Relationship Advice For Parents:

You Need Romance Too

by Bob Lancer

Relationship advice for parents is not that prevalent in today's self-help marketplace. And yet, parents, perhaps more than anyone else, require the loving spice of sexy affection that is romance passing between them.  They won't die without it, if by life you mean only the active heartbeat that can be sustained through artificial, mechanical means. Romance is not essential to life like air, water, food, sleep and exercise, but it is a necessity for genuine matrimonial bonding.  Friendship and love-making, humane teamwork, honest communication and giving one another space for regrouping are all integral to the thriving marriage, but no more so than the consistent nurturing of the romantic spark of secret infatuation that lives when it is shared.

The relationship advice presented in this article is primarily based on the fact that the influence of romance in your marriage impacts your children deeply.  A dearth of it drains you emotionally and encloses your sentiment with blank stares, making you seem inaccessible and therefore unreliable to your child. The child who feels this deficit of emotional bonding soon demonstrates an excess of difficult behavior. On the other hand, when spouses give play to their romantic sides, they bring the their own overflowing heart to their child, nurturing child's trust with bright, loving patience, unity and understanding that naturally inspires the child's most caring self-direction.

Beyond impacting your capacity to bond with your child, the quality of your relationship with your mate models the kind of relationship your child will form and gravitate toward.  A marriage hardened by a lack of loving softness leads children to relate insensitively with others, with themselves, and toward their environment; and it often drives them to compensate by entering wildly fiery relationships that toss responsibilities to the wind.  By following the relationship advice presented here, you will be automatically passing on its wisdom to your child.

Out of love for our child, then, we parents need to remember that parents need romance too, and most likely most of all.  Romance may include flowers and candy, perfume and feathers, a dance on a date, but not necessarily.  Those special eruptions of the internal, volcanic warmth that builds through mild affectionate interplay over time are just punctuations that occasionally mark the sentence of daily kindling. Romance grows through caring looks, soft kisses that may last only a second, a fleeting touch as you walk by that leaves both wanting more.  Isn't this pleasant relationship advice to follow?

We adults often find it easier to trust young children with our hearts than other adults because in childhood adults intimidated us with the threat of their size.  The conditioning of childhood shapes the personality for a long time, until self-work undoes the limitations.  So we carry our childhood fears of other adults, until we confront them.

Confronting your fear of intimacy is the first real step to kindling, or rekindling, the spark of romance and claiming or retrieving a love-life. Take total responsibility for the way that you relate with your mate.  That bit of relatioinship advice is the foundation upon which your ability to create a loving relationship relies. If you cannot trust your mate it is not she who needs to change.  If you cannot lovingly look, touch, and embrace in a way that returns infatuation, it is not he who dams the flow of romance in your life.

How you see your mate is not your mate's responsibility. The attitude you express toward another is an experience you give to yourself. Don't wait for your mate to thaw your heart's frost.  Engage the warmth of a giving look melt the barriers that protect only loneliness.  It only takes a momentary glance that says, "You are safe with me."  You are always free to set out in a new direction.  Here is a tip for how to follow all of the relationship advice presented here: taking one baby step at a time is enough to soon hear yourself calling your lover "baby" once again.  

To learn more about your power to create the relationship you want, and to receive relationship advice on how to find your soulmate or fulfill the soulmate potential of your relationship, see Bob Lancer's book, The Soulmate Process: