Relationship Glue

RELATIONSHIPS AND THE LONG HAUL

 

 Relationships are often the result of dating.  For many that's the driving goal.  Once there, it can be another story if left unattended.  My take on this as several books help clear the path.  "Falling In Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose" by Ayala Malach-Pines and, "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love" by Helen Fisher are two that I find both detailed and clear when it comes to explaining dating and partnerships.


DR. KELLER GLEANS RESEARCH ON

 

Keeping Romance Alive:

• Do novel things together - variety, variety, variety.

• Sexual intimacy.

• Review antidepressant medication.

• Be gender-specific - face-to-face (female) vs. side-by-side (male).

• Space or time apart increases anticipation and pleasure of the reward (to a point).

• Date and stay romantic.

Making yourself fall in love:

• Do novel and exciting things together.

• Banish other romantic distractions.

• Open yourself up to love.

Making a relationship last:

• Novelty.

• Commit to one another.

• Have engaging life projects - keep growing intellectually.

• Regular sexual intimacy.

• Listen to each other: Ask questions--Give answers.

• Appreciate one another.

• Stay attractive.

• For men, include your partner.

• For women, give him space.

• Be honest and trustworthy.

• Tell your mate what you need.

• Accept your mate's shortcomings

• Be respectful.

• Mind your manners.

• Have a sense of humor and use it.

• Compromise.

• Argue constructively.

• Never threaten to depart.

• Forget the past.

• Avoid affairs.

• Don't assume the relationship will last forever.

• Build and work on the relationship every day.

• Take relationship problems as a chance to grow.

DR. AYALA MALACH-PINES DELVES INTO RESEARCH & THEORY

 

Trying again--How to make use of past long-term relationships in the next one.

• Intimate relationships can be the best way to help resolve childhood issues and create meaning for your life. So even if you’ve been in a long-term relationship and it has ended, it doesn’t mean you can never be in another one.

• Your old relationship gives you a chance to see where you’ve grown and how you might change things in your new relationship.

• The choice to fall in love is unconscious/unintentional and so is often illogical/emotional.  The reasoning part of the brain is called the cerebral cortex-the outer most layer of the brain; and falling in love is decided by the limbic system—where emotions rule in the deeper parts of the brain.  

• While illogical and emotional; the choice does seem purposeful in that it provides you a partner best suited to deal with your own obstacles to growth.

• However, the risk is that the first thing that attracts you to your partner may be the thing that causes the most problems later on. 

 

Here are some examples:

• Attraction:  He pursued you and you felt desirable. 
• Problem:     You feel smothered and can’t breathe.

• Attraction:  She was perfect and your ideal in a partner.
• Problem:     You never get the feeling she desires me.

• Attraction:  You always felt secure with him.
• Problem:     He is boring.

• Attraction:  She has a mysterious air about her.
• Problem:     She isn’t really there; no emotional intimacy.

• Attraction:  He was ambitions and looked to be a success.
• Problem:    He’s gone all the time on business; never home.

• Attraction: She looked to be a great homemaker.
• Problem:    She is not exciting; no interest outside the home.

• Attraction: He looks to be very easy-going.
• Problem:    He won’t stand up for himself.

• Attraction: She was energetic, very active and exciting.
• Problem:    She blow up over little things; has temper tantrums.

• Attraction: He was very smart and assertive man.
• Problem:    He makes me feel incompetent and stupid.

• Attraction: She respects me and you feel appreciated.
• Problem:    She is insecure and blames me for everything.

 

• Obviously, the attraction is meeting a need in your own life.  When you’ve begun to grow in that area, you may no longer need what it was about them that attracted you.  Now, the trait feels more like a problem than something positive and you’re at risk for relationship burnout.

• Some may fall in love, start a long-term relationship, get married and never feel the need to end the relationship.  Others find themselves repeating the process over and over again—recognizing they’re repeating the same pattern in their relationships.

