Add & Subtract - Love in Relationships

Today's theme is Love in Relationships

ADD BEING IN LOVE

We have been forever bombarded with distorted messages about love through books, movies and other media. Real love is so often portrayed as dramatic and intense, complete with fireworks, drug-like highs and lots of hot sex (with no time to even undress properly!).

Yet if we are really present, grounded and connected with ourselves as well as our beloved, love in relationship (the whole package including sex) becomes something depthless and quiet. Instead of choppy superficial waters, we get to dive below a still surface into peaceful, rich unfolding.

Here is where a mature, satisfying and enduring relationship is formed.

Suggestion: Set aside 10 minutes each day for a week to be present with your partner:

• Sit in silence side by side and breathe
• Hold hands
• Melt into a hug a stay there
• Look into each others eyes for the whole time…

Notice what arises in quiet love. Vulnerabilities, insecurities, unresolved issues may come up. Allow whatever arises to be there, and your deeper connection to be felt. Observe the challenges and the rewards.

A Course in Miracles teacher Robert Perry:

“According to the Course’s lofty definition of love, real love only gives. It places no demands whatsoever and allows complete freedom. To love is to give yourself away to everyone a once, all the time, without any partiality, selectivity or variation. Rather than the ultimate sacrifice, this is the ultimate ecstasy…Love therefore is a total idea. In love, what you give is total”

Source: Relationships as a Spiritual Journey: From Specialness to Holiness

SUBTRACT FALLING IN LOVE

In reality those media portrayals of love show a temporary state of insanity! Two people collude to regress into their infancy, collapse into needy dependency and hope that their every need will be fulfilled by the other. Adults have become little children once more!

“They complete me”, “I cannot live without you”, “You are my world”… All these common sentiments describe our experience as babies, when we are indeed completely reliant on mother to survive. Pure openness but powerless, helpless, ego-centric.

All about taking, getting our needs met long before the developmental stage where we can really give to another. A seductive fantasy of being totally satisfied by the other, yet impossible to sustain and bound to end in tears. 

Suggestion: Remember that healthy relationships are created by two people taking full responsibility for their own needs as healthy independent adults. From this foundation, the exchange of love, care, support, affection will build a strong, enduring bond.

Psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck:

“If falling in love is not love, then what is it other than a temporary and partial collapse of ego boundaries? I do not know… without this trick, this illusory and inevitably temporary (it would not be practical were it not temporary) regression to infantile merging and omnipotence, many of us who are happily or unhappily married today would have retreated in whole-hearted terror from the realism of the marriage vows”

Source: The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth