A heart-warming story

So this is an inspirational story that happened in my own country Vietnam that I really wish to share with all of you.
During the rushed hours of lunch time on a normal day, a woman who collects scrapped metals as a livelihood insisted on seeing the owner of the food stall. She told him, crying : " For this tough year (in lunar calendar, it is still 2013), she has always relied on this food stall to save her meager income as much as possible". For your information, this food stall sells each vegetarian meals at 25 cent and the income of the woman is approximately 2 dollars a day. After having said that, the woman brought in a kilogram of rice and a cooking oil bottle as a thank-you gift to the owner. The owner was surprised by this gift and immediately turned it down as it was way too expensive given her little income. However, the woman insisted on giving it, saying that she would feel uneasy if he refused to. Heartened by such kindness, the owner received it and reminded her that next time she should not give such expensive gifts anymore. They both smiled warmly to each other and the story of kindness lingered in the hearts of the people nearby.


26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town (Part II)

16. So you become an expert at taking *ahem* flattering selfies.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town

17. And you experiment with every possible video chatting software enough to form well-informed pros and cons lists about each.

And you experiment with every possible video chatting software enough to form well-informed pros and cons lists about each.
The ability to do this ^ goes on FaceTime’s pros list.

18. You let some personal hygiene and grooming fall by the wayside.

You let some personal hygiene and grooming fall by the wayside.
Although, let’s be real, if you’ve been together long enough, this is no different when they’re in town.

19. And, since you can’t update them on your bodily functions in person, you find yourself sending and receiving some interesting texts.

And, since you can't update them on your bodily functions in person, you find yourself sending and receiving some interesting texts.

20. You’ve screenshotted and Instagrammed at least one text message convo, or one of these cutesy Skype shots.

You've screenshotted and Instagrammed at least one text message convo, or one of these cutesy Skype shots.

21. When you have a bad day, you have no idea what to do with yourself.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
CBS / Via pandawhale.com

22. Whenever you have a funny experience, your first thought is, I can’t wait to tell [your boo] about this.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town

23. You have a constant mental (or physical) count down to when you’ll be reunited…

24. And you’re baffled every single day by how slow it’s moving.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
Warner Bros / Via gradstudentdrone.tumblr.com

25. You realize all the teeny tiny everyday things you’re dependent on your S.O. for, and appreciate them tenfold.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town

26. So now more than ever, you’re 100% sure that when you’re reunited, the wait will be worth it.





26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town


Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/things-that-happen-when-your-significant-other-is-out-of-tow
Author: Rega Jha BuzzFeed Staff

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town (Part 1)

It obviously sucks when your favorite person is going away…

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
20th Century Fox / Via glee.wikia.com

But nobody warned you about aaaaall the little ways in which your life would change.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
Lionsgate / Via inezccosta.tumblr.com

1. You can’t watch the next episode of your favorite TV show, because it’s tradition to watch them together.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town

2. You keep ending up with leftover food/coffee because you’re used to making enough for two people.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town

3. You start making plans with all the friends and acquaintances you neglect when your boo is around.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
Screen Gems / Via 69.89.31.136

4. And every time you go to a party or social gathering, you’re constantly asked where they are.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
BBC / Via wifflegif.com

5. You and your S.O. are texting a lot more than you usually do, but about literally nothing.

You and your S.O. are texting a lot more than you usually do, but about literally nothing.

6. And, if you weren’t already, you’re definitely best friends on Snapchat now.

via Adam Ellis / BuzzFeed

7. At first, you get unreasonably excited about all the extra space in your bed.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town

8. Then you just end up investing (money and emotions) into a pillow used exclusively for cuddling.

Then you just end up investing (money and emotions) into a pillow used exclusively for cuddling.

9. If your partner is far enough away, you get really good at doing time difference math.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
Fox / Via celebquote.com

10. You decide with full conviction that you’ll look great for them when they’re back, so you go to the gym…once.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town

11. You plan your weekends around the two-hour Skype date you will inevitably have.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town

12. And you fall asleep on the phone or on webcam at least once. Kinda cute, mostly inconvenient.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
Columbia Pictures / Via wellthiswillbeawkward.tumblr.com

13. You make a thousand mental notes for all the cool things you’re gonna do together when you’re reunited.

26 Things That Happen When Your Significant Other Is Out Of Town
Columbia Pictures / Via whatshouldwecallcc.tumblr.com
Forgetting than 90% of your time together is actually just spent watching Netflix in bed without pants on.

