TRUE LOVE 101
Guide to discovering, creating, and sustaining true loveBy Nancy L. DavisBalboa Press
Copyright © 2012 Nancy L. Davis, LMSW, LMFT
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4525-5992-6Contents
Preface................................................................viiAcknowledgments........................................................ixChapter 1: The Journey to True Love....................................1Part 1: Three Stages of Relationships..................................5Chapter 2: First Stage: Trust and Innocence............................7Chapter 3: Second Stage: Building Hopes and Dreams.....................12Chapter 4: Third Stage: True Love......................................18Part 2: Foundation of True Love........................................21Chapter 5: The Importance of Knowing Who We Are........................23Chapter 6: Spiritual Aspect............................................27Chapter 7: Mental Aspect...............................................31Chapter 8: Emotional Aspect............................................37Chapter 9: Physical Aspect.............................................45Chapter 10: Observing Aspect...........................................48Part 3: Creating True Love.............................................51Chapter 11: Core Needs.................................................53Chapter 12: Love and Connection........................................61Chapter 13: Safety and Adequacy........................................73Part 4: Sustaining True Love...........................................91Chapter 14: Truly Loving Practices.....................................93Chapter 15: Continuing the Journey.....................................113About the Author.......................................................117
Chapter One
The Journey to True Love
I deeply care about true love. I believe, within the journey of learning how to discover and sustain true love, exits the best hope we have individually or as a planet to survive and ultimately thrive. I also believe that where we are most motivated to value love is in relationship to ourselves, our spouse or significant other, and our children.
Most people want to have a partner/spouse/significant other. There are various names for this primary person in our lives, but no matter what the name, if that most intimate relationship is working well, we feel much more excited, hopeful, and energized by life. If that relationship is causing disappointment, fear, jealousy, or physical or emotional pain, we are miserable. It affects how we feel about every other area of our lives. We so want a successful relationship, and yet most people do not know how to create what they want. Statistics vary but suggest that from 50 to 60 percent of people fail at being able to sustain a successful relationship, and many of those still in a primary relationship do not seem to be happy.
We all enter a committed relationship assuming it will succeed. However, most of us have never really received the education or the tools needed to actually be successful. People have often turned to religion as a way to find answers to help their failing relationships. They have grown up being taught that "God is love," so they reason that religious teachers should be able to help them. Unfortunately, too many people have experienced judgment by these teachers, as well as inequality and lectures about the various rules to follow, rather than learning how to sustain true love.
Today, many people are more likely to turn to psychology and psychotherapists for help. The literal meaning of psychology is the "knowledge of spirit." Ironically, while many psychotherapists strive to teach people how to love themselves and each other, they would never mention the word spirit.
There are many therapeutic approaches that work with one or more aspects of healing. For example, cognitive therapy looks at how we think. By comparison, cognitive behavioral therapy looks at how we think and behave. Most approaches are helpful to some extent, but most ignore wholeness. Consequently, I often compare psychotherapy to the story of the blind men touching the elephant to find out what it is like. When they describe their experience to each other, each is very confident that he is describing the elephant, while in actuality, each is only describing one aspect of the elephant.
"Whole-I-ness" is ultimately what we all need to heal. One definition of healing is "to make whole." Whole-I-ness is not about being perfect or alone. It is about each person choosing to become more fully who he or she is. When each individual strives for wholeness, one plus one becomes more than two. If individuals value who they are, each person in the relationship will find that he or she is better off because of the relationship, rather than diminished. To be whole, we must reclaim that we are spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical beings. All of these aspects of self are communicating important information to us about how to discover and sustain true love with ourselves and others. If we are willing to honestly listen, amazing wisdom and guidance resides within each of us.
Knowing how to discover and sustain true love in relationships has only become more relevant in the United States over the past few decades. Historically, marriage as a legal contractual agreement kept most unions together. Women were not allowed to own property or work and therefore literally could not survive without a man.
The 1960s were the beginning of liberating men and women from contractual law that required them to stay together. For the first time, there was a massive shift in thinking about relationships. Women rose up as never before and began the fight for equality and control over their bodies, which continues to this day. Phrases like "battle of the sexes," "make love, not war," "love the one you're with," "male chauvinist pig," and "sexual harassment" began to transform our relationships. Underneath all this confusion and conflict, the desire for true love remained.
Not only do statistics tell us that our marriages are not lasting, but also, more recently, the census data tells us that, for the first time, less than 50 percent of people are even bothering to marry. More people than ever are questioning the validity of the marriage contract beyond that of a document that defines the legal rights for their relationship and their children. Clearly, legal documents no longer have the power to bind relationships.
This book is a guide to learning how to discover, create, and sustain true love. It is based on my experience over several decades as a psychotherapist working with individuals and couples. During that time, I had one primary focus, which was to find the clearest and most helpful approach to empower clients to create the successful relationships they desired.
