COURTSHIP

Courtship is the period in a couple's relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage, or establishment of an agreed relationship of a more enduring kind. During courtship, a couple get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement or other such agreement. Gifts are exchanged. A courtship may be an informal and private matter between two people or may be a public affair, or a formal arrangement with family approval. Traditionally, in the case of a formal engagement, it has been perceived that it is the role of a male to actively "court" or "woo" a female^[ thus encouraging her to understand him and her receptiveness to a proposal of marriage. Within many western societies, these distinct gender roles have lost some of their importance and rigidity. It is now common for females in younger generations both to initiate relationships and to propose marriage.

Young people today are finding shattered hearts and broken promises in the place of real love. This book outlines God's special plan for building lifelong marriages. It courageously presents a challenge to young adults to build a greater kind of love through honorable courtship.

You'll learn:

• How do I know if we're compatible?
• Just how far can we go before marriage?
• What girls need to know about guys
• What guys need to look for in a wife
• How to keep your head when you're head-over-heels in love
• The dangers of both haste and delay in getting married
• The #1 enemy of your relationship
• The best "test" to see if your relationship is on the right track
• The surest way to make your marriage a success

I believe that courtship should not be too long neither should it be too long. Its is a time when two people who want to spend their life together discover their selves to know if they can live together as man and wife. Its wrong to have pre-marital sex but not every body abtains before marriage its depends on what you want, depending on individuals involved. There should be no regrets if a courtship does not lead to marriage because a its better if u discover that u cant marry a person than to get married to the wrong person and regret for the rest of your life.

Relationships and Life's Lessons
Robert Najemy is the author of 19 books - 95,000 copies sold, director of the Center for Harmonious Living in Athens Greece with 3700 members, and editor of the ezine "Clarity - The Psychology of Happiness".

When we do not get what we want from our relationships, we often feel hurt, abused, rejected, disappointed, bitter and angry.

We then have a choice to remain in our negativity or seek to use this as an opportunity for learning more about ourselves and contacting a deeper source of security, self-worth, inner fulfillment and love within ourselves.

Below are some examples of behaviors, which might bother us and thus contain some possible lessons for us.
The use of any gender is arbitrary and could be otherwise.

a. When she criticizes me.
b. When he does not respond to my request or needs.
c. When she asks me many questions.
d. When he shouts and accuses.
e. When she plays the role of victim and cries.
f. When she blames me for what has happened.
g. When he ignores me.
h. When he doesn't listen to me.
i. When he looks at other women.
j. When she is not conscientious about our agreements or responsibilities.
k. When he does not agree with me.
l. When he does not pay attention to me when I talk.
m. When she is late for our appointment.
n. When he doesn't help out with the cleanliness.
o. When he tells lies.
p. When they ignore my needs.
q. When they gossips.
r. When he does not tell me what he is feeling.
s. When she complains too much.
t. When he thinks he knows it all and does not listen to my point of view.
u. When she gives me advice I have not asked for.
v. When he threatens me that he will leave.
w. When he does not take care of himself or does not do his share.
x. When the other is weak and dependent.
z. Other_______________________


What is the Lesson?

We seek happiness, security, affirmation, love and fulfillment in our relationships. When these needs are not satisfied, the ultimate question is "what is my lesson here?" "How can I recreate my happiness, love and peace?"

The key to discovering what we need to learn is the faith that everything that happens to us is a result of processes called mirroring, sympathetic attunement, resonance or projection.

Our beliefs, emotions, expectations, fears and behaviors are mirroring, reflecting, projecting or resonating in our external world attracting the behaviors and events which we experience.

Those events, behaviors or situations that cause us to feel unpleasant feelings are specifically mirroring parts of ourselves which are ripe and ready to be transformed.

This is a very powerful tool for self-discovery because it gives us a very clear understanding of what we need to change while simultaneously freeing us from negative feelings towards the others. We realize that we ourselves attract the behaviors and events that create our reality. It is through exactly those stimuli that we will be motivated to evolve out of our old limiting beliefs into new beliefs, more aligned with the truths of our real spiritual nature.

Some readers might not be able to accept these basic tenants. This life-philosophy is based on the following basic tenants

1. We are immortal, inherently divine beings in a process of evolution.

2. We are totally responsible for the reality we experience.

3. We evolve and mature emotionally and spiritually through a learning process stimulated and sometimes forced upon us by life's events and circumstances, and to a great degree, others' behaviors.

4. Unpleasant events and circumstances are always opportunities for growth. We also learn from pleasant events and circumstances.

5. There are four factors within us, which attract these life stimuli and create our subjective reality:

a. Our past actions and behaviors.
b. Our present beliefs, emotions, expectations, behaviors, fears, guilt, attachments, internal conflicts and roles we play.
c. The specific lessons we have come to learn as souls in evolution.
d. How we interpret events and behaviors.


6. There are four areas of our lives through which we receive most of our lessons:

a. Our close relationships
b. Our health and physical appearance.
c. Our work environment.
d. Various events such as accidents, marriage, divorce, loss, gain, war, natural disasters and changes in general.

7. Most often our lessons are to be found in events, circumstances or behaviors which bother us, which are not to our satisfaction, or are painful to us.

