Infatuation Versus Real Love

Infatuation versus real love
Is this hot sexy man for real or full of red flags? Hot picture of Hugh Jackman from the amazing website Shanghai Expat

Infatuation versus real love.  That magical moment happens…you meet a man who is attractive, intelligent and there is chemistry.  The conversation is fun, playful and you’re thinking to yourself…OMG…finally!  A man I can get excited about!  I’m here to give you an excited for you but – maintain your Sassy Bitch grip on this scenario!  Please…ask questions, be aware of red flags…keep things moving slowly so you have the time to get to know him.  So you don’t…

Look past the red flags and fall into…infatuation. Infatuation makes your brain go to sleep. Infatuation makes you not care about the red flags because he smells so good and kisses sooooooo….sooooo…

Here is a nice overview of infatuation versus real love that I enjoyed on Diffen.com

Love takes time. It takes work to get to know someone. Don’t have sex too quickly.  Women do it on the second date now!  I don’t get it! Unless that is all you want…to “get it.”  Are you sure that’s all you want? One of my favorite lines from a movie is from Clueless.  When asked “how far she had gone,” Cher admits she’s a virgin and says…”you know how picky I am about shoes and they just go on my feet.” She had a clue here.  But do the rest of us?  The sexual revolution has allowed us to do it anytime, anywhere with anyone we want. Cool, right? But there are consequences if we let infatuation rule and have sex too quickly.

Like completely missing those pesky little red flags.  The red flags that will doom you to a relationship with a man who doesn’t give you what you truly need to relax, let go and fall in love with him.  Red flag awareness will keep you from wasting your time on the wrong guy.  So start asking him questions, listen to his answers and watch his actions.  Before you give yourself away and then email me asking “why is he acting this way?”

So … I met a man I could get a little excited about.  Our first conversations were epic and amazing. Our third conversation set off some red flags for me.  I cut him some slack.  He seemed genuinely nervous talking to me.  Then the red flags continued.  I asked him questions about them.  He seemed to realize my concern and tried to assure me these red flags were not a problem.  I was skeptical.  In our short dating life we already had a pattern here. The red flag was that he was too self-involved.  He would talk about himself endlessly.  I took a lot of interest in him but his interest in what was going on with me was…not satisfying me.

So I called him on it.  He called me needy.  (See this article for exactly what he tried to do by calling me needy: The Deflection)  Which I found to be hilarious because he talked endlessly about me being understanding about HIS needs, quirks, problems and issues.  How he “needed” me to be patient with him.

I understand male deflection well … I called him out on that too.  I told him that crap wasn’t going to fly with me.  To which he…freaked out.

Ahhhhh….Check mate for me. I was done with this child man.

I’m so glad I listened to those red flags and paid attention to his actions!  It has saved me so much grief.  I desire a man who is inspired by my passions.  They make me ME. He takes as much interest in me as I do him. Every girl deserves this and more.  Do not settle for anything less than a man who is passionate about YOU, sassy one…mind, body and soul!  Love, Goddess

Suggested Reading:

  1. The Obnoxious Male
  2. Bitch Lifestyle:  The Manual
  3. Love Games:  An Outrageous Proposal

© S Stevens Life Strategies

Perfect Personalized Gift-Here It Is!

Vivien-Leigh
Image from Top Of Ten: http://topoften.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Vivien-Leigh.jp

When your best girlfriend wins an Oscar, make sure you’re there to take her picture! 

It’s so much fun to give the perfect personalized gift.  How can you make a persons’ face light up with joy?  Truly one of the best feelings in the world!  The only problem is, the more you love someone, the more you want to show them and have their face light up.  And if that person is someone who has everything they need and are low maintenance?  It can get even more frustrating.  I have a little solution for you.  It isn’t very expensive and takes a little planning but it’s a really thoughtful gift that really helps in these situations.  It’s not sexy.  It’s incredibly practical.  I never see it in all those “what to get for the person who has everything lists” in magazines and online!  It’s something that would mean way more than a store-bought product.  What is it?

A meaningful picture.  A moment caught in time that will last forever.

