True Love 101

THIRD STAGE: TRUE LOVE

This is the stage that inherently, we all long for, even if we don’t know what to call it or how to get there. There is something in all of us, at such a visceral level, that knows when we feel loved and safe. When I use the word safe, I do mean physically safe, but I also mean spiritually, mentally, and emotionally safe. To know that we are “safe” to express our inspiration, creative ideas, thoughts, and feelings versus being shamed, judged, and intimidated is fundamental to sustaining a truly loving relationship.

There are several challenges to being able to discover and sustain a truly loving relationship. One challenge is the word itself. For our deepest most intimate emotional expression we say, “I love you.” But we also say, “I love hot dogs!” Clearly, it is important to figure out what that word means and are we both meaning the same thing when we say it.

A second challenge is that our music, movies, romance novels, etc. have become our reference points for understanding what love is. Unfortunately, in many songs it is associated with, “I’ll die without you. I can’t live without you.” In movies and romance novels we are taught, being with the most handsome man who has a fast car and lots of money and the most beautiful woman with long blond hair and the body of a sixteen year old model, is where true love resides.

A third challenge is that the imbedded beliefs about relationships, which we unconsciously store away in our belief box, come from whatever experiences we have had from living with our parents. From these early experiences, we collect the internal feelings and beliefs of our five year old, twelve year old, our sixteen year old etc. as to what the other person should say, do, be, give, sound like, etc. if they really loved us.

The last challenge, I will mention, is the fact that most of us, including our parents, have never taken classes on such topics as: “Discovering and sustaining a loving relationship”, “Creating and sustaining sexual intimacy”, “Understanding how to make relationships stronger through conflict resolution”. Therefore, most of us enter into a primary committed relationship with unrealistic expectations, many unmet needs, and no skill set or understanding of what is involved with discovering, creating, and sustaining a truly loving relationship.

Even with these apparent obstacles, most of us long for a truly loving relationship. Research tells us that people are usually happier, better off financially, and live longer, when their relationship is an enjoyable one. While we have these challenges to overcome, we have it in us to discover and sustain true love.

It has been my privilege, to work with, incredibly successful, doctors, corporate executives, lawyers, educators, architects, scientists, writers, carpenters, pipe fitters, realtors, artists etc. These clients have been amazingly talented people. Yet, they would go home, and feel inadequate and unloved. They may have been responsible for a multi-million budget, saving someone’s life, or designing a building during their work hours, but one look or comment from their spouse could make them feel utterly inadequate or unloved in less than 5 minutes. These are all powerful people and yet they too had to learn how to sustain loving connection. They had to choose to stop using their power to try to win “power struggles” in order to be “right”. Rather, they had to choose to learn how to sustain what they really wanted, a loving, sexy, successful relationship.

The reality is that most of us need help to ever experience this stage of relationship. Somehow, we have to figure out how to put a foundation under the trusting and innocent dreams and longings we had as a child to be loved and safe. We have to pick ourselves up from the disappointment of failing at creating our hopes and dreams of a successful lasting relationship. We need to reclaim the word “love” from the hot dog stand and all the air brushing and fantasies of Hollywood. The good news is that if you are reading this, you still have hope and desire and you have found someone who really can teach you how to experience the “True Love” stage of relationship.

When people make the choice to create such a relationship, they realize the effort involved with discovering and sustaining a truly loving relationship, is actually simpler and infinitely more gratifying than all the struggles they were having. The rest of this book will teach how to discover, create, and sustain truly loving relationships.