8. The lessons we need to learn in these areas can be varied and multiple but fall the following general categories:

a. To transform our conscious and subconscious beliefs.
g. To change our attitudes and behavior.
c. To communicate more clearly, assertively and effectively.
d. To change our way of life.
e. To make efforts to improve the world around us.

9. In general, our lessons involve transforming beliefs and fall into categories:

a. Beliefs which we need to change in order to cease attracting or creating a situation, which bothers us.
b. Beliefs which we need to transform in order to be able to accept the situation exactly as it is.
c. Beliefs which we need to change in order to communicate more effectively with others concerning what is happening.
d. Beliefs which we need to transform in order to be able to actively improve or change the external situation.
Some examples below will help us understand this.

Some Examples of Possible Lessons:

a. If, as a soul, I need to learn to gain self-confidence, it would be only natural to create a situation in which my personality could not find external support, thus forcing me to learn to depend upon myself.
b. If I need to learn self-acceptance, then it would be natural for me, as a soul, to create a situation in which I pass through a period of not being accepted by the others, so as to develop an inner base for my self-acceptance.
c. If I have chosen to overcome a fear, then the obvious way to do this would be to subconsciously create or attract exactly what I fear, so that I may overcome it.
d. If I need to overcome an aspect of my character such as selfishness, what better way to see my selfishness, than to confront it in others.

Mirroring and Projecting

There is a small difference between mirroring and projecting. When another's behavior "mirrors" something inside us, that means that there is a resonance and that the other is behaving in a way which reflects some of our beliefs, emotions or expectations. There is a silent resonance between us, which causes the other to mirror the some of our aspects.

"Projection" means that we are seeing things in the other's behavior, which are not there, at least not to the extent that we see them. We are subjectively interpreting and often magnifying aspects of the other's behavior so that we "project" on to his or her behavior our own beliefs, needs, fears, emotions and expectations, and guilt.

In future articles we will investigate more specific situations and the possible lessons that might be learned

14 Relationship Principles to Live A Successful Relationship

Each relationship combines two individual stories to coauthor a new relationship story. The implicit contracts authored by each party in a relationship become unspoken assumptions that can facilitate or derail the relationship.

A crucial part of communication in a relationship is to make explicit the hidden assumptions and implicit expectations. To see the point of view of the other and to communicate that understanding, each must respect the other's point of view. Understanding and respect are not synonymous with agreement.

The ultimate freedom is not to rely on someone else's response to determine how you feel about yourself.

Ineffectiveness of communication, simply feeling that what you said was not heard or registered by the other, may result in irritation or anger. So often the content of the discussion is focused on with greater intensity, rather than the process initiating the derailment of feeling ineffective in not being heard.

14 Relationship Principles

1. Each person has a point of view. Communication is the establishment of a common ground to understand different points of view to create a mutual, collaborative agreement or plan.

2. Developing empathy with another is predicated on doing it with yourself first. Empathy is a way of listening to yourself as well as to another person with resonance of an entire experience of feeling, thinking, perceiving, and behaving.

3. Rapport is from the French word rapporter which means to be in touch or contact with a person, including yourself.

4. With emotionally charged subjects, reflect back to someone what you hear them saying before saying what you will say. This reflection assures the other's sense of effectiveness in knowing that you register what was said, and better positions him or her to hear your point of view.

5. What someone believes is more important than what they know.

6. Requiring that others respond to you in a particular way renders inauthentic the person and their response.

7. We are always communicating; there are many languages, and some even use words. "Do not the most moving movements of our lives find us all without words?" (Marcel Marceau)

8. What you don't do is as important as what you do.

9. Strike while the iron is cold. Known when to be reflective and invoke principles. When a child is drowning is no time to teach rules of swimming.

10. There are few true emergencies in life. "I'd like to think about that and get back to you" is a response.

11. Everyone fails emphatically with another at times. Most important in a relationship is how the empathic ruptures are learned from to then come together with greater understanding. At times the most important thing may not be what you have done, but what you do after what you have done.

12. To forgive someone is to free yourself.

13. You cannot change yourself by first trying to change someone else. To have someone live an unexpressed part of yourself can be both unsatisfying and addictive.

14. The only person you can change is you. Attempting to change someone else's mode of processing or personality style won't work, and will create derailments. Quicken software will not change to Word Perfect.

 MARRIAGE

Relationship Principles Applied to Marriage

1. Marriage is the most difficult and complex contract someone can enter into that they will ever know. Communication is vital as an ongoing effort. Remember to reflect back what you hear the other saying first, in order to maintain effectiveness in communication.

2. Discuss how to facilitate meeting needs, as well as needs of love and connection in the relationship.

3. Be present to yourself and to your partner.

4. Limit spending the currencies of worry, regret, remorse and suffering.

5. Distinguish self issues from relationship issues and commit to work on both.

6. Collaborate on how to maintain romance, sensual pleasure and the "in love" feeling; when these experiences evolve over time, it does not have to mean a diminution of love, romance or excitement.

7. Recognize gender-specific and unique individual characteristics. For example, creating pleasure for a woman may include the romantic experience of candles, music, and a special dinner. The same pleasure for a man may include a certain dress, lingerie, and a graphic sexual encounter.