. Then they wonder why they begin feeling insignificant, unfulfilled and empty in their relationships. Long distance relationships are the hardest ones to succeed – this is not because of lack of faithfulness, but lack of attention, love and appreciation. 

Distance does not pull two hearts apart, the ones involved do. Distance does not make you unfaithful. Love that falls into these untrustworthy traps do so because they lack fulfillment and the number one lacking gesture is appreciation. We do not forget to be thankful we just forget to show how thankful we are.

I know the days seem long when you are caring for your children, if you are newly married, or just trying to juggle school and work. We get so caught up in our daily schedules that we place more time in temporary things (work, school, bills) and less time to something that can be eternal – LOVE. We need to stop neglecting our loves and we need to show our appreciation daily. A simple “I love you” should be the first thing you say to your partner when you two awake in the morning and the last thing you say when you two lay to bed at night. Men, send her flowers and a card, take her out to dinner, give her a break from the kids. Ladies, make his favorite meal, give him a break from the kids, make him feel like a man at ALL times.

Showing appreciation is not hard because we already appreciate our partners but time makes it hard to remember. Time builds familiarity but it is imperative to remember to never let time take away from your love. Do not let the clock drag in neglect. Love everyday; give everyday, show your gratefulness everyday. Not sometimes but ALWAYS.

The Written words of AJT