A Night of Romance...Before Afghanistan

It started with a gift.

A simple little anniversary gift we wanted to give Rhonda and Tom, an active-duty Navy couple who have lived in our neighborhood for the last five years.

The gift? We volunteered to keep their children overnight so that they could spend one entire evening completely alone together.

As in one night without kids underfoot and driving them to distraction. As in, a night shared drenched in ecstasy and wrapped in pure rapture. A night filled with…you guessed it, nothing but romance.

Lord knows they needed it.

Rhonda, a First Class Petty Officer with nine years in the Navy, had reported to shore duty at Dam Neck in Virginia Beach, Virginia early in July. Two weeks into August, temporary orders to Afghanistan for seven months suddenly landed in her lap, instantly pitching her into a quagmire of disappointment just one week after her sixth wedding anniversary.

Seven months more to spend away from her husband and children.

Seven months to add to the enormous heap of all the other lengthy deployments she had somehow endured at sea.

Seven months without birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas to celebrate with her sons, her husband, once again as a family...a family that had already spent too much time apart.

This is shore duty?

Unfortunately, the needs of the military dictate that this type of situation sometimes happens.

A significant number of Navy sailors brag about never having to spend a significant amount of time at sea throughout their careers. I’ve received email from enough of them over the years.

Others, like Rhonda, are plagued with nothing but constant deployments, abrupt U-turns to take just when they think they have finally reached that glorious, distant oasis: shore duty.

Listen, we want you to pick a night - we’ll keep the boys for you!” I yelled out to her as she trudged down the walk from my door after our visit, her shoulders squared in the late afternoon sunlight. “Plan a memorable night for you and Tom…something really romantic!”

She turned back and laughed. “Romantic? Are you kidding? After all we’ve been through, I don’t have a clue what that word even means.”

Keeping Romance Alive

Rhonda may not have a clue, but she definitely needs to be reminded. Now that she is three weeks away from her departure to Afghanistan, an unforgettable night of romance for this couple who face at least 210 days to spend woefully apart is definitely in order.

Or is romance something they should have been concentrating on continuously throughout their relationship?

It's been my experience with long-term relationships that keeping romance alive when so much of the outside world threatens to overwhelm it is one of the most difficult challenges we will ever face.

You might be thinking, Well, how in the world can that be? If you're really in love with each other, keeping romance alive shouldn't be a hard thing to do at all.

I wish I could say this is true, but unfortunately - at least in terms of the number of years I have spent intuitively perceiving romantic relationships in readings - falling in love is relatively easy. But keeping romance alive as time passes is, realistically, one of the hardest things we will ever do.

How do we keep something so seemingly elusive alive?

For one thing, we wake up every day and see our relationships as genuinely living, growing things, and we care for them accordingly. We realize that being "in love" is an important connection involving passion and attraction, and as we strive to build a much more meaningful foundation of hope and trust on both with the passing of time, we keep that "in love" feeling nurtured from day to day.

We exercise a tremendous amount of understanding and forgiveness in our relationships, because we are aware that *today* is not *yesterday* in terms of those relationships. But, with the right care and handling, today will certainly become a more enriched, far more fulfilling tomorrow because we have been able to love unconditionally.

Through that unconditional love, we can keep romance kindled by letting hurts and resentments fall by the wayside as much and as often as possible; for instance, with a standing rule: No going to bed angry!

We do everything we can to stay "in love" by continuing to be the individuals we were at the start of these relationships. In other words, she still makes an effort to dress "for him" when they go out to dinner. He still serves breakfast in bed "for her" the way he used to do when they were engaged.

They continue to romance each other and be attentive to each other's needs, even when the dishes aren't done or the lawn hasn't been mowed. They essentially look for ways in the midst of everyday living to celebrate their love for one another -- to literally keep their love for one another alive.

This may not be all the time, of course, but enough of the time. Often enough to let partners know that even when times are troubled or if circumstances aren't quite what we'd like them to be we are still very much "in love" in spirit.

Yes, you can keep romance alive in your relationships, but it's up to you and your partner to make it happen.

Plainly speaking, there is nothing effortless about love. In fact, genuinely loving our partners can be one of the toughest commitments we ever make in life. But the rewards to be reaped are enormous when we are sincerely committed to investing enough time and effort -- enough of ourselves -- into developing a loving, romantically-inspired bond that can literally last a lifetime.