Simple Kindness: #8

TREAT YOUR PARTNER AS YOU WANT TO BE TREATED

We all want to come home each day to a loving, supportive partner and a relationship that's a refuge from the stresses outside. This is our hope when we become partnered with another. If we are fortunate, we may get what we want, but not before life teaches us that we and our partner can disappoint each other, that it takes work and determination to remain together, and that stress can come from many directions. It's in the course of learning these lessons, sharing experiences, and creating our family that we reap the partnership's true lasting rewards: acceptance, understanding, comfort, and well-tested love.


REMINDERS

* Commit to keeping your partnership strong-recognize that at times each of you will expend more effort and do more compromising than the other.

* Be respectful and considerate, even if you've been together for a long time. Be pleased to see your partner, give compliments, offer to do them a favor, show them that you are deeply concerned for them.

* Disagree fairly- don't always insist on having to be right. Try to resolve arguments rather than allowing them to fester. Let some things go, even when it's difficult. Never use physical force or tolerate its use against you.

* Try to be supportive through difficult times. Encourage your partner to be hopeful, assist in finding help for your partner when it's needed.

* Accept your partner, but encourage and reward positive change.

* Do things together and talk often. Help each other stay interested in the world, healthy, flexible, and open to new ideas.

SIMPLE KINDNESS=HOW TO BE KIND IN AN OFTEN RUDE WORLD