by Stephanie Bucklin, Originally posted 2/1/2015
Learning about Love from a Child’s View
I can remember what it felt like to be loved by my parents as a young child. I felt safe, warm, and accepted completely for who I was. My parents taught me unconditional love by showing it to me every day. I always got affection from both parents, and they tried to teach me to love myself. My Mother taught me to share with my siblings, to show compassion and empathy for other human beings, to love openly and honestly, and to be patient and calm. I learned that the more heart and soul you put into everything you do, the greater the gift you will receive. Early on, I’d say around the age of 12, I felt a serious lack of love in the world. I watched the news with my family, and was disheartened by the negative goings-on in the world. I have always had a love for life, I feel because of my parents and the stable home-life I had growing up. I always felt lucky because so many of my friends had come from broken homes.
My research on love started when I was a teen. Because I felt that love was a scarce commodity, and any time anyone showed me an ounce of affection, I took it and ran with it. I became needy for love, searching high and low for it. I’d been having some emotional problems, which I’ve learned through years of therapy was due to a lack of attention from my parents (a lack of love from others), as well as low self-esteem and confusion about my sexual identity (a lack of love for myself). In the training of the mind that is psychotherapy, I set off to examine my life with microscopic intensity. Thus my psychoanalytical nature was born. When I was 17-years-old, I came out to my parents and the world as bisexual. Since then, I’ve had long-term relationships with both men and women, and I’ve learned a great deal about both sexes along the way. I feel my bisexuality has given me a unique perspective on both heterosexual and homosexual relationships and, due to failed relationships, the problems that occur in both.
Love Has Been A Journey Of The Heart…
The reason I’ve developed such an interest in human relationships is because I enjoy analyzing things, particularly I enjoy picking apart reasons for certain conflicts vs. ways of consensus between human beings. I believe love, or in a lot of instances a lack thereof, is the reason for a lot of things that occur in the world. But more than that, love has been a heartfelt exploration of its peaks and valleys for me – an honest soul search. In this evaluation of love, I’ve learned a great deal about human relationships, including interpersonal, sexual, and casual types of relations. At the start of my college career, age 19, I decided to major in Psychology and took my first Psychology class. I was going to save the world. Psychology taught me how to evaluate situations with critical thinking and to see things from a sort of birds-eye view. When I was about 23-years-old, I learned that my intuition, or sixth sense if you will, was stronger and more developed than most other human beings, and that I have the capacity to feel energy coming from others. When I walk into a room, I can generally tell the moods of the people in it, just by focusing on the energy I’m feeling from the room. Based on my personal experiences in love relationships, I’ve found love to be the most intense energy among all the different energies I’ve experienced, and the one that is most easily discernable. With the combined assistance of therapy, constant self-evaluation, and my research on energy transference, I have grown tremendously from the passions and traumas in my life, and have formed unique perspectives on human relationships that may be perceived as much wiser than my age or social status would allow.
I Am All About Love…
Love is the one place in my life where I feel balanced and completely secure with myself. As I’ve mentioned, Love has been one of my truest and deepest soul searches, and is the feeling/ emotion/ energy that interests and motivates me most in my life. John Lennon believed that “all you need is love,” and I started out my adult life believing this was true – that love is everything, love will heal all wounds, and love is the key to happiness. The hardest lesson I’ve learned in my life is that love is not enough…It’s never enough to sustain a relationship in the long term. It’s only enough to keep people together if they continue to try. It took a failed relationship after 11 years of trying to keep it going just on the fuel of our deep love for each other to realize this truth. While love can make the world go round, it isn’t everything. While love may be the basis of a relationship, it takes a plethora of other elements to achieve balance in love and to have a truly successful relationship.
Different Perspectives, Defining Love
Love is quite difficult to define – while Dictionary.com may find ease in defining the word (definition appearing below), others have spent years studying and writing about love, devoting their entire lives to love research. Some of the most famous writers in the world, such as William Shakespeare and Pablo Neruda, based a great deal of their writings on love stories and poetry. Scientists have attempted to explain the love phenomenon in many different ways – one said that love is like a drug and that we become addicted to it. Philosopher Deepak Chopra has said of love: “Between lovers…ordinary moments are suffused with a presence or specialness that wouldn’t be felt by an outsider. Something totally compelling draws your attention when you are in love; once experienced, it is not easily forgotten.” There’s something about being in love that makes everything in life better. Something is to be said about perspective and the effect it can have on one’s life. “In being loved, we become more open. In being open, we become more authentic. In being authentic, we become more loving and creative. Love, open awareness, and authentic existence are intimately interrelated. They co-arise interdependently and together comprise a coherent structure of well-being, allowing one to be most fully human and most fully and uniquely oneself.” (Adams) Love truly does lift us up – it makes us feel freer than any other feeling can.
Love Is A Delicate Emotion…
Love and belonging are one of five basic life-sustaining human needs. (Wubbolding) There are so many ways to nurture love, and equally as many ways to injure it. You start out in a relationship in the most innocent form of love – your new love is the most perfect feeling you’ve ever felt, and nothing can come close to that intense emotional connection you have developed for and with that other person. But there’s something about love that makes everything in your life just that much better. Love lifts us up and makes us feel freer than any other feeling can. There’s nothing else like it. “In the world of human experience, human relationships are empowering. They are liberating. They are fun. They are life sustaining. Human relationships that are gratifying and pleasing provide the royal road to mental health and self-actualization. No matter how dire one’s circumstances, the human will and creativity are relentless in their pursuit of human closeness.” (Wubbolding, 2005)
Love as an Addiction
When love fills in gaps that previous loves have left behind, the initial infatuation can suddenly become an addiction. Suddenly love becomes like a drug – take in a small amount of love’s energy and you’re hooked. There may be no end to what one will do to get and keep the love they desire. Psychologist Robert Wubbolding stated, “No matter how dire one’s circumstances, the human will and creativity are relentless in their pursuit of human closeness.” (2) Other scientists have instead cited a chemical reaction for the love we humans feel. According to a study published in the Journal of Neurophysiology, “love ignites a craving and desire system in the brain, similar to the center engaged during drug addiction.” (Johnson) This leads researchers to believe romantic love is an addiction and not an emotion. We have survival instincts within our psyche that ensue certain reactions. “The old brain is the child in us with built-in survival instincts that determine our basic reactions. The new brain is the adult we are today that can become aware of reactions that are ineffective and change them. ” People fall in love with potential mates because they are likely the “ideal candidate to make up for the psychological and emotional damage [one] experienced as a child.” (Hendrix 485)
This author would argue that not only does one look for healing from childhood wounds in potential mates, but that healing from wounds that previous love relationships have caused may also be a contributing factor to one’s mate choices. One researcher contends that one should, “Create a more accurate image of [their] partner by seeing them not as one’s savior but as another wounded human being, struggling to be healed.” (Hendrix 486)
Infatuation vs. Love
Teenagers often start out with their first love, feeling something they’d never felt before. But to fall in love after 20, one is left wondering if their first love was even love at all. New love, infatuation, or “Puppy Love” is often times experienced by younger people who may not be sophisticated enough to differentiate between infatuation and real love. A study that compared adolescents and adults and how they perceive love people under age 20 were “more likely to believe in love at first sight and that ‘all problems can be solved if there is enough love’.” Older individuals with more life experience have a more realistic view on love. (Peterson 17)
Infatuation is the reason that “some relationships deepen into devotion while others fizzle into indifference. Studies on persons experiencing infatuation report that the normal duration of infatuation ranges from six weeks to six months, depending upon the characteristics and the circumstances of the relationship. Being able to foretell the behavior of the other person, rather than negative experiences, normally is what decreases the earnest excitement of infatuation. The danger comes when one believes that the experience of infatuation is synonymous with ‘falling in love’ and associates a decrease in intensity with a decrease in love.” (Applewhite 1)
Attraction and Sexual Gratification
It is usually a certain level of attraction will make people notice each other. Some call this “love at first sight.” Attraction often leads not only to infatuation, but sometimes to sexual contact early in the relationship. When the sex is good, a unique bond grows between the lovers that will be unlike any other connection. “In making love, the lover and beloved unite in intimate [involvement]: physically, psychologically, and spiritually they participate in (and even as) one another.” (Adams) But not everyone stays connected when making love with their partner. Some don’t even feel a connection. Others may feel the emotional connection related to their love-making, but their attention wanes as the relationship is prolonged.
“Men generally do not connect sex and feelings the way women do, according to most single women participating [in a study on women and love]; or as one woman says, the feelings of many men don’t last longer than it takes them to [ejaculate].” (Hite 457) Worse is when a lover’s fantasies bring other people into the bedroom, which can deeply effect the couple’s emotional connection. Many a relationship has been lost when this connection is broken, even if the relationship is many years old. While most men can have an orgasm with physical contact alone, it takes a psychological effort for a woman to do so. (Neufarth) When considering this fact, it’s easy to understand why women easily become emotionally involved with those they have sex with, whether in a relationship with that person or not. “83% of women say they prefer sex in the context of emotional involvement, sex with feelings, rather than ‘casual sex.’” (Hite 732) Sexual disconnection essentially enervates a relationship, slowly breaking it down until all of the emotional connection is lost.
What is True Love?
The answer this author most agrees with is that true, genuine love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth; an extension of one’s ego boundaries in order to include a portion of the other person whom you love into your life and identity.” (Peterson/Thompson) When a human being experiences love, they feel it with every fiber of their being. Peterson and Thompson referred to the following ideal characteristics for defining real love:
“(a) You cannot love another person unless you first love yourself;
(b) Love is a choice that you make;
(c) Love is not easy, it requires work;
(d) There is no such thing as a soul mate;
(e) Love is both a selfish and non-selfish act;
(f) If you love someone, you are able to live without them, you simply choose not to; needing someone is not the same as loving them;
(g) Due to the extension of the ego boundaries, the more you love an individual the more blurred the distinction between yourself and the outside world becomes;
(h) You cannot make someone else happy just by loving them, in turn, you cannot depend upon them for your happiness.” (18)
True love encompasses all of these qualities in some manner or another. It is possible for a long term relationship to be sustained without some of these elements, but a majority of them are of an absolute value. This author believes that other factors, such as communication, respect, and integrity.
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.” — Zelda Fitzgerald
So Where Does The Love Go?
When you first fall in love with someone, it’s all romance and passion. If you’re compatible, this passion leads to wanting to spend more and more time together, so you move in together, you get married, and you start to build a life together. Reality often sets in shortly following the end of the “Honeymoon Period.” It is then that the couple really begins to learn about their partner’s ins and outs or pet-peeves. They may like some of these idiosyncrasies while others may drive them crazy. All too often, communication begins to break down; it is common for a couple to begin to lose touch or drift apart at this point. Then what happens is they grow in two completely different directions, begin to think, “We can’t go on,” and a breakup ensues. Why does this happen? While there may be many other underlying factors, I believe it is because politeness fades, truths come out, and your respect for each other wanes considerably.
Respect is one of the most important aspects of a relationship, and it is the one thing that is forgotten first when a relationship begins to go sour. While there may be many other underlying factors that a relationship falls apart, it is often as simple as the mutual politeness and respect disappearing from the partnership. I believe the main problem is that a lot of people forget how important respect for their mate is, especially after a number of years with that person. The sad thing is: a couple that’s been together for a long time, say 25 to 50 years, and will lose the respect in the relationship, and bitterness, resentment, anger and frustration become more prevalent.
Sometimes that same couple will stay together for years in a muck of discontentment, doing nothing in the way of repairing the problems. There may still be love in the relationship, but without respect, bitterness and resentment are inevitable. Small issues become the “elephant in the middle of the room” that they keep walking around and avoiding. They live in denial, have fights constantly, and are never able to get the relationship to flow. What’s worse, one may realize what is lacking, and try to fix it, but without the other working towards improvement there will be no success. In a relationship like this, you feel like you, as a couple, are always “chugging along” and aren’t connecting on the higher level that you’d expect out of a long-term relationship with that person.
“Love is like an umbrella. It can protect you from the showers of life or it can poke you in the eye.” — Cheryl Hawkinson
Good Intentions Pave the Road to Hell…
How often have you been hurt by your partner only to hear them say, “I never intended to hurt you.” Have you ever retorted with, “Did you ever intend NOT to hurt me?” Take a real honest look at the difference in these statements. In the first situation, the person didn’t intend to hurt the other one, but never really took responsibility for NOT hurting them. In the second situation, the person takes full responsibility for their actions, making an EFFORT to not hurt the other person. What makes you think that saying, “I never meant to hurt you” is good enough to ease the pain? I think that’s a cop-out. “Become more intentional in your interactions – recognize that the primitive response of your old brain makes you react without thinking – and train yourself to behave in a more constructive manner.” (Hendrix)
Unconditional Love Is The Best Way To Show Your Respect For Another Human Being…
Respect is one of the most important aspects of a relationship, and it is the one thing that is forgotten first when a relationship begins to go sour. A lot of people forget how important respect for their mate is, especially after a number of years with that person. I had a conversation on this subject with my parents, Ken & Mary Bucklin, who just recently celebrated their 30 years together on a cruise to Hawaii. I asked, “Coming from the perspective that love is not enough, what other qualities do a relationship require to maintain it in the long term?” My dad replied, “Mutual respect for one another,” and Mom said, “Friendship.” Consider the definition for respect as listed above. Wouldn’t you want to show regard, esteem, concern, consideration, and appreciation to your partner at all times? Likewise, wouldn’t you want to receive these things in return? What’s more, showing your mate compassion, empathy, and unconditional love will fuel a bond unique to the two of you unlike any other human connection.
Employ the golden rule in any relationship: “Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.” However, it goes deeper than that. Each member in any given relationship should see themselves as the catalyst to the continuation of the relationship. Recognize that the energy you put into the relationship is directly related to what you will get out of it. It seems like a logical concept, but so often couples complain that their mate treats the cat better than they treat them. What’s more, showing your mate compassion, empathy, and unconditional love will fuel a bond unique to the two of you unlike any other human connection. “Learn to value your partner’s needs and wishes as highly as you value your own. Don’t assume your partner’s role in life is to take care of your needs magically – instead divert more of your energy to meeting your partner’s needs.” (Hendrix, 486)
I Love You Because You Give Me Space
To believe that love will make a person complete is to have a codependent relationship. A mate cannot offer you completion to yourself and to expect this will only end the relationship in disappointment. Hendrix takes an interesting perspective on this subject. He suggests that one should build up their own strengths and abilities that one is lacking to avoid the repercussions of seeing their partner as the person that will make them whole. (486) “Search within yourself for the strengths and abilities you are lacking – your partner [may give] you an illusory sense of wholeness. Learn that the only way your can truly recapture a sense of oneness is to develop the hidden traits within yourself. Become more aware of your drive to be loving and whole and united with the universe. Social conditioning and imperfect parenting have made you lose touch with your abilities to love unconditionally and to experience unity with the world around you. Consciously rediscover your true nature as a human being.” (Hendrix 486) “Learn to value your partner’s needs and wishes as highly as you value your own. Don’t assume your partner’s role in life is to take care of your needs magically – instead divert more of your energy to meeting your partner’s needs.” (Hendrix) Having had experience with dependency and codependency in a relationship, this author contends that these types of relationships can only lead to heartache and pain. In an interdependent relationship, both partners embrace their individuality, maintaining a life that is their own outside of the relationship. Not only will they continue to grow, but they will bring the things they learn on their own back into the relationship.
COMMUNICATION, HONESTY AND TRUST
Communication is an Invaluable Part of Any Romantic Relationship
Simple things like always saying “please” and “thank you” can go a long way. Out of respect for the human being with whom you are sharing your life, give them your energy by talking with them. Treat your partner the way you would treat a good friend. Ask questions, seek reassurance, and be inquisitive! Talk about life events. It seems like a logical concept, but so often couples complain that their mate treats the cat better than they treat them. This is where having an open line of communication is critical. I highly recommend that when you converse with your partner, try not to cut them off mid-sentence. Also, don’t use the words, “I don’t want to talk about it.” Not only will this take communication from your relationship, it will cause hurt feelings, and worse yet, cause distrust. Be honest about your past history, your life experience, and your hopes/plans for the future. Also, be honest about how you’re feeling right here and now. If you had a bad day, tell your partner before you bite his or her head off. [Also] embrace the dark side of your personality, acknowledging the fact that you, like everyone else, have negative traits. This will lessen your tendency to project your negative traits onto your mate [thereby] creating a less hostile environment.” (Hendrix) Talk with your partner about your significant experiences as you are going through them. Don’t shut your partner out – how would you expect to grow with someone when you don’t allow that person to experience your life with you? It’s also extremely important to speak with good purpose – for example, don’t have ‘pick a fight’ with your partner because you feel like arguing.
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone: it has to be made like bread, remade all the time, made new.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Lathe of Heaven”
Honesty is the Best Policy to Prove Yourself Trustworthy to Your Mate
Another very important aspect of relationships is approaching it with an open and honest heart. If trust is the basis of a relationship, then when there’s no trust, there’s nothing at all. The better the quality of the communication is the better that relationship will be in the long-term. In order to keep an open line of communication with anyone, it is necessary to keep in close contact with that person by checking in with them regularly. Likewise, in order to communicate effectively, it is necessary to be open and honest with regards to one’s feelings and individual perspectives on any given issue.