14. You disgust and nauseate yourself by the number of times you say “I miss you” and “I love you.”

You disgust and nauseate yourself by the number of times you say "I miss you" and "I love you."

15. If they’re gone long enough and you aren’t already initiated, this is when you make your awkward foray into the world of sexting.

If they're gone long enough and you aren't already initiated, this is when you make your awkward foray into the world of sexting.
Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/regajha/things-that-happen-when-your-significant-other-is-out-of-tow
Author:   
Rega Jha  
BuzzFeed Staff

5 Secrets to a Successful Long-Term Relationship or Marriage

 

By John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

There have been a thousand or more articles written about how to have a successful long-term relationship or marriage, but none that seem to capture some of the core ingredients I’ve found important in relationships. So here’s the straight dope, from my experience.
Before I begin, however, it’s important to dispel a common relationship myth — relationships are (or should be) easy. That is simply not true. The grass always looks greener in other people’s lives, because few people share the truth of the amount of work that goes into relationships (hence why 50% of marriages end in divorce). Relationships — even the best relationships in the world — require constant attention, nurturing, and work. If you can understand and accept the need for constant attention and work in your relationship, you’re started in the right direction.
1. Compromise
Relationships are about not only taking, but also giving. If you find yourself not giving very much, or feeling resentful of how much you give and how little you receive back, you may be in an unequal relationship where one side is taking more than they are giving.
For instance, couples sometimes mistakenly believe that “love” will help them deal with any issue that comes up, and that if the other person truly loved you, they would just do as you ask. But people are independent with their own unique needs and personalities. Just because we found someone we want to spend our lives with doesn’t mean we give up our own identity in the process.
2. Communicate
Relationships live and die not by the sword, but by the amount of discussion. If two people can’t find a way to openly and honestly communicate their needs and feelings to one another, the relationship doesn’t stand much of a chance long-term. Couples must find a way to communicate regularly, openly, and directly.
This doesn’t mean waiting for an argument to tell your significant other how much he bothers you with his throwing his clothes on the floor instead of the hamper. It means telling him when you feel the need to, and to do so in a manner that is respectful but assertive.
3. Choose Your Battles Carefully
After marriage or when two people move in together, couples tend to discover pretty much the same thing no matter who they are – that they are two different people and living together is harder than anyone ever told them. Love conquers a lot of things, but it is no match for living day-in and day-out with another human being (especially if you’ve spent years on your own).
Prepare yourself for this challenge by choosing what arguments you want to turn into a full blown battle. For instance, do you really want to start a fight over the toothpaste cap or how clean the shower is? Or would you rather reserve your energy for the discussions over finances, kids, and career paths (you know, the things that might really matter to a person). Too many couples fight and bicker over the dumbest things, especially when put into context of issues of true importance.
4. Don’t Hide Your Needs
Sometimes when we enter into a long-term relationship, we put ourselves second, behind the other person’s needs and desires. We might give up working to have a child, or agree to move to another city to help support our significant other’s career. And that’s fine, but you need to be realistic first with yourself about whether such things really matter to you or not. If they do, you need to find a way to communicate such needs with your partner, and compromise where possible.
Two people will rarely have exactly the same wants and desires out of life — that’s just a fantasy. Instead, expect that sometimes your two paths will diverge. Express your needs at those crucial moments, but always find a way to do so respectfully and with an open mind.

5. Don’t underestimate the importance of trust and honesty
Different people have different areas of concern, but almost everyone values trust and honesty from their partner above all. Why? Because your partner is the one person you want to be able to depend upon in the long-term, without question or doubt.
Little things where your significant other hasn’t been completely honest shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, because virtually everybody tells little white lies (especially when one is dating). Focus instead on the big things, like if they say they’re a lawyer and you discover they’ve never even passed the bar, or they say they like kids but later on insist on never having one.
* * *
Strong relationships are like a really good conversation with someone you admire, trust and cherish – they are ever-changing, engaging, wonderfully rewarding and sometimes surprising. But in order to continue the conversation because you want to see what the person has to say next, you have to respect your significant other’s opinion even when you disagree with it.
And just like a good conversation, you need to work on keeping your end up too. You need to show attention and nurture the relationship constantly, just as you would nurture anything you value in life. You don’t just “get married” and that’s the end of it. Indeed, marriage is just the beginning of a long process of learning to openly and honestly communicate with another person in a respectful and caring manner.
If you’re up for it and follow these tips, you’ll be on a road to having a more successful relationship or marriage. But remember — it takes two to tango. Share these with your significant other or spouse and use it as an opportunity to begin the conversation of your life.