I will be briefly discussing the first two stages of relationships where most people get stuck and never really progress farther, to the true love stage. I will then be focusing on the elements involved in being able to discover and progress to this final stage. Finally, I will explain the practices involved in sustaining a truly loving relationship.
There is a very wise saying, "To know and to not do, is to not yet know." Because of this necessity "to know and do" in order to experience what we desire, at the end of each knowledge section, I have assigned homework to encourage you to practice what you have learned. It is my utmost hope that you will choose to learn and apply the tools offered in this book so that you may know the joy of discovering, creating, and sustaining a truly loving relationship.
Chapter Two
First Stage: Trust and Innocence
If we are honest about what initially draws us to another, no matter what our age, it is often simple and sweet: "He's cute," or "She's hot." If feelings are mutual, we will want to spend more time with that person. Depending on the strength of the attraction, it is amazing how quickly we can jump into a relationship. We call, we text, and we e-mail. We want to spend as much time as possible with that person. We think about the person. We dream about him or her. We imagine how our life with this individual will be. We get high on intimacy.
So many of us have come from families where we do not feel loved and connected. We do not feel safe emotionally and sometimes physically. We do not feel special, unique, important, adequate, or powerful enough to create what we need in life to thrive. These are such basic needs. Even if we don't think about them, these needs are ever present and driving our choices. When we meet someone we are attracted to who seems to care about us, we easily assume how wonderful this person is. We can't wait to be close to the person. We so want to be loved. We so want to feel safe. Now we have met someone whom we think/feel will be that person.
Sally and Jack met on the Internet and briefly dated from a distance. It seemed they were the people each had been searching for. Soon Jack moved from South Carolina to Michigan so they could be together. During their brief long-distance dating, they had never had a fight and were confident that their relationship would last. After Jack moved in with Sally, they discovered that Sally was very neat and Jack was not. Sally was working, and Jack was trying to find a job. These differences and others soon led to arguments and the threat that what once had felt like an ideal relationship would end in despair and disappointment.
In this first stage of relationships, we can be so innocent and can quickly give our trust away because we believe how we feel will never end. We are vulnerable to making decisions based on how we feel because of the stories we have told ourselves about this person rather than taking the time to create experiences that would tell us who this person really is.
In time, trust and innocence give way to something much more complex. Sooner or later, life gives us the opportunity to discover more about ourselves as well as who that other person is. Sometimes we are shocked at what we discover: "I can't believe you said that!" "I can't believe you would choose to behave that way. I can't believe you had an affair. "I can't believe I did not realize you were lying." "I can't believe I left South Carolina for you. What did I ever see in you?" "I can't believe how stupid I was to fall for your lies. I can't believe I trusted you." "What is wrong with you?" "What is wrong with me that I was attracted to you?"
Sometimes we give in to anger and try to make the other person change so that he or she matches what our trusting and innocent voice wants to be true. We tell the person, "You will never see that woman (or man) again!" "You have to start behaving differently if you expect me to stay!" Or we try to strike bargains with ourselves: "He did not really mean that hurtful thing he said (or did)." "She won't do that again." "I know he (she) loves me. He was just going through a bad time."
These responses are all stages of loss. Anger, denial, depression, and bargaining are all the mental/emotional responses we come up with because we do not want to lose the feeling/belief that the person we were attracted to deserves our trust and innocence. Our inner child or deep longings talk to us about simply wanting to be loved and to be successful in creating our heart's desires.
Being loved and feeling safe and adequate to create what we long for are the most core needs we have. Every day our actions, attitudes, and attractions come from trying to get these needs fulfilled in some way. When we are not fully conscious of how these needs drive us, we innocently pick a partner/spouse and invest in that relationship, trusting our dreams will be fulfilled. All the ways that our parents have hurt, disappointed, and not fulfilled the desires, needs, and dreams we had as children (even if we don't remember what they were and believe we had a perfect childhood) have been taken into this relationship. We innocently trust that this person we love will heal, fulfill, and successfully create a "happily ever after" relationship with us. This experience happens so quickly and innocently that we usually have no idea what is going on until something happens and we start to feel some kind of emotional, physical, or mental pain.
Pain makes us question our assumptions. Pain makes us want to judge the other person or ourselves. Pain makes us want to give up the hope of having a successful relationship. Pain brings us to crossroads of choice. We can either give up all hope of having a successful relationship and take no responsibility for the relationship failing and blame the other person so we can start all over again in trust and innocence (once lost, it can never be felt in the same way). Or we can choose to become more aware of how to actually have a truly loving relationship. Becoming more aware begins with questioning rather than judging. Why did that relationship not work out?
There is much we can learn from this stage of relationship that can help move us toward being able to discover and sustain "true love" if we are willing. Here are some of the potential strengths and lessons from experiencing the relationship stage of trust and innocence.