• Sometimes, in an effort to not repeat the same pattern, you may try to find the opposite kind of person.  If in the past your partner was demanding and controlling, you’ll chose someone who is laid back and is indecisive.  Unfortunately, this opposite is just the other side of the same coin and you’re faced with a similar dilemma.

• By recognizing the issue resides within you, you can begin to address it and see your partner as the individual –flawed and imperfect—and not as a projection of your childhood experiences or own self-image.  As you learn to accept yourself, you begin to accept your partner as well.

• This doesn’t mean you must stay in your relationship.  You can leave a relationship for any reason in most states.  And no family court in the county is going force you to stay married to your partner if you don’t want to be married anymore.

• My role as a mental health professional is not to put a value judgment on your decision to stay or leave.  But to help you look at the risks and benefits of your decisions and support you in moving in directions you feel are in line with your values.

• The fact is that making long-term commitments usually involve investment of time, energy, and resources.  And each time you end and begin again in a long-term relationship, you have costs emotionally and physically; and at times in terms of opportunities. 

• Most people recognize this and don’t typically even acknowledge their desire to leave a marriage or other long-term relationship unless they’ve become quite unhappy.

 

Make sure you read "Falling In Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose" by Ayala Malach-Pines and, "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love" by Helen Fisher for solid information, research, and theory on falling in love and relationships.

 

What part have you played in your relationship successes?  Failures?

DATING IS NECESSARY

Some dating thoughs that mingle mine and those from this part funny, sometimes irreverent, and often spot on book about dating, "Dating Makes You Want to Die: But You Have to Do It Anyway" by Daniel Holloway & Dorothy Robinson.  The title itself gets you to open the book, but the snark and the truth keep you reading.

 

BEING SINGLE

• Being single is okay when you're supposed to be single--in your twenties.  Getting out from under parents, going to college, the military, or starting a full-time real job is just the beginning.  The time for finding love and settling down and getting married is still in the twenties and has only increased a couple of years in the past thirty years.

• It's less okay when you're in your thirties because you realize everyone else is not single anymore.  Your friends won't stay out late anymore and you find yourself the 3rd or 5th at every get together.  You notice the conversation is about baby food, or diaper delivery.

• It's definitely not okay in your forties where all your old friends are a distant memory and all you get is suspicious glances from other 40-year-olds pushing miniature plastic race cars around in the grocery store while you're humming along with just a basket; or worse yet with a jug of milk in one hand a magazine in the other.

• Kidding of course, but anytime you swim upstream from cultural norms you'll start to feel uncomfortable. And the cultural norm is to be married.  But that doesn't mean its wrong.  43% of all American adults are currently single.  22% of all American adults will never marry. 78% of all American adults will get married.  25% all American adults will divorce at least once (which is about 33% of all married adults).  There are nearly 200 million adults in the US; so get dating!

MAKING CONTACT

• Eyes - catch someone looking at you?  If you are interested, hold their gaze briefly and smile.  Let them know you're interested too.

• Touching - If someone is comfortable enough to touch, they like you at least a little.  It takes time and trust to shrink personal space, but a touch is a good sign.

• Laughing - This also means good.  If someone is laughing at your jokes--they're into you.

WARNING SIGNS THAT FIRST CONTACT ISN'T GOING WELL

• Your at party and they end the conversation.  Not a good sign, but you can wait and try again later.  If it happens again, they're not interested.

• They drift away while at a gathering - this may mean they have to attend to other friends/family.  But if they never return, they're not interested.

• They won't give out their phone number.  People give out their phone number to people they like.  If you don't get their number, they don't like you.

EYE TO EYE

• Restaurant not coffee.  Unless it's an online dating contact, no coffee first dates.  Coffee isn't dating, it's seeing if he's a serial killer.  And yes, you're the man and you're buying.  Get over it. 

• Culture is changing, but not completely; and not before you get too old that dating won't matter anymore--meaning for the next 50 years at least.  So just accept that the polite and mature thing is to pick up the tab on the first date if you're the man.

 
WHERE TO FIND A DATE

• Friend's parties.  You know your friend and they know you.  Trust they'll have a good mix and that you might get to know someone new.