 Source: http://psychcentral.com/lib/5-secrets-to-a-successful-long-term-relationship-or-marriage/0001271/2

Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Long-Distance Relationship

Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Long-Distance Relationship
For most of human history, long-distance relationships have been impossible to sustain due to travel reasons alone. The internet age has made it much more feasible, but as I found out with my girlfriend, romance and relationships are a different beast when thousands of miles separate you.
As we've discussed before, sometimes failure is the best way to learn. My girlfriend and I are on our second try now after the intial attempt at long-distance went awry. As it turns out, it's possible to bridge the gap, both physically and figuratively, but not without major changes to our behavior. The first attempt didn't end well, but after learning several important lessons, we managed to move into a normal, ridiculous, local relationship. I won't be able to tell you how to be happy forever or find the secret to a 50-year marriage. Far from it. Hopefully this can at least help deal with the problems of being apart.






The Physical Aspect Matters More than You Think

Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Long-Distance Relationship

It doesn't take an eight-year psychology degree to realize that hugs are great. However, you'll start to miss them after six months of being away from your partner. It's not just physical affection that gets lost with the distance, either. Chances are that even the most tech-savvy couples will communicate primarily via text, voice, and occasionally video chat sessions. If you've ever spent time talking to a person face-to-face, this is a huge step down.
During most of your conversations, there are whole swaths of human interaction you're not privvy to. You don't get to see them smile. You don't get to sit next to them on the couch. You can't tell that their body language is different when they're upset. In fact, if you don't talk to them via phone or video, you can't know if they're upset at all unless they volunteer that info.
This inherently puts more pressure on verbal communication. A lot more than we're used to, in fact. If you were to walk into a room and see your partner crying on the couch, it would be insensitive to shove a video of a cat playing with boxes in front of their face. However, if your primary method of communication is via IM or text message, you can do exactly this without ever realizing it.
As in most situations, the key to overcoming this problem is communication, but this type might not come naturally. In this case, making use of your imaginary audience can be helpful. Internet culture has a way of bringing out the egotist in us all. It's the reason we share things like what food we're eating or what movie we're watching. If you catch yourself wanting to share something with that perceived audience of people that may be of relevance to your partner (i.e. "I've had a bad day"), share it with them instead of Twitter.

Your Partner Will Spend a Lot ofTime With Other People

Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Long-Distance Relationship

It sounds obvious, but if you're not living in the same area, your partner will have to get their socialization fix somewhere else. Most people will tell you that spending time together is key to keeping a relationship alive. When you're separated by hundreds of miles, though, your primary method for accomplishing this is by spending a lot of face time with a cold, digital display.






This doesn't mean you can't have meaningful interaction. Skype and Hangouts provide great opportunities to spend quality time with your partner both alone and with others. However, they're no substitute for getting out of the house. If your significant other is going to a concert, a movie, or out to dinner, they're going without you and probably with others.
If you're the jealous type—and it's hard not to be in a long-distance relationship—this is especially problematic. You'll wish you could be there, but you can't. This causes tension. It also breeds paranoia (which we'll talk more about in a bit). It may be possible to overcome this by setting aside time to spend together and by reassuring each other that if you could, you'd be doing activities together. However, you can never fully change the fact that when your partner is out having fun and you're home alone, it will almost always feel just a little bit like rejection.
In this case, a little overcompensation can do a world of good. Chances are that if you're living in the same town, it would seem overly mushy if your partner texted you to say "I wish you were here!" every time she went to dinner. When you're a thousand miles away, though, this kind of reminder matters a lot more. You let your loved one know that this situation isn't optimal. You assure them that if you could be part of their outing, you would be. It won't fix the fact that they haven't seen you in months, but it will be a small comfort at a time when every comfort counts.






You can also alleviate your own worries by filling up your time with activities of your own. We all have our own ways of recharging and every night your partner is out of communication is a chance to do things that benefit you. Read a book. Go to a party. Build something. Find something to invest your time in and relax while your significant other is out doing the same.

Time Differences Skew Perspectives

Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Long-Distance Relationship
If your long distance relationship is spanning multiple time zones, things are going to get tougher. Relationships are built on shared experiences, which are tough enough when you're separated by a hundred miles. If you're on the West coast and she's on the East coast, though, then your "bed time" is her "middle of the night." Your "first thing in the morning" is her "been at work for an hour and a half."
If you want to get a sense of how much this matters, try showing up to your next dinner engagement three hours late (or more if your partner is on another continent). You will probably find some miffed guests who have already eaten and moved on from the restaurant.
If you're separated by so much space that you're more than an hour or two out of sync, set a schedule. Try to find routines that match up with each other. If you don't have any, make some. Pick a day every week to spend the evening together. Talk every day for at least a little while. This is one way that long distance relationships don't differ much from short-distance ones, but it takes extra effort to reach the baseline, so it can't be neglected.

You Need an End Game Plan

Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Long-Distance Relationship

All your precautions and communication won't mean much if nothing ever changes. It's possible to maintain your situation on a temporary basis, but it's not a permanent solution. Long-distance relationships that don't have a goal to work towards—a vacation, the next meetup, or a permanent relocation—are relationships that will create their own expiration date.
Goals give you a target, something to justify the stress of being apart. Imagine working an internship for several years without any indication of when you might be moved up to having a proper job or even getting paid. That's what long-distance relationships without any set of goals are. They're in a state of unsustainable limbo until you close the distance.
The catch 22 is that depending on where you're at in a relationship, talking about plans to move to be together may be premature and put unnecessary pressure on you both. There's no formula for avoiding this problem, unfortunately.






If you can't make plans to pick up and move across the state or country just yet, at least plan your next meetup before the current one ends. You don't need to make travel arrangements necessarily (that can be incredibly expensive to begin with), but having a target to look forward to can help alleviate some of the stress of seeing your loved one go.

Long-Distance Relationships Are 90% Promises

Five Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Long-Distance Relationship

When I got started in my first major long-distance relationship, I had the good fortune to have a friend tell me something that helped frame most of our issues in the right light. She told me: "A long-distance relationship isn't really a relationship. It's just the promise of one." Now, I should note that this is not something I fully agree with. I think it trivializes what are some very real connections. I'm currently very happy with my girlfriend that began as a long-distance relationship, despite some initial rockiness.
However, we're very much the exception. While the warning may not be universally accurate, the truth is, when you're in a long-distance relationship, you make a lot of promises. "Things will be different when we're together." "When we live in the same town, we'll do a bunch of fun stuff." "I wish I were there so I could bring you food/take care of you while you're sick/do things I'm not allowed to publish on Lifehacker." You may be the most sincere person on the planet, but that doesn't change the fact that you're racking up a bunch of promises that you'll have to deliver on later, or shatter the illusion.
If your relationship begins locally and then moves to long-distance, it might be easier to get an idea of what you're reaching towards. But if you've never met someone, or you reach a point where you've spent more time apart than together, you have to keep your illusions in check. It's so easy for us to picture how perfect things will be and then discover that life is more complicated. It can be done. Absolutely. But it takes an element of sober self-assessment.
Like I said at the beginning of this piece, I can't tell you how to have a perfect or perpetually happy relationship. I can't even guarantee that this will help with the distance problem. I can say, however, that it's a problem that can be overcome. It takes a lot of work and not everyone will pull it off, but it is possible that you can get out of the long-distance situation and have a regular, chaotic, messy local relationship just like everyone else.

The two hospital patients


Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room's only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back. The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on holiday.
And every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window. The man in the other bed began to live for those one-hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and colour of the world outside.
The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every colour of the rainbow. Grand old trees graced the landscape and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.
As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.
One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by. Although the other man couldn't hear the band - he could see it in his mind's eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words. Days and weeks passed.
One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away. As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch and, after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone. Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the world outside. Finally, he would have the joy of seeing it for himself. He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed.
It faced a blank wall. The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window. The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall. She said, "Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you."

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