101 Love Tips

If you haven’t had a chance yet to check out Romance Tracker’s community on MyBlogLog, I hope you’ll take a second to visit . . . and join. MyBlogLog is a great service that lets like-minded readers and bloggers connect and interact, and it’s a really cool way to discover new blogs and keep track of which communities your contacts are joining.

Romance Tracker’s community has 38 members in it now, and I’d like to give them all some link love below. Thanks for joining, and check out the blogs of some of the other members below!

Chris M.

Dan and Jennifer

KWiz

Sabro

JilBean

HappyBusyBee

Nellioness

Meagandixon

Dreamystargazer

Manilamom

WondahWoman

Teknosavvy

Namre

JonathanPhillips

JoyAnderson

Murashijo

Cirquelover

Qumang

Airriaz

Ronan Business Garden

Forever Together X

Ilkeryoldas

Debojitc

Lou Moore

Tom Hanna

Villager

KKD

Webindex

Kuanyin

Rex Dixon

Sindhu

Caridad Pineiro

Cbkr11

Saucy Konfections

Those of you who visit Romance Tracker with any regularity (come on, there must be a few of you out there!) may have noticed that I’ve been tinkering with this site’s theme a lot over the past week, and I think I’ve pretty much gotten it to a point where I’m digging it. The previous Cutline theme that I had been using worked great for the first few months of the blog, while I was focusing on SEO and linkbacks, but it was a little too simple and vanilla. I still suggest Cutline for any wordpress users who want a simple, clean, search-engine-friendly theme for their blog!

The new Romance Tracker look is basically a hacked-to-hell version of this Valentine theme that I came across. It’s an attractive, simple, search-engine-friendly theme that the author did a great job on, but it was a little too “pink and mushy.” This blog is about romance, but all of the hearts and flowers are a bit too much even for me! So I hacked the code a bit, did a switcheroo on some colors, created my own banner, and you’re looking at the finished product.

I’m sure I’ll make other small changes to the theme in coming months (I have a hard time leaving things as they are), but I’m going to try to leave Romance Tracker basically how it is for a while as I focus on gaining regular visitors.

So, what do you think? Like the new Romance Tracker design? Leave a comment and let me know!

It’s cool to see that Romance Tracker is starting to get listed in a few blogrolls as a site for “expert dating advice,” and I’m glad that people find the posts here helpful. There’s nothing like a little old-fashioned romance to add a much-needed spark to your relationship! But as for being an “expert,” I’m far from that. I consider myself a very lucky guy to be in a great relationship, but believe me, we aren’t without our challenges and troubles, just like every other couple!

In a way, though, I’m glad that we’ve had to so much diversity together, and you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of facing problems as a team, either. While making unneeded drama in your relationship is never a good thing, actually working together to overcome inevitable problems can bring you and your special someone much closer.

There’s an old saying about a broken bone healing even stronger than it was before the break . . . and the same goes for romantic relationships. If you and your significant other can face problems together as a team and work through them together, your relationship will be stronger and more stable for it. Solving problems together requires give-and-take, patience, and ingenuity, and all of those are important ingredients in building successful romantic relationships.

So don’t hope for problems in your relationship, but don’t despair when they come, either. Difficulties are unavoidable in any relationship, and if you face them with optimism that you and your partner can solve them together, you’ll set yourself up for success and solidify your romance. Remember: there are no challenges you’ll face that someone hasn’t faced before!

How about you? Are there any problems that you and your lover have faced together that made your relationship stronger in the end? Leave a comment below and share your experiences with our readers!

Before you start thinking that this blog has switched topics from “old-fashioned romance” to “top five writing project,” check out today’s post on relationship problems . . . and don’t worry, this is the last batch of entries from the project that I’ll be posting here!

Anyway, the final batch of entries in Problogger’s project is bigger than all the rest, with 297 new entries. I’m reproducing them again for you below. Don’t forget to check out Romance Tracker’s entry on finding the person of your dreams!

Kudos to Darren Rowse for putting together a great writing project that spurred a bunch of terrific blog posts. It was a great opportunity for bloggers to drive new traffic to their sites, too. Taking part in the project helped raise my daily visits and my feed circulation number . . . both of which I’m very thankful for! (more…)

Okay, I swear I’m going to get around to actually writing a post about old-fashioned romance today . . . but taking part in Problogger’s Top Five Group Writing Project has proven to be so much fun that I’ve sort of been distracted from it for the last few days. I submitted my entry, “how to find the person of your dreams,” on Monday, and there have been hundreds of other entries since then. Today’s batch has 222 entries in all, and I’m once again listing them below for your reading pleasure. Have fun! (more…)

It’s been a lot of fun taking part in Problogger’s Top Five Group Writing Project, and it looks like today’s list of submissions is even larger than yesterday’s. There’s even more great stuff in today’s list, and I’m reproducing it below. If you haven’t already, make sure you check out Romance Tracker’s Top Five submission on “how to find the person of your dreams.” I’ll keep posting new entries for the rest of the week! (more…)

Yesterday I submitted a post on the top five ways to find the person of your dreams to Problogger’s Top Five Group Writing Project, and it looks like I was one of a whole lot of bloggers who decided to submit an entry on the first day!  As part of the project, I’m reproducing links to all of the day one writing project submissions here on Romance Tracker.  Reading all of them would probably take hours and hours, but scan the list below if you get a chance and check out the ones that sound interesting to you.  I’ve been looking through them and there are some pretty good ones! (more…)

Here’s a quick list of ten romantic quotes to add a little old-fahioned romance to your day . . .

“Love is a friendship set to music.”

–E. Joseph Cossman

“If you have it [love], you don’t need anything else, and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter much what else you have.”

–Sir James M. Barrie

(more…)

So, are you one of the lucky people who’s found the man or woman of your dreams? If not, don’t stress out . . . you’re part of a pretty big club! Meeting that perfect person to share your life and passions with can take a lot of persistence and patience, especially if you’ve been single for a long time. Just remember: you need to have faith that there really is someone who is meant for you . . . and dedicate yourself to becoming the best person you can be for when you do finally meet them!

Until that time comes, though, there are a few things you can do to make your life more fulfilling, more romantic, and make it more likely for you to come across the person you’re meant to spend your life with. None of them are hard to do, and all of them are guaranteed to make you happier, more productive, and more fun to be around. In fact, even people who aren’t looking for love could make their lives a heck of a lot better by following these five simple rules! (more…)

So, when’s the last time you played hooky to spend some much-needed romantic time with your special someone?

Before you laugh, I’m not advocating that you skip work whenever you feel like snuggling with your sweetheart; part of being a good lover and a responsible partner is living up to your responsibilities and taking care of your own career. But occasionally, we all need to forget about the rest of the world for a while and concentrate on the things that mean the most to us!

It’s the truth: millions of people skip work for an endless number of reasons every day, including plain old laziness. But if you’re a hard worker and deserve a little time off, taking some much-deserved time off to spend time with your sweetie is a perfect way to recharge your batteries and add some good old-fashioned romance to your relationship. (more…)