Effective communication techniques for smoother relationships. Learn the best methods for communicating with your man--so, that he can relate and understand your points. Learn to have your man pay attention to you as much as he does the Television. If you have children and he is behaving like another child--learn to enable him to behave as a partner and not another child. If you use the methods provided in this book, you have a chance to make positive changes in your relationship--making it flourish and grow stronger. It's never too late to help your partner become your partner in every aspect of your life.
Generations of Happiness
Accomplished Through Effective Communication TechniquesBy Christine PecorainoAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2009 Christine Pecoraino
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-9691-2Chapter One
Generations of Happiness
Love, Joy, Respect and Honesty
LOVE - Very strong warm feeling or deep concern for someone, commitment
Is love hard to find in today's world of fast paced jobs, computers, technology? Well what do you think? The answer is NO. But, as everyone is looking and coming up short-why is this? The problem is no body has a plan. Yes, a plan. We plan everything else in our lives-but the most important thing, we don't have a clue on. We don't have a clue on how to meet someone that we can actually care for.
As for women today in this fast paced world we live in, there are too many things and not enough time to do them in. Yesterday is over. Today we are changing things up. To me, relationships take two people 50/50-right ladies? And, that's the way we will reprogram ourselves beginning today. Women today are more powerful, educated and have more freedom to be women than any other generation before. This book is going to change your lives-YOU ARE EQUAL TO MEN!!!
JOY - Great happiness, delight, elation
As women, we have emotions inside us that can make us happy, sad, frightened. What we need to learn is how to make men make us happy. Don't we make them happy? Yes we do. We take care of them, wash their clothes, mother their children, tend to household necessities. Yes, we o all of this for ourselves and our men. We even work now and have to hear them tell us what to do and how to spend our money. Can you believe we let them tell us everything because we love them and we enjoy having them around? [It's a bit insane!!!]
This is all yesterday's news. Today we are going to learn how to make men respect us. Why should we do this? Simply because we deserve it! We give so much and what we get back is being put down or getting physically hit. We tend to be shown a total lack of respect and for some odd reason we accept this. It's astounding really. We do, and do, and do and what does our other half give back? Sometimes nothing short of verbal abuse. Don't think that after a few months of this, it doesn't affect us. It clearly does. Verbal abuse takes away our personalities. And, mental abuse takes away our self respect, self esteem, self worth and the joyful parts inside us until we just walk around in a daze.
RESPECT - Consideration for someone, to have a good opinion of someone-someone to look up to.
Respect is very important in a relationship and a marriage. Do we always get respect? What is a man? Someone that respects, loves and protects women. And, what are we doing? We let them get away with a little each day until they are totally out of control. This will stop, like everything else-we will together turn things around and we will get 50/50 or we will go on strike. Yes strike in our own ways and we will be heard and respected ladies. Men think they are tough-they haven't seen tough yet ladies. Together and with the methods we will use, we will make history again as we did so many times in the past.
Are we being treated like someone with sound opinions, like someone to be looked up to? Men tend to put us down in front of our children and take this away from us. What this book is going to do is help women just starting out, women that are in the know and women getting ready for new relationships.
HONESTY - Telling the truth, integrity, fairness, sincerity
When we get married the word honesty is used about 10,000 times, but does honesty stay in a marriage or relationship? Well, let's say men think honesty is a word that can be bent. Is this what we do to them? NO. We do everything in the household: we clean, do laundry, cook, take care of the children and work. They watch TV, go out and lie to us as if we were stupid. These things must change and we are going to supply the methods to help you.
ROMANCE - Thoughts of love and adventure, the state of being in love, a story about love between people
Is a little romance too much to ask for? Considering all we do in the relationship and marriage-we also do their part. Do they romance us with flowers once a week, or even a kiss at the end of the day? When was the last time your partner made you feel like you're on an adventure? Take you out for no reason? Bring the children to his mother's or sister's house to be alone with you and make you smile? No, we always seem to be the one to do everything-making each and every effort to make them happy. Enough of this already. It's as if we are enslaved or something.
PASSION - Strong Feelings of desire, lust, enthusiasm
Let's face it on this one-enthusiasm to him is like giving us his underwear to wash and he believes farting should elicit feelings of desire from us. When was the last time your man made your favorite drink and told you to relax while he cooked dinner? LOL Men truly need a RUDE AWAKENING!!!