• After work.  If your work mates have nothing better to do than to hang out after work, then you can be sure they are (mostly) single.  Coffee, a beer, or ice tea; finding singles at work is a place to start.  You often will find singles from other employers hanging out at these water holes as well.

• Sports.  Church leagues, work leagues, community leagues.  Bowling, golf, softball, pool.  There are other singles there and you're all doing something fun.

•  Weddings.  Obvious isn't it?  Everyone looks nice, a party is about to begin, and lots of other singles there too.

• Night School.  Grad school, community college, extension classes at your old high school.  All of these are putting similar people together with similar interests.  Some are single.  See after work for more clues. 

• Blind dates.  Being Zen is helpful on these excursions; want nothing be in the moment, desire is an illusion.  With this in mind, you might be pleasantly surprised.

 

INTERNET

• Internet.  There are two big areas here. Meetup and dating networks.  Meetup.com is a wonderful site that promotes people getting together offline by using the Internet to find one another.  The Toledo area has many Meetup groups that have a wide range of interests.  Some are focused on singles and having fun.  It is not a dating site, but you can join groups with structured activities with the goal of having fun.  That's a start.

• Online Dating.  This can range from Craigslist that has no structure or oversight where even illegal activities are advertised to eHarmony where the procedure is tightly controlled, hundreds of questions to be answered, and marriage must be your goal. 

• Fee-based sites/do-it-yourself.  Match is the granddaddy of these types of sites.  The idea behind pay sites is that at least those serious about getting a date are willing to pay.  You sort through the profiles on your own.

• Fee-based sites/we-do-all-the-work-for-you sites.  Chemistry and eHarmony are the big players here.  They use psychological instruments to place you in categories and match you up with those who are similar.  Chemestry.com uses the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and eHarmony is secretive about their own proprietary version.  You should know that eHarmony has struggled to give gays and lesbians a chance at their system.  They've agreed to have a separate site that they will now link to eharmony site.

• Free Sites.  OKCupid and Plenty of Fish are a couple of the better known sites.  The fear is that it's the wild west, but even  Match.com was involved in a federal lawsuit so buyer beware free or not.

 
AFTER A FEW DATES

•  Some decisions will have to be made. 

• First up you'll need to start dropping barriers.   Maybe your childhood, or college days.  You're not getting closer unless you know more about each other.  But this shouldn't be a confessional or a therapy session.  Revealing you troubled past or dark fears may be a bit too much right now.

• Avoid talking about dysfunctional relatives, or your parent's marital problems.

• Ex-talk is dangerous. Avoid if you can.  Move the conversation to something you'll both enjoy and won't regret later. 

• Your date may really want to hear about your ex's, but it'll be like slowing down to look at a car wreak.  They'll know they shouldn't, but they can't help it.  And now they'll never get those images out of their mind. 

• If you've gotten this far, it means you have a bit more than superficial interest.  And they seem to be feeling it too.

 
FROM "YOU & ME TO "WE & US"

• So without realizing it you've become a couple in a relationship.  If you're washing their dishes or spakiling a hole in the bathroom wall; you;ve reached that point.  If you didn't know it you will when they intorduce you as their girlfriend/boyfriend.  Be prepared.

• Meeting the parents.  Remember, their parents know more about your partner than you do and are just happy they're happy

 

SIGNS YOUR RELATIONSHIP ISN'T HEADING FOR MARRIAGE

• You don't touch anymore.

• Texting and phone calls dwindle.

• You're fighting--a lot.

•  If you’re thinking of marriage, the engaement is as good as it gets.  It will only get harder with marriage, work, children, and all the responsibilities of life together.  So if you’re struggling, see someone who can help you lean ways to communicate, fight fair, and problem solve.  If that doesn't work, be careful about your next step in the relationship.

• Know when to call it quits.  Be prepared to end it before you tie the knot and you'll save yourself a bigger struggle later on.