Strengths
1. Being in touch with the feeling of an open, loving heart is where joy comes from.
2. Being in touch, with feeling attracted to someone, wakes us up to the possibility of true love.
3. Our innocence, infused with feeling loved and safe, wakes us up to our dreams of what life could be.
Wisdom Lessons
1. We need to experience at least "four seasons" with someone before we can begin to really know someone. The term "four seasons" is symbolic of the fact that it takes time to know someone. This process cannot be fast-forwarded. Trust and innocence must be balanced with strength and wisdom.
We need the wisdom to know that trust takes time to earn. Words are not enough. We must observe actions long enough to see what is true. If words and actions are not the same, great pain, confusion, anger, sadness, and many forms of discontentment will follow. This discomfort is good because it tells us that something is very wrong. Just like when the fire alarm goes off. Pain is meant to get our attention so that we can take care of ourselves. We need the strength to see and act on what is true rather than cling to what we innocently want to believe and trust.
2. We must understand how we have been wounded. Do we question our lovability or adequacy? Without knowing ourselves, it is impossible to accurately see anyone else. This of course makes it very difficult to choose a relationship which can succeed.
3. This stage of relationship gives us the dream of what is possible. We must recognize how much of the relationship is the story or dream that we are hoping for versus a possible reality. Even when this kind of relationship ends, it is important to appreciate the dream of what we were hoping for. This dream is often our inspiration and hope that true love is possible. Our challenge is to figure out how to put a foundation under our desire for true love so it can actually become a reality.
During this first stage of relationship, we are not wise. We don't really understand how to discover and sustain true love. It just feels good and we go for it.
Chapter Three
Second Stage: Building Hopes and Dreams
At some point along our journey of wanting to create a relationship, we will want to move away from the parents we grew up with. We will want to create our own home and primary relationship. For most of us, dating is a nightmare. We long for someone we can build a life with. All of the pain and drama of past relationships are collected as stories that we laugh or cry about with friends or just try to forget. When we meet that person that we fall in love with, hope is renewed. All of the dreams that we have been collecting are dusted off. We want to imagine, talk, plan, and start to move toward building a life together. If our hearts have been broken or we have just dated enough to feel rejection, we approach this new possibility of a relationship with some caution. We are no longer innocent. We don't immediately trust someone.
Chronologically, we are usually in our twenties or early thirties, but this may also happen when we are older. We may be in college, graduate school, or we may have been working for a while. We feel grown up and experienced. We've been in love, had sex, and feel very hopeful that we can create a life with someone. Often for men, a committed relationship or marriage represents the possibility of having sex on a regular basis without all the work that goes into finding someone. For women, they are usually thinking about the possibility of feeling loved, having children, and creating a family with someone.
During the dating process, each person usually has certain tests they are putting the other person through. How often and willing is she to have sex, and what kind of sex? How well does he dress? Do my friends like him? Is s/he fun? What kind of education/ job does s/he have? What are the spiritual/religious beliefs? How many kids does s/he want to have? Does he talk about his feelings? How attracted to him/her am I? Can we carry on a conversation? Etcetera. We all have our own tests. If the tests are passed well enough, people proceed with creating a life together.
We have probably all heard of the honeymoon period of a relationship. This is the period where all is sunshine and light. No one has bad breath, and if they do, it doesn't bother you. Annoying habits are still cute, and there is a layer of frosting on any possible irritant. We all also know that something happens, and at some point, conflicts start to arise. The honeymoon is officially over.
During this stage of the relationship, we have a lot of idealism about what it takes to have a successful relationship. But we also have some adult, mature thoughts about how we are going to be different from our parents. We are no longer just innocent. We are more aware of self-doubts and insecurities. We know that, even though the honeymoon is over, we want to stick with this relationship and make it work. Our hopes, dreams, and good will go a long way during this stage of relationship. Conflicts seemingly come and go and life goes on. The house and furniture are purchased. Routines of life are settled into. Children are born. The man cave is created.
In time, something seems to change. Couples stop easily moving through conflict. For some people, it seems to begin to really matter who is right and who is wrong in a particular argument. For some, it is very painful and maddening that advice is imposed rather than emotional support given. Conflicts seem to happen more often and feel worse, like a wound that is never really healing but keeps being reopened. The toll of unresolved differences, unmet needs, sleeplessness, financial struggles, the exhaustion of arguments and unsuccessful compromises, etc. all become the forces that are threatening the fundamental ability to feel loved and secure in this primary relationship. Couples become confused, scared, angry, sad, and threatened. They don't know exactly how they got to this point, and they don't know exactly how to fix what is threatening the survival of their relationship.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from TRUE LOVE 101by Nancy L. Davis Copyright © 2012 by Nancy L. Davis, LMSW, LMFT. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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