HAPPINESS - Conscious enjoyment of good fortune; contentment
Happiness is something that is in us and we simply need someone to help us release it. It truly doesn't have to be everyday-perhaps a couple of times a week. Well, getting him to help bring out this happiness is like him getting up to retrieve the remote control! What the hell is it with him and that TV? It's like there is an affair going on between them or something. He pays more attention to that TV than he does to you or the children. This totally has to stop now.
Organize your marriage or relationship like a business
To begin with, we are going to arrange our marriage or relationship like a business. Why are we doing this, you ask? Well, because with organization it will be easier to run the marriage or relationship. What we are here to accomplish is to make your lives easier and to have our husbands be more involved with us in our relationships or marriages. What makes most marriages and relationships fail is money and not knowing how to talk to one another. Regardless of the amount of money you have or don't have, we all need to budget it. A lot of men and women in today's fast paced world, simply don't have the time to sit down and budget their money.
What we are going to do is learn how to make the time in our relationships to budget and spend more time together. I know you are wondering how on earth you will be able to make more time to relax together at the end of the day, have a nice conversation-maybe some kissing and hugging too. I am going to give you the techniques to do all this and more.
Budgeting our money
What we will do now is we will make a budget of our money. Make a balance sheet similar to the example below:
Assets - Liabilities = What is left after Our income What we owe
Paying bills
What we need to live
(i.e., groceries, clothing, etc.)
This is pretty simple. I believe everybody should know how essential a budget is to running a household-no matter how much we make. With budgeting and sticking to the budget, there is little room for arguments to arise over the spending of household income. You need to sit down as a couple and figure out your budget and make decisions as to the spending (or saving) of the remainder of the funds left available after you deduct the liabilities. Couples that don't do this risk having many misunderstandings and arguments, which could have been avoided by taking this step. A lot of couples end up getting divorced or ending relationships because of misunderstandings, fights and hurt feelings over the spending of household income.
As part of my research for this book, I interviewed over 200 couples and to my surprise, half of them lived paycheck to paycheck. The other half, budgeted only sporadically and were not really consistent or on the same page with their other half. I couldn't believe this. I spoke to the husbands and the wives separately first and what I found out is that they blamed each other for financial issues and disagreements. When I spoke to them as couples, what I found is that I was the only one in the room actually listening to all parties. By employing my methods, this will (and must) change.
In the budget, you should include a housekeeper or childcare if needed. I know a housekeeper is out of the question for a family on a tight budget, so don't worry or stress about it. Even childcare is expensive today and is not intended for all families. I do realize that every household has different income and different needs. With this in mind, I will attempt to give a lot of food for thought. What I really want to do here is give you the extra time to spend with your spouse, the extra money to do more things together as a family, thus helping you to release and enjoy happy emotions. That's the way God intended for us all to live-that's why we have these happy emotions to enjoy.
Example:
One woman who found her extra time got her mother and father to join her and help her out. This led to more enjoyable family outings and when she needed alone time with her spouse, allowed her to do so without worrying about childcare. Most importantly, it gave her children more of a direct access to her parents. This relationship enriched the lives of her children. They had the opportunity to be in touch with old family values and stories that can be passed on. The woman and her husband were able to work out many of the problems they had through conversation in the time they had alone. She also came to me with her husband so that a third impartial party could explain things to him in a clearer and less emotional, logical conversation. - Always search for extra help.
Budgeting Your Time
Time today is money. So, what we need to do is make every second of the day count. First, what is necessary is making a schedule of your work time and your husband's work time. Then we will include the schedule of our children, if we have any. [To bring up a point here, if our children want to be involved in everything, perhaps we should cut down on a lot of things. Baseball, Football, Soccer, Band, Swimming, Karate, Dance, there are so many things that our children get involved with. To get back some time and cash in our budget, it's important that children pick only one or maybe two activities to be involved with.]