• Have a little class when you break up.  First tell them.  Don't let them slowly twist in the wind of your dissatisfaction and feigned interest in them.  If it's over for you, then end it.  It requires the courage of a Roman Legion, but do it.

• Tell them in person.  Give yourself a few days apart before you do this.  Do not end the relationship in either of your apartments.  Or in a place where you can't gracefully get up if things become ugly, and walk out and exit safely.

• No one wants to go through the agony of breaking up, but if you are going to date, you will.  You recognize you'll need time to hurt and make sure you get the support you need and then move on as best you can.

Be sure to check out, "Dating Makes You Want to Die: But You Have to Do It Anyway" by Daniel Holloway & Dorothy Robinson for more on dating and suriving as a single at any age!

 

Where has dating taken you so far in 2012?

ROMANCE YOUR RELATIONSHIP

 

Below I've gleaned a few things from a great resource on how to bring romance into your relationship "1001 Ways to Be Romantic" by Gregory Godek.  A great read and a worthwhile investment in your love relationship!

 

SOME DEFINITIONS

Romantic love - is the desire for emotional and physical intimacy with another person.  The attraction and desire that's filled with excitement and mystery for someone.

To be romantic is to bring these kinds of feelings into the relationship.  Helping to remind the one you love that what you have can be at times, extraordinary.  Even though relationships have burdens it is possible to enjoy the excitement and mystery of loving the one your with.

Any long-term relationship there is routine, boredom, and disappointment.  How can there not?  Allowing yourself to take your intimate partner for granted puts the relationship at risk and leads to further dissatisfaction. By creating romance you remind one another the passion you can have for each other.

Romance is what makes your intimate partner different from your first family relationships (parents, siblings) and your relationships with your friends or children.

Being romantic is available to anyone even if you don't know how, or feel you can't, or have simply lost hope of every having it again.

 

WHAT ROMANCE IS NOT

Romance is not counseling.  Garbage, dishes, and laundry are not romantic.  Yet no romance is possible when basic commitments are not honored.  Know the duties of shared living and take time to make the agreements that make living together possible.

Romance is not able to produce feelings that were never there or have long since died out.  It is based on attraction and desire already established and positive feelings having been nurtured at some level.

Cards, Candy, & Flowers.  These are only the most basic of tools of the romantic.  Cards and the other tokens of love must always be given on holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries and meeting that requirement is not being romantic.  That is the bare minimum behavior if you ever want to foster affection in your mate.  Forgetting these are like forgetting to pick up the children from the school!

 

ROMANTIC IDEAS 

Demonstrate passion by taking what you'd normally do and make it extraordinary. 

This takes some creativity and with some thought you can do it.  This means you don't have to reinvent your romantic ideas from scratch.  You can add something extra, make it different, and it moves from an ordinary token of love to an extraordinary, big, creative romantic gesture.

It doesn't mean elaborate or expensive, but it can be.  If you want to fly roundtrip to Paris just to have lunch--wow!  That's romantic!  But you can also just do what Gregory Godek shares in his book, "1001 Ways to be romantic":  Give your lover a dozen roses--and do it with a creative twist.  Give eleven red roses and one white rose.  Attach a note reads, "In every bunch there's one who stands out--that's you". 

 

TEN IDEAS FROM "1001 WAYS TO BE ROMANTIC"

• Make a BIG card--out of an appliance box.

• Fake a power outage 9throw the breaker) with no TV, computer, or furnace, you'll have no distractions and can enjoy candles fireplace and cuddling.

• Long-stemmed chocolate roses

• Buy the entire product line of your partner's favorite fragrance: soaps, crèmes, candles, perfume.

• Be prepared by creating a gift drawer--guy gifts ahead of time.  On sale, off-season, discounted quantities, and just on a whim.  Now you are prepared!

• Create romantic to-do checklists: Daily (kisses, complements, 20 min. uninterrupted time together), Weekly (small unexpected gift, two insights you learned this week, one little love note), Monthly (one romantic surprise, restock gift card stash, rent two romantic movies), and Yearly (plan next anniversary, think of unusual ways to celebrate partners birthday, make plans for next Valentines Day in advance).

• Consider gift-of-the-month clubs:  Beer, Romantic restaurant, New Ice Cream Flavor, Stuffed Animal, Back Rub; you get the idea.

• Women can send flowers to their partner at work.

• Practice "telepathy romance".  When apart, agree to stop and think of each other at the same time for one uninterrupted minute.

• Go outside in the morning and warm up her car.

 

What all this really means is that to stave off normal boredom and disappointment of everyday life together, you must intentionally work hard at your love relationship and make it an important priority in your life. 

The metaphor of a plant is useful here.  It needs sunshine; water, nutrients, and warmth, or it may die.  It might not; it may just look weak and withered.  Or it could die.  And once dead, it may be simply impossible to make it live again no mater how much you want it to. 

Relationships are alive and need your care because once they die; they rarely come back to life.  It's up to you to prevent this and romance is a start.

 

How has someone created romance in you life? 

WRAP UP ROMANCE IN TOLEDO

Valentine's Day is getting closer--where to romantically celebrate in the Toledo area ?  This is the day to impress, pullout the stops and make it special.  A day to remember.  So where in Toledo can that happen?  Well you'll have to figure that out for yourself.  That's the whole point, right? 

Okay, here are a few ideas to get you started.  Treo Restaurant in Sylvania does a funky kind of elegant.  Quirky style with a crooked grin.  Fool proof food with style for the Day includes prime rib and lobster tail with a delightful Chandon Rose sparkling wine, from Napa Valley, CA.

A powerhouse to please the man in your life is Toledo's stalwart Mancy's Steakhouse.  You can't go wrong with the Filet, Porterhouse, or T-bone partnered with the 2008 Beaulieu Vineyard, a straightforward Napa Cab, or even the 2009 chateau Les Terrasses, a young Bordeaux if feeling adventurous.  The outside-the-box choice is the Lamb Chops and a glass of 2009 Estancia--A pleasant Central Coast Pinot Nior.

Your Sushi savour will swoon at the 5-star Kyoto Ka on Central Ave. where you can sometimes snag a complementary hot Sake while waiting for your take out.  My choice is the Kanisu Salad, Shrimp Tempura, and Sashimi Eel.  That's right, Eel--I said it!

Five Guys Burgers and Fries  A spot where you can fall in love; or just remember why you'll always be in love with burgers and fries--whether the Bacon Burger, or for the slender-focused a Veggie Sandwich, or a childhood favorite, Kosher Dog--as simple and beautiful as it gets in All-American food.

That's enough, Toledo has a range of wonderful spots and for whatever taste or expense you can imagine.  I'll leave with this enigmatic quote, complements of Fabulous Food Quotes. 

 

“A man taking basil from a woman will love her always.”
- Sir Thomas Moore

 

Where do you dine for romance?  What food memories have lingered long after the relationship?

YOU FALL IN LOVE--OR YOU DON'T, PART 4

 


So who are you falling in love with?  Who's doing the falling?  Who's the beloved?  Carl Jung spoke to falling in love with the idea of the Shadow.  You reject and repress those things so precious to you--so deeply apart of yourself and kept hidden away;  aching to return.  Then without warning you discover someone so breathlessly perfect.  But completely unlike what you normally find acceptable--feels like coming home.  Who is this strange person you don't know?  You're falling in love and you don't know what's been done.

Jung also talked about the Archetypes:  Anima & Animus.  Parts inside that move and lead in ways that surprise and awaken you.  Strangely embodying the opposite--gender, values, purpose--your conscious self struggles for different things in the every-day-world. 

Parachute encapsulates this idea in, She Is Love.  The one alienated deep inside trying to wake you up.  Falling in love is one way to awaken:  I've been beaten down, I've been kicked around, But she takes it all for me. And I lost my faith, in my darkest days, But she makes me want to believe.  They call her love, love, love, love, love.  Steven Sonderbergh's 2002 film: Solaris, based on Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel, gives a taste of this encounter with the other.

Each relationship is an invitation to understand yourself as much as it is to understand the other.  Each relationship is a summons to be in the world.  An offer to heal--and learn the path of love set out for you.

 

How does love  surprise you?  When is the struggle to love another a path to understand the one inside you?

 

Hey! check out AM 1470 9:00 to 11:00 am.  I'll be chating next Saturday about dating, love, and relationships, with the hosts of A Firm Foundation, Toledo's #1 Saturday morning talk radio show.

YOU FALL IN LOVE--OR YOU DON'T, PART 3

 

That's not all, falling in love can be dangerous.  Art is filled with it from Romeo & Juliet to Nights in Rodanthe.  With falling in love there comes a dissolution of stability; a tearing apart of what is, along with the possibility of what could become.  In this way Dr. Alberoni says falling in love is subversive--seeking to destroy what stands and rebuilding amidst the rubble.

 

As a youth, you may have had little to destroy and with so few obstacles to overcome and being in love comes to pass naturally.  This may not always be true as you move a bit further into life.  You've gained a sense of who you are with success and are coming to terms with the boundaries of the possibilities in your life.  You sought stability and have achieved it.

 

In many ways this is why you fear and resist falling in love as much as you purse it with intense desire.  You resist and test love to see if it is real.  You know it will bring a reordering of you life if you follow.  And when you embrace it you embrace everything of your beloved.  You love them inside and out--you cherish their very bones and sinew for they are that one and special person--your beloved.  Their character flaws and physical imperfections become endearing and symbols of their uniqueness.  No other is like this one you love and no other love like this.  This all consuming passion, fusing you to your beloved, you gladly welcome its ability to undo much of your life, and make way for this new vibrant love.

 

It may also be why you can't fall in love even if you ardently desire it with all your heart.  Your life at some point became full; it's now settled and you've grown accustomed to its stability and relaxed into it's comforting regime.  You have no room anymore for falling in love.  You may date and seek out new loves, but your life is how you prefer it and without that pang of something more; of real dissatisfaction-you'll enjoy and even love new partners, but falling in love with its blinding passion eludes you everywhere you seek.

 

Dr. Alberoni highlights a unique effect that falling in love has on your history.  You my have suffered greatly at the hands of a former lover or gotten lost in endless emotional cul-de-sac's; yet being in love creates the ability to rewrite your history.  You can now say that all the suffering has come to this one point.  To prepare you for this great love affair.  It erases the hopelessness you've been fighting.  You have a new history that shines a bright light on this endless life with your beloved.  Falling in love is a wondrous thing.  Making your history--once set in stone--shimmer and refocus anew.  Old loves, deep hurts, and lost chances are easily forgiven and reworked leading you to this new love.  Falling in love is like no other healing balm.

 

How has your in-love ride been? 

YOU FALL IN LOVE--OR YOU DON'T, PART 2

Falling in love is a good news-bad news story.  You have to feel bad before you feel good.  Once you feel good, you have to worry and get gripped with suspicion and jealousy.  You endure it all because what's the option?  Emptiness?   Falling in love and its passion and desire is forever just up ahead teasing you and your beloved with immortality.

So how do you get to despair?  Everything seems to be going just fine--then it's not?  Unlike falling in love, despair is a slow process.  The day-to-day world is a time filled with routine, responsibilities and disappointments--the continual need to adjust expectations to the situation at hand.  Being in love creates a different time.  When new possibilities emerge and undiscovered paths open up that never could in the day-to-day world. 

While this world is filled with obligations to others, rewarding and desired as many are; by necessity these obligations repeatedly flow against your own needs and desires.  Over time, the everyday world can become dark and you weary.  Your own desires and dreams are uncomfortably crouched in an isolated corner of your mind waiting to be found.

This is why teenagers easily fall in love.  Though this angst threads itself throughout your life, it's keenly felt in adolescence when your place in the world is yet to be found.  You can feel it again as an adult after the wave of life's success washes over you; having built relationships, or family, or career.  Where the tide recedes and you examine what is left to be done.  It's at these moments you're open to falling in love.  You begin to see how much has been left behind, undone, or wrecked upon those uncovered shores.  Falling in love allows for those desires and dreams to awaken and take hold. 


What was awakened in you when you last fell in love?

YOU FALL IN LOVE--OR YOU DON'T

  

Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all. --Toni Morrison

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your heart, or burn down your house, you can never tell. -- Anonymous

Love isn't a decision. It's a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simpler, but much less magical. --Trey Parker and Matt Stone

Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate. --Sigmund Freud

True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self. --William Butler Yeats

The heart was made to be broken. --Oscar Wilde

Two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one. --Fredrich Halm

The difference between friendship and love is how much you can hurt each other. --Ashleigh Brilliant

(Thanks to Simran Khurana for her great quote pages at about.com)

These quotes highlight the conflicted nature of love and falling in love.  You may want to experience it dearly or are reeling from losing it.  Either way its the season to ponder it.  I'm exploring ideas by my favorite Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni.  His insightful books, "Falling in Love and Loving" and "I Love You: A Theory of Love" are remarkable in their originality, clarity of thought, and accessibility.

 

• The climb to the top of the roller coaster--passion, abandon, and love.  How do we fall in love and start this wonderful and terrifying ride?  Dr. Alberoni holds out this provocative idea.  That to be able to fall in love you must be unhappy.  You must feel deeply unsatisfied with your current life--despairing of your life and what it holds; then you're ready to fall in love.  This is what prepares you to fall in love.  It makes sense.  If your life is settled and you've grown accustomed to its stability and relaxed into it's comforting regime, you'll have no room anymore for falling in love.  You may date and seek out new loves, but your life is how you prefer it and without that pang of something more; of real dissatisfaction-you'll enjoy and even love new partners, but falling in love with its blinding passion will elude you everywhere you seek.

 

• He hits you with another thought--you don't really fall in love with people you know.  You really fall in love right away, when you hardly know the peron at all.  Isn't that true?  When you think about it, you realize that you've never fallen in love with someone slowly and after a time of getting to know them.  You may deeply love someone that way, become friends, learn to appreciate them and love them.  But falling in love is always sudden and often it's a complete surprise.   Try to fall in love and see what happens.  You can choose to love someone, but falling for them?  He's quick to point out that it's just as wonderful to quietly grow your love and love deeply without such intense passion.  It does seem that "falling in love" is but one path, borne out of the extreme unhappiness you may be experiencing at that time.  Falling in love, rather than growing in love, it simply a starting point in the process of loving and building a relationship--a life project--together. 

 

Falling in love is not an easy thing to figure out.  I want to explore this idea of despair and love more in my next post.  It's strange how falling in love seems to begin, and many times, end with despair.

Have you ever fallen in love?  Have you had a great love that grew slowly?  How so?

36.8 WAYS TO MAKE THE RELATIONSHIPS IN YOUR LIFE PURR

So I'm getting ready to be a guest on Northwest Ohio's #1 Saturday morning talk show, A Firm Foundation hosted by Rick & Jackie Metz aring here in Toledo every Saturday from 9:00 am - 11:00 am on WLQR AM 1470. 

As it's going to be the Saturday before Valentine's Day we'll be talking relationships, couplehood, and online dating and I wanted to put together a hopefully humorous and sometimes provocative list of ideas to wet the appetite for those who want to fall in love, as well as those already in love--and want to stay that way.

 

1.    Have a project together.

2.    Never stop dating--the person you're with.

3.   Realize falling in love is a roller coaster ride filled with excitement (passion/abandon/love) and terror (jealousy/doubt/hate).

4.   Accept you'll sacrifice a little of that rollercoaster ride for stability to create that project together.

5.    Let your kids get bored.

6.    Believe the one you picked is the one you have an unwritten contract with to grow yourself.

7.    Honor the fact you'll need to renegotiate that unwritten contract when you achieve that growth.

8.    Realize when the woman in your life gives birth; she fell in love with someone else.

9.    Believe that when you fall in love with that new person too, you've created a new way to love her--a new project together.

