March With Venus: 94 Love Games (Book 7) (3 page)

This chart shows the five
loops
through which your relationship must go through to be sustainable over a long period.

These loops are yourself, your partner, your couple, your future as a couple (that is, how you project your relationship in the future), and key success factors.

For your relationship – and any relationship, for that matter – to strengthen and grow, you have to pay attention to five key success factors: physical, spiritual, mental, financial and biological.

You and your partner do not have to be in sync on all five, but ticking at least three elements off the list can significantly increase your chances of marital bliss in the long term.

These five KSF are what I called the ‘fulcrum of a blossoming relationship,’ essential elements that constitute the foundation of any successful relationship.

If you can improve any of these five elements – doing so simultaneously is the preferred option – you have a higher probably of strengthening your relationship and laying a favorable groundwork for the love games you fancy.

Know yourself.

First and foremost, you should know yourself before embarking on a relationship – any relationship, for that matter.

Understand what motivates you, your personality type and the kind of lover you want.

This is important because you must achieve inner peace and understanding before reaching out to someone and extending your love and passion.

If you don’t fully understand yourself and grasp what defines your soul, you are on your way to not one, but many relationships, the kind that usually end up in nightmares, arguments and much, much pain.

Know yourself first, so you can then know and appreciate the other person.

Joshua Ackerman, Vladas Griskevicius and Norman P. Li, in a recent
paper
discussed the best way to communicate commitment in romantic relationships, insisting on the importance of self-realization before communicating with your partner.

In other words, it is important that you know where you are personally, in terms of life priorities, before you embark someone else in your life journey.

As the authors wrote in the article, the lack of commitment and understanding could create far more pain than gain, introducing their paper with “’
I love you.’ These three little words have inspired eons of hope and devotion, sacrifice and tragedy.”

I find this quote pretty powerful, and it agrees 100% with the central theme in this book.

Know your partner.

This is a difficult tip because we humans are complicated, and you can never know someone thoroughly.

In fact, you can only know a lover in two distinct ways: what he or she allows you to see, and what you conclude after close, regular scrutiny.

The last part takes dedication unless you have some kind of supernatural power or extraordinary ability – which some people have, mind you.

So all you can do is talk to your partner and ask him or her to share personal things. Whenever he or she does, pay attention. Don’t rush things; take it easy and let him or her open up gradually.

Not long ago, a Chinese reader emailed me about a pressing issue she was grappling with. The main theme was how to make decisions in your relationship.

Her husband, a man bred in the conservative values of rural China, “gobbles up all the air in the house,” always wanting to take center stage in the decision-making for their couple, children and familial life.

My first question to Sheila X. was how long she had been with her man. To which she answered: 18 years.

My follow-up question was: Was he like that at the beginning or has he changed over the years? The answer was affirmative.

Long story short, Sheila relished the authoritativeness of her husband at the beginning – I needed a ‘strong’ man in my life, she quipped – but now she finds him suffocating.

I gave her a few tips to rekindle passion in her relationship, get to know her man better, understand his priorities and challenges, and help him in his vicissitudes.

I was very happy yesterday when Sheila wrote me back, announcing improvements in her relationship and spending more
quality time
with her hubby.

“We now have meaningful conversations, like we did two decades ago. I got my man back…just peaceful, charming and cuddly as before. Thank you,” were the last words in her email.

A Few More Things

Develop your skills patiently.

With love games, you’ve got to be patient, improve on your
game
to make the overall game pleasurable for you and your lover.

Don’t shun creativity and the ability to expand on your existing skill set, or to learn new things.

As everything else in life, romance needs a bit of innate talent and much, much practice to be fully honed.

To polish your abilities, find peace and joy in learning on your own.

Be slow as a snail – sometimes.

Love matters often require slowness, smoothness, sensuality…all things that develop, grow and blossom in slow motion.

I want you to think of yourself as a snail. Slow…but efficient as you embark on your romantic play.

The snail always reaches its destination, does it not?

And so does the turtle. In life, the key thing is not always speed, but the ability to chart a course, protect yourself against adversity and implement your life plan.

Anything else is pure distraction, whether it comes from your own mind or other people.

Ultimately, life is a journey and a marathon – and what matters most is not your position at the beginning or where you are mid-course.