I do this for those I love.  And you can do it too!  All you have to do is think about what that person loves to do, who they love to do it with and then take the picture.  Make a nice collage and put it in a frame.  Voila.  The perfect personalized gift.  Here are some examples to inspire you:

  1. My brother and Dad are SO difficult to buy for.  If they need something…even around their birthdays or Christmas, they can’t wait!  They just buy it.  Leaving the family scrambling for ideas. So my counter attack was to take pictures of them doing their hobbies together.  The first one is a picture of them fishing on a brilliant summer day.  I put it in a big frame and they loved it.  Next up is golf.
  2. Dad:  Make a collage of the two of you.   Arrange pictures of you growing up doing things with him.  Put a nice picture of him in the middle.  This is the perfect personalized Father’s Day gift.  It works with Christmas or Birthdays too!
  3. My Mom has a best friend who lives in California.  They absolutely adore each other and it is so cute.  Every year they get together at a nearby resort, have lunch and reminisce. They look forward to doing this together every year.  I surprised them and took pictures as they were arriving for their “annual luncheon.”  I made two sets of pictures so both would have them.
  4. Think of the loved ones’ hobbies/loves.  Take pictures of them doing it.
  5. Have a difficult to buy for girlfriend?  Make a collage of you together.  Doing the things you love.
  6. Always take a picture of an important event and then frame for a gift.  One year the whole family when to Disney World.  I wanted all the generations together for a picture in front of Cinderella’s Castle.  I can’ t tell you how difficult it was, but it was SO worth it!
  7. Traditions.  Eating around the table during a holiday with everyone saying “Cheers!”  Tailgating, sporting events, etc.

With a little thought, a little planning and some humor, even the most difficult of people on your list will enjoy a meaningful picture.  Those special moments and loves all wrapped up for them to enjoy for years to come!  The perfect personalized gift!  Now get “snapping.”  Love, Goddess

Suggested Reading:

  1. Relationship Issue:  Rudeness 
  2. Self-Esteem Quiz:  How Do You Rate?
  3. How Not to be Late Night Booty Call Girl

© S Stevens Life Strategies

Love Love Love


Warning: DOMDocument::loadXML(): Opening and ending tag mismatch: hr line 5 and body in Entity, line: 6 in /home/customer/www/bitchlifestyle.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-amazon-associate/APaPi/AmazonProduct/Result.php on line 149

Warning: DOMDocument::loadXML(): Opening and ending tag mismatch: body line 3 and html in Entity, line: 7 in /home/customer/www/bitchlifestyle.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-amazon-associate/APaPi/AmazonProduct/Result.php on line 149

Warning: DOMDocument::loadXML(): Premature end of data in tag html line 1 in Entity, line: 8 in /home/customer/www/bitchlifestyle.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-amazon-associate/APaPi/AmazonProduct/Result.php on line 149

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/customer/www/bitchlifestyle.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-amazon-associate/APaPi/AmazonProduct/Result.php on line 160

LOVE

Love is an act.  An action.

Valentines Day.  It started out as a nice marketing thought.  Now I think it is has become one of the worse ideas for a “Holiday” ever.  The thought is wonderful-celebrate your love.  The undertones can and will bring out the absolute worse in your inner Drama Queen!  I was chatting with a long time client about this very thing.  We were talking about how awful she had been in the past to her boyfriends regarding Valentines Day.  Here is part of our conversation:

Me:  You-awful?  (playful sarcasm that she definitely understood regarding her history!)

K:  LOL…Yes.  You’re not going to believe what I did.  Well…maybe you will!  Anyway, I told a past boyfriend exactly what I wanted for Valentines Day.  Flowers delivered to my work desk.

Me:  Oh…

K:  He didn’t do as I asked!  He wound up surprising me with something else.

Me:  Wow. What a creep. (more sarcasm)

K:  The problem was I was the creep.  Instead of just enjoying what he wanted to do I made it all about me.

Me:  You were trying to control.

K:  Yes.  And I wasn’t very nice to him when he tried to surprise me.  I am such a better girlfriend since you kicked out my Drama Queen through your coaching!

And…she focuses on something much more healthy…how a man treats her ALL the time, not just one day of the year.  She is now engaged to an amazing man that she would have never appreciated before.  So this is what I want for you on Valentines Day this year.

1.  Focus on all the love around you!  Each day…leading up to that day, tell someone important in your life why you love them.  What you appreciate about them.  You know what I love to do?  Buy those little kits with the stickers in them and hand them out to all my girlfriends.  (Guys will find it a bit silly.  Give them a big hug and smile instead!)

2.  How do I love thee?  Change that to:   How do I love myself?  List the ways you are absolutely adorable.  Post it on your refrigerator, your boudoir etc.