One psychologist contends that “shared emotional experience, creation of community, and creation of new shared language [and] dialogue becomes a healing experience. Feelings of love and manifesting powerful mutual emotional attunement in the conversation signal moments of therapeutic change.” (Adams 3) Recognize that omission is a form of betrayal. Give your partner the opportunity to make informed decisions based on all of your truths. Don’t lie to your partner, lest you want them to lie back to you. Creating an air of dishonesty only leads to pain, and is just so unnecessary. Consider this: If lying is necessary in your relationship, are you sure that you really want to be in a committed relationship? Another researcher has suggested, “Take responsibility for communicating your needs and desires to your partner [by] accepting the fact that in order to understand each other, you have to develop clear channels of communication.” (Hendrix 486)
“Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time.” — Anna Louise de Stael
INTEGRITY, SELF-VALUE, AND SELF-CONTROL
Respect Yourself and Respect for Your Partner Easily Follows
But it is not just respect, interdependency, and communication that are required for the long-term success of a relationship. Respect for oneself, as well as the respect for the relationship as its own entity is even more vital. This will allow the partners in that relationship to fully trust each other. Respect and trust are obviously lacking when infidelity is brought into the relationship. A common response to being caught in a lie or cheating is for the offender to say “I never intended to hurt you.” But an intention is something we contemplate and plan for. When it comes time to make good on those intentions in a romantic relationship, what choices are made to hold one’s intentions equal to one’s actions?
Integrity is Your Inner Voice
Having integrity is one of the best ways to maintain a healthy and satisfying relationship. This means to take all of the realities of one’s life, all of the promises that one makes and all of the roles that one takes on, and follow them through with honest and complete actions. Actions truly do speak louder than words. At first, being a person of integrity is as difficult as it would be to adjust to walking around with twenty-pound weights strapped to your shoulders – difficult and maybe even painful, but given the capacity we all have as human beings to be ethical, moral, upstanding adults, it is totally possible.
With true integrity, you will soon grow into a strong person with empowering convictions, morals and true integrity. Integrity is at the heart of what makes a human being into a “good person” and a strong individual. Having integrity means that you are honest, not only with the people you encounter in your life, but also with yourself. It means that you hold your promises and commitments true without question. It means that your word can be taken as a guarantee or promise that what has been said will be followed through with action. It means that you have moral convictions about what you think is right and wrong, and that you are unwavering when those convictions are tested. Most importantly, it means that you are open to changing your point of view when your convictions or beliefs are proven erroneous.
All you have to do is follow your heart and be true to yourself, and the rest just falls into place. Hendrix recommends that one should “become more intentional in [daily] interactions – recognize that the primitive response of your old brain makes you react without thinking – and train yourself to behave in a more constructive manner.” (486) When one’s actions truly do speak louder than one’s words, trust easily follows.
“Remember that true friendship is the basis for any lasting relationship. The person you choose to marry is deserving of the courtesies and kindnesses you bestow on your friends.” — Jane Wells
DEEPER THOUGHTS ON LOVE
Expectations
Of the definitions of expectation below, this author believes that the second definition is more disturbing. Why wish for something when communication can get a person what they want much faster and more effectively than any other method. Expectations can be quite harmful to a relationship. Removing all forms of expectation from the way one perceives one’s romantic relationship will ensure that disappointments will rarely occur. With disappointment excluded from one’s daily interactions with love, one can continue having an open heart and true love for a long time to come.
If It’s To Be, It Is Up To Me…
Where eastern philosophy has flourished, western science has essentially just been born in the wake of the spirit and soul of a human being. Quantum physics researchers have just recently begun studies on the energy of love.
“We cannot do great things-only small things with great love.” — Mother Teresa
We humans do not live by definitions alone. It is important to remain thoughtful in the way of love within a romantic relationship. The tools and insights I’ve described herein have been most effective in developing and maintaining many of my personal relationships, but especially, my romantic relationships. As indicated herein, it takes much more than one’s love for their partner to make that love last. “…a good [relationship] requires commitment, discipline, and the courage to grow and change.” “Fulfilling quality world pictures of relationships and developing new ones requires energy, effort, and tenacity. Yet, the payoff can far exceed the expectation.” (Wubbolding, 2) Encompassing all of these qualities with a commitment to be a better partner will ensure that one’s love will last.
~S