Accept your lover as he or she is.

Be patient and accept your partner as he or she is.

Well, I don’t need to tell you this, because you are with him or her – not anyone else – for a reason.

But it is important to repeat this, because many couples start on a positive footing, and everything is good, and everybody is jolly…and then all of a sudden, things don’t work as expected.

“You’ve changed!”

“No,
YOU
have changed!

Those are typically the kind of irate conversations – all centered on the blame game – you hear from disgruntled lovers.

So, I’m repeating it again here: Accept your lover as he or she is.

If he or she is not into your
games,
don’t force it. Just take it easy – when the time is right, you will re-enact your romantic scenario.

Don’t forget what I said at the beginning about the brain being the number one sexual organ in your body – not your genitalia.

And here is a general advice: Don’t try to change people; you will only end up frustrated because people only change when they want to or are forced to.

Every person you meet in life is unique, has a unique destiny, and has a unique contribution to make to Planet Earth.

Accept people as they are – and walk away if your energy level does not match the other person’s energy level.

The lesson we must learn from human relationships is accepting people for who they are, without expecting our happiness to be totally dependent upon anyone.

So don’t try to change anyone, except yourself. You don't need to change who you are in relation to life's experiences, only our negative reactions to these events.

Whether you see the bottle half-full or half-empty depends on you, not the bottle or its content.

Be prepared to be disappointed.

Another big one: Not everyone is into love games, and your partner might be one of those people.

Does it mean that he or she is not cool?

Not at all.

It just means he or she is not into romantic plays – the same way some people don’t like baseball or jazz or smart phone alarms or a neighbor’s dog barking in the wee hours…(Oh, actually the last one is me! I love dogs, but I hate it when my neighbor’s puppy barks at night!)

So what’s my point here?

Adjust your expectations based on your lover’s reactions or nature.

Gear up for disappointment and adjust your expectations accordingly.

That way, you control your patience and can easily accept pain and frustration, especially if what you are awaiting is too slow to manifest itself.

Paulo Coelho, in
Veronica Decides to Die,
wrote that the two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.

I could not agree more. The essence of it all, if you think of it, is to find the right mental balance to accept whatever we receive, regardless of what we expected originally.

. For a deeper conversation on how to life fully and influence people, see
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KY8RZVA

My View on Love Games

Before everything, let me just remind you this is not an X-rated book – at least that’s not how I view it or wrote it.

I consider sex and love play parts of human biology, a necessity of life.

I place them right at the bottom of the Abraham Maslow’s Need Hierarchy, alongside the biological functions of eating, drinking, sleeping and defecating.

But I ascribe a bit more importance to sex in that it involves (normally) another person.

That means, you have two bodies merging, transmitting energy, communicating vibrations and exchanging (again, when done normally) good and blissful energy.

This is how I look at sex: a function of the human senses, a byproduct of our innate mating abilities, but most importantly, a chemical equation.

Yes, love is a chemical equation in which what you give comes back to two-fold or more, especially when the other person reciprocates not just once, but over a long period of time.

So what’s my point here?

I’m simply saying that before you start thinking about a sex vision or love play, think about karma.

Think about the need to fulfill secret and long-held urges, but to do so with your loved one, or if impossible, do it in a way that preserves your couple or marriage.

If your reverie involves a cheating aspect, again, going back to karma, don’t be surprised if your partner also cheats on you or if your relationship unravels in the end.

Don’t get me wrong: Some fantasies cannot be, and should never be, materialized.

You are better off keeping them in the confines of your brain, at the same location where you hold your darkest secrets.

Other fantasies are not bad, but they cannot be implemented because of your partner’s beliefs and views – or your own.

So that is why, in conclusion, I advocate fantasies you can gradually share with your partner without risking the “oh my God” look on his/her face, or the guilt that ensues when he/she sees you as a totally different person, the kind he/she would not have wanted to mate with if he/she had known of certain things in the first place.

We don’t want that to happen, do we?

The goal here is to have fun…. Fun at strategizing over a kinky, dirty scenario! Fun at surprising your sweetheart! Fun at implementing your fantasy set-up! And finally, fun at having fun while doing all these things…and (re)igniting passion in your relationship.