By Mirabelle Summers
Author of Get A Great Guy Guide
If you want genuine men and not just any man, this will challenge your beliefs about love and attraction, and show you the way to become a seduction success story, check this out…
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3 Ways To Keep Your Relationship Fresh
Men are funny creatures. Many of them believe – without any sense of irony – that committing to a girl is like a death sentence, because a girl who’s comfortable in her relationship will:
* Stop wearing sexy underwear,
* Gain weight,
* Start nagging, and
* Turn into his mother.
Ridiculous, I know.
But then I thought about the young women I knew who’d settled into long-term relationships…
…And I realized that very few of them looked as healthy as they did when they were single.
Most of them were significantly heavier, and they didn’t smile as easily as they used to. All the vibrancy they once had was gone.
What had happened? Was this a natural part of the process of getting older? Was it a consequence of getting comfortable in their relationships? Or were these young women just not making an effort anymore?
REVIEW: YOUR BODY IS MORE THAN AN OBJECT
Let’s review some body philosophy here.
No matter what age you are at in life, your body is a temple. Regardless of whether you are 20 or 40, in a relationship or single, skinny or overweight, your body deserves nurturing and care.
Your body should move easily and lightly, with grace and elegance. You should feel comfortable walking without experiencing shortness of breath. You should feel free to dance and move your body in joyous ways, without caring if anybody is looking.
We’re gotten misled by the cosmetics and fashion industries to believe that it’s our body’s APPEARANCE that matters most.
Yes, your appearance matters some, but not as much as how you MOVE.
The way you hold yourself and make even the slightest gesture tells a man a lot about who you are.
A woman who is comfortable in her own skin will smile easily, laugh easily, touch someone else easily, and move with grace. HEALTH is irresistible to men.
But all too often, we treat our bodies as sexual objects that we adorn to attract to men. It’s almost as if our bodies are things that BELONG to us, rather than BEING us. We say things like, “He only wants you for your body.” We even feel that our bodies actually come between us and the pure love we desire.
But if you disassociate from your body and look at something you own, rather than who you are, then you’re going to have a hard time attracting good men.
You see, men can immediately tell whether a woman is comfortable in her body, and a woman who is comfortable in her own skin is a big turn-on.
Men know that she’ll be more fun in the bedroom, because she won’t be worried about her “wobbly bits” or being seen naked by him. She won’t be self-conscious about her body, either, which is also wonderfully attractive.
In fact, I would even go so far as to say that it’s more important to (most) men that you’re comfortable in your skin than that you have a great body!
So, from this perspective, then, it shouldn’t matter if a woman gains weight when she’s in a relationship. As long as she loves her body, that’s all that matters … right?
HOW RELATIONSHIPS AFFECT YOUR WEIGHT
Weight isn’t just a matter of looking good. It’s also a matter of being healthy.
As we get older, we all gain weight. Part of gaining weight in a relationship is the simple process of getting older. Our metabolism slows down, and we no longer burn off calories so easily.
Too, when we’re in a relationship, we often find ourselves eating more food than we would have if we were single. I notice this all the time at home.
When my partner dishes up the dinner he’s cooked, he always gives us equal portions … never mind the fact that I’m half his size! I have to be very aware that if I ate the same as he did, my weight would balloon out of proportion.
Being in a relationship also creates temptation. When you’re in a relationship, it can be all too easy to indulge together.
You want to spoil one another, and one of the easiest ways to do this is through food. You may find yourself eating dessert more or drinking more than you would if you lived alone.
Too, you may find it more difficult to stay physically active when you’re in a relationship.
Whereas you had a lot of time as a single person to go to the gym, go running or play sports, you now fill up that spare time with couple activities. And when there’s a choice between snuggling up on the sofa and going to the gym, you tend to choose the former.
It can be scary to see that you’ve put on ten pounds since you started dating, but the measurement on those scales is your wakeup call.
At a certain point, you will have to make a break with the indulgent lifestyle of courtship and find ways to maintain your weight within the relationship, if you are going to stay healthy.
If you have to lose weight on your own, it will be much harder than doing it as a couple. That’s why I often recommend that couples make staying healthy a priority TOGETHER.
They can encourage one another to make healthy food choices, cook low-calorie meals, and stay physically active. For example, a thirty-minute stroll after dinner is a great way to unwind and much better for you than watching a sitcom on television.
You may never get back that body you had when you were 18 and tearing up the town, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
As long as you’re healthy and full of energy, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a spot of cellulite or wider hips. For most men, curves on a woman are alluring.
Men realize that real women don’t look like centerfolds, and they honestly don’t mind. They find you attractive for YOU.
DON’T RUN YOURSELF DRY
Many men believe that women don’t make the same effort with their appearance once they’ve gotten into a relationship.
They think that the only reason women try to look good is in order to attract a man. Once she’s got him, she doesn’t need to try anymore.
I think this is a bunch of baloney. Women want to look good for a number of reasons, of which attracting a man is only a small part. We enjoy feeling healthy and looking great, regardless of whether there’s a man in our life.
But sometimes life gets us down. We have so many pressures on us that we just want to veg when we get home. We want to put our hair in a ponytail and throw on our sweatpants. We don’t have the time or energy to look sexy 24-7.