10.    Get over the idea that there shouldn't be any power struggles in a love relationship.

11.    Don't forget, you might go off to work every day and expect her do your laundry, but if you were living alone, you'd have to do your own laundry anyway.

12.    Know your kids are not supposed to be grateful.

13.    Don't confuse having a mom with being in a relationship with a woman.

14.    There's no intrinsic value in a long life--or marriage.

15.    It's the valued directions you took and the people you touched along the way that made it valuable.

16.    Take out the garbage before it's full.

17.    Resist the urge to use the kids to score points against your former partner.

18.    Find ways to intimately touch one another every day.

19.    Risk looking silly for the one you love.

20.    Accept your kids won't understand until they have their own--or at least until their 35 years old.

21.    Your life is never the same after you start to live with someone.

22.    Empty the dishwasher after it's done.

23.    Your kids were already who they were long before you got them.

24.    If you want a relationship, start asking for phone numbers.

25.    A scribbled note of appreciation to the one you love is untrammeled poetry.

26.    Appreciate those who fill your life.

27.    Practice holding back angry words until you'll talk about what upsets you with respect.

28.    When it's feeding time in the middle of the night, get up and bring the baby to her.

29.    Don't let yourself lose respect for the one you love.

30.    Don't gamble with falling in love with someone else unless you want to end the relationship you already have.

31.    Don't always be in the dark when having sex.

32.    If you're fighting--switch sides of the bed.

33.    Figure out if you want your kids to like you or if you want them to be healthy adults--you'll rarely get both at the same time.

34.    If your relationship is stuck, do something different.

35.    Assume what you can't stand in your partner is what you hate most in yourself.

36.    Make sure you both don't pick the same child as your favorite.

.8      Understand that avoiding a problem is growing a problem.

 

What are your ideas for a good relationship?  What on the list rings most true for you?  Least true?

SUPPORT YOUR CHANGES

I had the chance to sit down with Rebecca Regnier, The host of Full Plate and former anchor of Good Morning along with her cameraman Brian at my office over at Court Diagnostic & Treatment Center.  She wanted to talk about how support from others plays a role when you're making changes in your life.  She will be airing several segments on making changes at 13abc starting next week and after the new year.  She has just finished writing a new book, Your Twitter Diet: How I Used Twitter to Lose 20 Pounds & You Can Too!  that looks at social media and the power of the group when making changes.  Here are some of the thoughts I shared with her.

 

WHERE DO YOU BEGIN?

To change you need to recognize the gap between where you are and where you want to be.  Be it your health, finances, or relationships.  That gap is your motivation to make the decision to change and start planning how you’ll go about it.  Planning is how you’ll succeed and an important part of that plan is support.  While you’ll need to know exactly what steps to take to achieve your goal and what the barriers and challenges will look like, it’s key to choose the right type of person to support you.

 

WHO WILL STAND BEHIND YOU?

They’ll need to be those you love–like family members; or who actively care about you–like friends who really know you; and those you respect–like members of a support group or colleagues.  Just announcing your plan to supportive individuals builds motivation for you to carry through–now it seems real and they can celebrate with your success and encourage you during difficult challenges or setbacks that are a normal part of the change process.

 

WILL YOU MAKE IT THROUGH?

But that’s not enough.  You’ll need to find a way to make your support part of you change plan. to help you accountable.  For example, you could give a friend a meaningful sum of money in the beginning.  If you fail to achieve your overall goal, they can send it to an organization you hate; that’s strong motivation!  Of course they’re also there to remind you of why you’re making this change and cheering you on to success.

 

CAN YOU DO IT AGAIN?

Not everything you want to change has the same level of difficulty–and support form others won’t change that.  But it’s possible to change your behavior and with motivation and encouragement form others these tasks are more likely to succeed.

How have you succeeded with making changes in your life?  What kind of support do you find helpful?

 

Keep an eye next week on 13abc for more on Rebecca’s new book and her segments about making life changes in the new year.