What I Expect from my Husband

I’ve been receiving a lot of questions about relationships and marriages. One of the most common questions was, “How do you and Chris maintain a strong marriage?” We’re not quite the veteran in this area because we’ve only been married for a year and 8 months but I can say that our marriage has been great thus far and we’re making a decision each day to keep it that way.  I don’t think there’s a formula to having a great marriage but if I was to share a few things we did that helped our marriage, it would be that we knew exactly what the other person’s  expectations were in the marriage and we made a decision to provide that each day. 

In the beginning of our relationship, Chris asked me what I expected from him as my boyfriend/ husband. There were two important things that I expected from him as my husband which was being consistent in his love and action and showing unfailing love.  I also asked Chris what his was and for him it was for me to show him respect and appreciation in any given situation. I didn’t realize how important knowing one another’s expectations were until just recently.


It was incredibly important that he was consistent in his love and action because I’ve seen too many cases where the husband or wife stopped doing all the amazing things the other person fell in love while they were dating. This goes for relationships as well. I’ve been in relationships where the guy wanted to do everything for me then one day it all changed. I married Chris for who he was. If he changed all of a sudden and stopped doing all the things I loved about him, I would feel cheated.


One thing I’m truly thankful for is that Chris has kept his promise. He has been consistent and showed me a type of love I didn't know could exist besides from God. I make a choice each day to keep my promise to him as well. A few ways I show that I respect him is through encouraging words, truly believing in him, and showing him that his words genuinely mean a lot to me. One way I show appreciation is by saying “thank you” even when he does the smallest things such as opening the door for me. I’ve learned that men will want to do more for their women if we sincerely encourage them and say thank you often.  We sometime forget to be appreciative of even the smallest things they do. 


Sometime last year I started realizing myself not appreciating Chris as much as I use too. I was getting too comfortable and expecting more out of him. Once I realized myself doing that I felt incredibly bad and had to apologize to Chris. Then I asked God to help me to see Chris the way He see's him once again. Once I confessed my inner feelings to Chris and asked God for forgiveness I started to feel even more appreciative towards Chris. We're not perfect and relationships will never be "perfect" but as long as we are willing to put ourselves aside and throw away our pride for our other half we can work through any difficulties. We've had our shares of disagreements but as we started to learn how to understand one another we improved ourselves as an individual and as a couple. I believe that helped our love to grow even deeper.

Do you know what your better half expects from you as a husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend?

P.S Please let me know if you would like to read more entires similar to today's topic in the future.


Love, 
Sandy

The Two Strangers

This past weekend Chris and I went to 3^rd street Promenade to eat the best Salty Caramel Gelato at Bellagio.  We drove 40 minutes just to have this Gelato and when we arrived we found out that they ran out of it. Chris was on a hunt to eat everything he wanted before he started his round 2 of P90X on Monday (Click here to visit his blog. You can see his round 1 results from doing P90X and more.)  We were both pretty bummed but we had a great time walking around and getting some fresh air.  That day turned out even better after we witnessed a very heart touching moment.  We were driving towards the freeway to go home then suddenly the engine of the truck on our right wouldn’t start.  She looked young and she was all alone.  She was talking to someone on the phone and I’m guessing she was calling someone to ask what she should do.  I can tell she was about to breakdown and cry.  Then, she got out of her car and started pushing her huge truck.  There were a lot of cars behind her and a few people were honking.  It didn't look pretty.  Chris decided to park our car to help her.  So we drove across the street to the gas station to park our car and as Chris got ready to run across the street her car started moving with her in the driver seat.   I thought her car might have started but as her car turned on the street I saw two young men pushing her car from the back.  Chris said they both jumped out of their car immediately and started helping her.  I don’t know why but seeing that brought tears of joy in my eyes.  I’m sure you guys know by now but I tend to cry easily for any occasion.  I don't know why I was crying but It showed a lot of love and hope.  It proved that there are many great people around us.  Sometimes it takes a difficult situation to see them.

This is obviously not the actual picture but I thought it was too cute <3

Did you witness true love recently? Please share I would love to hear about it.
Love,
Sandy

Happy 2011!!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years!

Mine was fun filled and extremely relaxing.  We had dinner at my sister’s house and opened all our wonderful presents the week before Christmas.  My nephews had a blast opening theirs for sure. Then we went to Castroville (near San Jose) to visit my in laws on the weekend of Christmas. This year we got a chance to visit San Francisco so we had an awesome Christmas Eve.  Literally all we did was sleep and eat that whole weekend which was awesome.

Then for New Years Eve, we went to Le Prestige at LA Live with a few of our dear friends whom I love very much.  We usually go to NYE service but we wanted to be with our friends this year especially since one of my best friends came to LA from New York. It was fun dancing our toes away and spending the last few moments of 2010 with people we love.

Another year has begun and I hope at the beginning of 2012 we can all be people who say's "we did this..." more than people who say's "I should have done...".  Let's not let what happened in 2010 distract us from where we're heading in the future.  One thing I know for sure is that the past does not define your future.  I hope this year will be filled with miracles in many different ways.

Also, I already have so many stories I want to share with you guys so please stay tuned. 

Here are a few pictures of the last moments of 2010:

LOVE,
Sandy