So it’s not the relationship per se that makes a woman quit putting as much effort into her appearance. Rather, it’s LIFE.
When a woman is busy and stressed, she can’t put her whole heart and mind into looking sexy for her partner, because she’s got other things on her mind. She may need help with everything that needs doing, and when her partner doesn’t respond, nagging him is a pretty natural reaction.
No wonder men think that women let themselves go when they get into a relationship. It’s because life gets so overwhelming!
If you feel like you’ve become tired, overweight, and completely uninspired when it comes to feeling attractive, then you need to make a serious life assessment.
If you keep up the pace as it is now, the stress may bleed your relationship dry.
You need to make time for fun. You need to make time for YOU. You need to give yourself space and leisure time to remember what it feels like to be beautiful.
We, women, are lucky in many ways. We have a number of beauty treatments available to us to help us feel more in tune with our bodies, including massage, facials, and manicures. Simply going to a day spa can help us feel more centered, grounded, and refreshed.
You may not feel that you deserve it. Spending so much money on yourself can be scary. Too, you may not feel that you have the time. There’s so much to do, and if YOU don’t do it, you worry that it won’t get done or it will get done wrong.
So you soldier on, self-importantly … and get more irritable and short-tempered by the minute.
For your partner’s sake and your own, you have to ask yourself the question: are all those “important” things in your life really so important?
Do you REALLY have to have everything done perfectly? Can’t you delegate, even if it means giving up a tiny bit of control?
If you take the time to consider these ideas and develop a plan to stay healthy, both physically and emotionally, then your relationship will reap the rewards.
You don’t have to be skinny and submissive to be a good partner, but you DO have to be healthy and happy. If you feel that your gorgeous radiance has started to go dim, do something about it!
Also, if you want genuine men and not just any man, let us challenge your beliefs about love and attraction, and show you the way to become a seduction success story…
Check out this presentation…
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No games. No scripted lines. Real life dating advice for real women!
thanks very much i love all i have read
WOW. I really had an “A-Ha” moment when I read the statement, “..it’s almost as if our bodies are things that BELONG to us, rather than BEING us…”. Although I’m health conscious, and do treat my body “as my temple”, I know that I’ve also thought of my body as a separate part of me. That sounds odd to say, but I totally understood this bit of advice. I really need to start loving my body because it’s just as much a part of me as my intellect, my personality, my value system, etc. I have been massively critical of my looks….never quite satisfied….and not embracing the little idiosyncrasies about my body that makes me so unique….and beautiful! I even have a magnet on my fridge that says “You are beauty-full”….but I need to realize this is a fact both inside and out! I’m not saying that I’m Super Model gorgeous….but I AM beautiful because I’m one-of-a-kind, unique, and specially made by God. I’m not going to be beautiful to EVERY man ( *whew*…I wouldn’t even wanna be!), but I AM going to be drop-dead gorgeous to that one, very special, man that I’m destined to be with! I can’t wait! He is going to be one very lucky guy to have a woman that is complete….but not finished!! Thank you for this eye-opening article! 🙂
OMG, If us girls have to keep all this stuf in mind we would not even have time to have sex–fix dinner–make the bed–or go to work and make money–just like he does. WOW–super girl –woman. I Keep your body in shape and active for MYself–I have a great body–I keep it that way. Red hair–brown eyes–etc. I call it genes –not to be confused with jeans–Be-gads–wear a dress–shorts–a cute blouse for yourself to look great and who cares if men ogle you or not. Guys have asked me to marry them when all I did was have a dance with them so I said to one “I never marry anyone if I do not know their name–He answered–“My name is James, now will you marry me?–I did not –but I loved his answer.FOOD–two of my fiends took me to dinner for my birthday at different times–so nice of them but I went for the social outing and to have fun–but-geeeze–they went to eat and that is all they did in between complaining about the food they took forks full of food and swallowed it –fast–I never went with them for food again. Qusestion–how pleasant is that guys?? Another thing–If a man likes you or loves you he will let you know At a dance a guy came to me and said “I bet you have all kinds of sexy night things you wear when you are with a guy.” My answer–I do not own even one of the above–If a guy goes home with me I barely get in the door and he strips me naked–NOW THAT IS HIS MOVE AND I LET HIM HAVE IT AND I LIKE IT. SO CHILL-OUT GIRL–IT’S ALWAYS THERE. NOT MY PROBLEM
I love it,
Thank you!
Pressure, pressure, pressure…must always look perfect, must always look 18, must be good sex slave, must be perfect, must see self as less if not perfect, skinny, 18, Phd, looks, looks, looks, looks. I am just a hole for men, I am just hole for men, no personhood, no personhood, no personhood.
Yes, always be perfect. How do you suggest one be this? Fact is…We can be good with who we are but not LOOK perfect and I detest a society that demands lookism…this unreal physical perfection crap is just that and is not true to everyone or throughout the world
Me and my ex girlfriend broke up like per month ago and we stopped speaking for about two weeks
then she texted me and is always wanting to grasp almost everything going on
in my daily life but doesn’t choose to share what is actually going on in her.. I even now love her but knowing she like another guy and doesn’t
have thoughts for me anymore hurts and was wondering how I could cease
speaking to her? I just can’t quit.. Is there something I can do to help make it easier?.