Do you have the time?

Do you ever find yourself in the same room with your spouse, partner or other loved one and find that hours can pass without you hardly exchanging words?

Thanks to laptops and huge HD-TV screens it's possible to be in proximity with people and hardly converse.

Quality time should be about focusing your attention and energy on your mate. This is how you cultivate love. Even an intimate dinner for two can fail to qualify as quality time if the two people are sitting there barely speaking and uninterested in each other.

So you don't need to go to a fancy restaurant.

You just need to listen to your mate as if they were the most important person in the world. As if they were the person of your dreams even if at that particular moment you don't have those feelings. There are a lot of books and articles that say you should spend X amount of hours per week in quality time. But those rules often up stir up feelings of guilt and guilt isn't a powerful motivator.

Find what works for you.

A brief conversation on the couch can count as quality time. So can playing together in a bowling, golf or tennis league. You don't have to spend your quality time in constant conversation.

Spending time in an activity you both love to do will bring you closer. And in order to truly love someone and love spending time with them you should learn to tune in to your inner emotions.

So if you feel resistant about spending quality time with your loved ones, start listening to and
understanding your own emotions before you start having negative feelings.
-- by Noel Jones