Creating Sparks That Last & All Things Relationships

How to Achieve Relationship Success? Image: Elora Canne Quality interactions - short term Combined dreams - long term Quality Interactions: For any relationship to be successful, you have to experience quality interactions that will draw you closer together and create lasting memories that you share. Last month we spoke about what we want more of in a relationship. Here’s the link if you missed it:  create-relationship-you-want The thing is, your partner also has their own desires for your relationship together. Here’s where the ‘how-to’ of a successful relationship comes in: A) Both partners write a list of 5 achievable date ideas for your relationship that will drive it to success. B) Swap lists and write a short list of your partners choices that you’d like to pursue. C) From each of your short lists, pick a starting point. Don’t over complicate things. Baby steps towards your relationship success will ensure sustainable practice in the long-run. Combined Dreams: Now that you bo...

How Do They Shape Our Identity? https://unsplash.com/@sagefriedman I’ve been thinking long and hard about this question over the years. I mean, change is inevitable, but how much of that change is influenced by our partners? How much of our core self remains untouched? Do you know? Are you the same person you were 10 years ago? 20 Years ago? No, of course you aren’t, because growth changes our perspective of everything. https://unsplash.com/@anthonytori So how do you maintain the you whom you have crafted so hard to forge, while evolving with adaptations to reality? There are 6 questions below that will help you find the answer. Examining your morals and ethics goes a long way to observing the person within that you want to portray to the world. To help keep your identity intact within the framework of a relationship, I’ve created a fun, anonymous survey that’ll help you define your beliefs. No email required! caleb-george-VL9ugqp_mko-unsplash It’s a blend of thoughtful, deep questions...

Holiday Reads to Help with your Relationships https://unsplash.com/@thoughtcatalog As the holidays get near, it's difficult to keep daily routines running smoothly and this is a problem for people who don't like their days disrupted. It's particularly difficult when you have friends or family staying for long periods through the holiday season. I've listed some books below that will help us understand the complexities in a range of relationships, and help us to see the perspective of the other person, or people, as well.  The following books relate to aspects of our relationship with: Ourselves  Our parents  Partner  Children   Extended family, friends or even colleagues.  I have read them all and have gained different insights from each one. (I am in NO WAY affiliated). We'll start with our relationship with ourselves, because ultimately, that's where our interactions stem from, in every single relationship we encounter. Hector and the Search for Happ...

Grow Into Love As I see it, a relationship should evolve with experience and maturity just as our preferences in foods and beverages do. Elora Canne: En Route memoir To explain the quote above, we'll start with loving ice cream and later, with a more health conscious awareness, we turn to frozen yoghurt as a delicious alternative.  As age creeps up and with it a broader perspective, green smoothies become the next best thing to improve our health and meet our flavour needs.  Then time wears on and we try an even healthier option – say kombucha – as our bodies begin the journey into our wisdom years. Let's Thrive on our Relationship Journey By and by we realize there really is no magic elixir to prevent life and relationship mishaps, but most importantly of all, the realization hits that all of these beverages we’ve enjoyed along our relationship journey have one thing in common – they have been primarily mixed with water. Bland, tasteless, colorless water. And that is exactly ...

I Have Good News for You So far, you have followed mine and James' progress into blissful mid-life marriage. You've read of our ups and downs through our relationship success, and now I'm overjoyed to share that I've created an ebook for you from our Date Year experiences! https://unsplash.com/@valentinantonucci It's the sequel to my memoir, out later this year, but gives the backstory to our tumultuous young beginnings and into keeping the spark alive through three and a half decades together. It has the same title as the blog, Creating Sparks that Last by Elora Canne. It's available for preorder today, at the link below. I want in!   Here's a Cheeky Joke to Make You Smile It's an old joke that people tell: Women need a  reason  to have sex, men just need a  place . - From Tonja Vallin in her article The Surprising Benefits of Holding Hands - Including Better Sex Here's the full article if you're interested   It's an informative look at the ...

Fast Track Your Relationship Success I’ll admit straight off that relationships are complex, but I can guarantee  one secret weapon you need, for relationship success. https://unsplash.com/@coopery “We do not see the world as it is, we see it as we are.” Anaïs Nin You are your own secret weapon in every relationship you encounter. The deeper you know yourself, the happier your relationships will be. Know your triggers. Know your boundaries. Know your deal breakers. If you know those things intimately about yourself, you have the power to steer your choices in the direction of your happiness. When you know yourself so well, you understand your own perspective more clearly. You understand why you are hurt by someone’s words or actions because it originates in your psyche. Your thoughts about that situation. I’m not discounting the fact that there are hurtful people in the world, I am exemplifying your strength of character to navigate your perspective inwards. Understand that you ca...

What aspect of relationships would you like to discuss in our new series? Image credit Priscilla du Preez via Unsplash Hi blogger fam, I'm dropping into your inbox on a Monday instead of Friday today - SURPRISE! New Blog Series I'm starting a fresh conversation here on the blog and I'd appreciate your input. But more on that in a minute. The reason for today's post is to let you know that I'll be sending out an email to all my blog fam later in the week. The topic is the same, but I needed to give you a heads-up. The reason for the heads-up is because I'll be sending the email via Mailerlite through my gmail address. If you don't already have me in your inbox, it might mark it as suspicious. It even marked it as suspicious for me when I sent myself a tester email haha. Image credit Harli Marten via Unsplash Navigating relationships can be tricky Tell me I'm not the only one who feels like this, right? And so, I'm excited to launch a brand new series ...

NO SPARK STAYS ALIGHT WITHOUT EFFORT Our Date Event for the year proved to be thoroughly worthwhile. James and I had bonded over new experiences and quality time alone, but that by no means meant we could sit back and watch our marriage continue to flourish all on its own. Just as there is no perfect person out there, yes I’m talking to you, there is also no perfect relationship or marriage out there. If you consider for a moment, that essentially you are two strangers from different backgrounds with your own opinions, cultures and personality, so you are bound to disagree on some topics, which is to be expected. And if you’re not disagreeing some of the time, I would venture to say that one of you is sacrificing too much of your self or possibly even being unnecessarily passive.  We should be playing to each others’ strengths not highlighting weaknesses, but building them up as best we know how. Relationships require fine-tuning all the time Every day we are faced with situations...

 Welcome and enjoy finding a whole new you. Image credit to Toa Heftiba at Unsplash It is so wonderful to have you in our reading room. We are delighted to share with you, our discovery of intricate connections that we made on our year-long dating project. Though we have been married for A Very Long Time, there is always something new to learn about each other and ourselves. This is the secret sauce to keeping your relationship alive - moving with the changing environment that we constantly find ourselves in as we progress along our daily lives.  Our daily lives become our years together. I do hope you enjoy reading about our fun and quirky dates. You'll find it  at this link.  I'd love to hear date ideas of your own, as well as your feedback once you've read 'Creating Sparks That Last'.