3.  In a complete Drama Queen snit?  “Re-Awaken” Sassy You with my Coaching Special:  http://bitchlifestyle.com/2012/07/your-re-awakening/

Blow yourself a kiss whenever you leave the house, drench yourself in something that smells fabulous, sleep naked in your softest blankets.  Love and adore YOU and those you love now and forever more!  xoxo  Goddess

Buy the book on Amazon:  Bitch Lifestyle the Manual

© S Stevens Life Strategies

 

Love, Pain and the iPhone

Gorgeous wallpaper can be downloaded at Background Wallpapers http://www.backgroundwallpapershd.com/love-wallpaper-backgrounds.html

“You’re tough on the outside, but really very mushy on the inside.  A girly girl.”  He knows me so well.  Not many people see that about me but he figured it out.  He really gets me.  I am so grateful you are a part of my life, Gio!  Because Gio understand this about me and cares about me, he respects this about me.  I feel really safe with him.  Safe to show all my sides.  Even the more vulnerable ones.  You all know that the people I care about I would do anything for.

It’s so scary caring about people SO much.  My Sassy Bitch side gets all over-protective and well…fierce.  This thought made me start to think about love.  How we as a people do a lot of communicating through devices today.  Text, IM, Facebook, Twitter.  It’s cool in a couple of ways.  As a company you have a whole new world to market to.  And personally, you can connect with people from all over the world with one click of the mouse!  The negative?  Impersonal.  Really impersonal.  You’re having a relationship with words through a device.   Then I thought about when people do it.  When they are sitting at the table eating dinner with their families.  As they walk down the street.  When they drive. When they’re out with people they care about and they can’t put down their phone/device.  It’s like another “person” in the room.  A robotic person.  They seem almost addicted to their communication device.

There is so much they are missing around them because they are so caught up in “Device Communication!”

I was thinking about this while I was at a memorial service today.  The man who brought me into this world, my Mom’s obstetrician and long time family friend had died.  A wonderful and caring man.  I’ll never forget the time I got some really scary test results.  I had some pre-cancerous cells.   Dr. Bradley took the time to come over to visit me at my home.  With my parents by my side, he read the tests and then assured me that as long as I did what my doctor wanted to do I would be fine.  He showed me on the photos what this procedure I needed would do and why it would work.  Then he gave me a warm smile and went back to being a busy retiree.   Years later, I heard that he had cancer.  I prayed for him.  Sitting at the memorial service, Dr. Bradley’s brother started to speak.  I was struck by how much they sounded alike!  I started to struggle not to cry.  I am a mess at memorial services.  Tough on the outside and a mushy mess on the inside.  It is so hard for me to hold it together.  I care so much.  The outpouring of love and accompanying tears from his family made me seesaw between tears and strength.  The strong part of me wanted to absorb their pain into my own body — to ease their pain.

Pain is such a part of love.

Later, the minister said something that really rocked me.  We are given the gift of life.  We must embrace it.  It is our responsibility to LIVE it.  Love it.  As we grow older, we realize our bodies get older.  We know we don’t look quite the same when we were younger, can’t eat the same things and certain body parts just don’t work as well.  We are here for a limited time.  We must cherish every moment.

After he said that I started thinking about love.  It is the most terrifying thing in the world because once you love someone they can go away.  It is so painful.  Just writing this makes me cry.  It makes me want to close off.  To not feel the pain, I started to think.  Of course it is the last thing we should do.   The more we can love, enjoy and relish the more we enjoy life.  We are not honoring our life if we close off.  Device Communication can close us off.  Device Communication will never be the same as talking face to face.  Device Communication is open to so much assumption.  People spend so much time trying to figure out the sub-text in a text!  I get so many emails about that one a day it would make your head spin.  So let’s try…just try to let go of Device Communication a little bit.  Turn off the machine and enjoy the moment.  Instead of checking your texts 10 times an hour, look deeper into the eyes of the companion you are with.  Try to notice a new thing about the person you care about the most.  The way they walk, talk, or quirks.  Quirks are what make a person unique.  Be thankful for having them in your life.  Tell them you love them.

There is no limit to how much you can love in life!

But life has a limit.  Honor it by embracing every drop of the phenomena known as love…and it starts with loving gorgeous you.

With Love and more Love, Goddess

Bitch Lifestyle the Manual  is available on Amazon for a very special price!

© S Stevens Life Strategies