It’s only a couple of days until Valentine’s Day, and in celebration of love, I thought it fitting to talk about the 7 essential Values that Charles and Elizabeth Schmitz have identified are must haves to keep you lighting up your partner and energizing and securing your relationship and marriage.
If you are willing to commit to these 7 values, your relationship will flow, thrive and be successful.
1. Put each other first in your relationship.
The first thing you notice in all highly successful loving relationships is that those who really love fully recognize that their relationship is not about you and me, it is about US. Discovering that YOU are not the center of the universe is the hallmark of a great relationship. Actually putting another human being number one is a powerful indication that you are truly in love.
2. Commit to democracy in your relationship.
Always remember, successful loving relationships are equal and shared relationships. If one of you has all the power and makes all the decisions, it is NOT love! True love is democratic.
3. Commit to ensuring your partner’s happiness.
Remember, true love is not just about ensuring your happiness. More importantly, and often for the first time in your life, you actually enjoy and are motivated by ensuring the happiness of someone other than yourself. It is a good feeling!
4. Value absolute trustworthiness and integrity in your relationship with each other.
If you cannot trust the one you love, then it is not true love! The most successful loving relationships report that they trust their mate unequivocally and without hesitation. To violate that trust is to undermine and, ultimately destroy, the relationship with the one you say you love.
5. Commit to caring and unconditionally loving each other.
When you truly love someone you do so without conditions. You may choose to set boundaries on behaviour you are not able to tolerate, by all means, but keep your loving beyond conditions.
6. Commit to being mutually respectful towards each other.
There is a Golden Rule in true love and it is like the one you learned early in your life – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Do not expect to be treated with respect when you are disrespectful to your partner. Respectfulness is at the heart of all great loving relationships.
7. Share a mutual responsibility for each other.
People in love care for each other in ways that they have never cared for another human being. They feel a sense of responsibility for their partner like no other. It can feel rewarding to love so deeply that you can put another’s needs above your own at times.
If you and your partner can master these values, your love will, in all probability, last a lifetime, which can be a perennial Valentine’s gift.
More on not feeling like lovers in our next blog.
Warmest regards
Julie
If you are in Sydney and would like help on any relationship issue, please check out our Sydney Relationship Psychologists.
Julie Hart 
Melinda Hart Penten 