Transporting your children to and from school - You should find a friend or family member that can take them one way and you take them the other. Sometimes carpooling with another mother works. Most women would be happy with this type of arrangement-to only have to deal with one trip a day. If you take all the children in the morning to school, they wouldn't mind picking all the children up after school and transporting them back home. This not only cuts down on the actual time of the trip, but also cuts down on your "getting ready" time. If you work, perhaps you can make arrangements with someone you know to handle the transporting all together. And, of course, you should allow in your budget to pay this individual a certain amount of cash. This will allow you to have less stress and peace of mind.
Talking to your children's teachers/coaches - Something that as parents, we all want to do and must do. What I attempt to do here, is try talking to them over the phone-instead of in person. This is another big time saver-especially if you have more than one child.
Household cleaning/chores - Remember that no one person should do it all! We all must be responsible for keeping our households orderly and clean. In my house, it is essential that everybody do their part. I have hampers and trash cans in almost every room. In this way no one should think it's okay to just let things lye around. I also have a strict rule that eating be done in the kitchen or dining room only and everyone must put their own dirty dishes in the sink/dishwasher.
Each person in a household should have certain chores to accomplish everyday-including your husband, it's only fair. Maybe you could teach your husband how to do laundry. My ten year old son knows how, so it shouldn't be terribly difficult for a grown man. If necessary, put up a diagram near the machine showing what colors should be washed together and what temperature water is to be used.
After dinner clean-up - Everybody that eats should be involved with this chore. It allows for more bonding time and dinner conversations can continue through this chore. Plus, it's a lot quicker and easier if all pitch in than if one person undertakes this task alone. A lot of women involved in my study asked me if this was going to be harder for them to accomplish than just doing the tasks themselves. I purposely didn't answer that question right away-I told them to trust and have patience, but please try it. Most of the women said it was difficult at the beginning getting everyone adjusted to the new responsibilities they had, but that once everyone settle into the schedule, they found that they could enjoy themselves while working together to achieve a goal. It instilled a sense of team work that is necessary for the cohesiveness of a family. Plus, they learned these things could be fun and enjoyable-especially when chores are done together. It allows for more opportunity to have fun together as a family. After everyone adjusted to the new chores, some husbands told me that their wives were much more relaxed, less stressed and overall much more pleasant to be around.
Eating out today is very expensive and fast food is just not good for you, so what I do here is cook a few meals on the weekend, which I freeze and defrost as needed. While cooking can be a shared chore as well, I am simply a much better cook than my husband and I enjoy it, so this is one task that I take on myself.
It is important to have one area in a household where children can safely play with their toys. It's also very important that the children follow the simplest rule here-if you take it out, you put it away when you are done playing. In life everyone must live with certain rules and the younger we start to understand this, the easier adhering to rules will be. Thus, there is at least a double benefit to gain by enforcing certain rules on your children. You will have a cleaner, more orderly organized household and your children will learn the importance of following rules.
Pets - They can be messy, but if we keep on top of them it is easier and cleaner. In my house, we have a dog and cat. The dog is a collie and must be brushed everyday and bathed once a week. My son and daughter take turns each day with the brushing. This makes the dog look nicer plus there is less hair flying around the house to clean. Bathing the dog takes place usually on a Saturday afternoon and both children do that together. The job isn't done until the bathroom is cleaned up after the bath. If handled in this way, the odor of the dog won't be that bad and won't be in the house lingering. As a side note-it's important to start this ritual when the dog is a puppy. For the cat, it's important that the litter be changed on a daily basis-easiest way to do this is with the scoop away cat litter. Children can do this when given instructions for good hygiene and safety. You should keep small plastic bags near the litter box and after scooping the dirty litter into a bag, the bag should be tied and brought right outside to the garbage can. You must also make sure that whoever does this task gets in the habit of washing hands thoroughly afterward. [I just lost my dog, Princess, at the end of 2008 and cried like a baby when she passed. We all really miss her. Oddly enough, my children don't really want another dog. They told me that a dog was too much work. Isn't that something?]
As for bathroom maintenance, teach the children to wipe down the sink after each use and teach them how to properly use a toilet brush. The bathroom floors, if swept once each day, shouldn't need moping more than twice a week-depending on how messy the children and your husband are. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? What are husbands for anyway?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Generations of Happinessby Christine Pecoraino Copyright © 2009 by Christine Pecoraino. Excerpted by permission.
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