Art of Love!!!

Our confusion leads to all sorts of unconscious and irrational behavior, uncomfortable feelings, and reactivity in our relationships. It can impact our ability to make or keep commitments. It can result in anxiety or withdrawal, even abandonment and betrayal. Confusion about love creates a lot of unhappiness. What we yearn for is something very particular. It’s often missing in our closest relationships. 

"We’ve wanted this simple feeling since we were born: it’s the feeling of secure, dependable love."

When children get this kind of safety and predictable care, they form a secure attachment bond with their primary caregiver.  When they don’t, they develop what the psychological literature calls “adverse developmental effects.”

We never outgrow this need to feel safe and secure in our relationships. We are designed to be deeply connected to someone we trust. All of us, whether infant, child, or adult, want to have our needs and feelings heard, and cared for, by someone who makes us a priority.

When you love yourself, you feel fulfilled and complete and choose to love another. There is no force there. It is a willingness to give your time to another. It is a choice you make. The person is in a relationship not because he or she feels incomplete without it or feels it is his or her duty to fulfill the bond, but because he or she chooses to be in it. The person you love doesn’t have to be on your radar all the time. Your love doesn’t depend on how often you are in touch with each other. You don’t have to know everything about the person’s day to day activities and feel offended if you are not up to date on it. You just love the person for who they are.

“I need you and I can’t live without you.” That is NOT love – that’s possessive behavior. In essence, you want the person for yourself, regardless of what the other person wants for himself.

Possessiveness in a relationship is the deep need to hold on to a person for himself or herself only. When you do not want your partner to spend time with anyone else or even pursue interests outside the relationship, when you want all of someones attention and love.

“I will lose something valuable if I lose this relationship. Therefore, I must do everything to hold on to it.” The operative emotion here is a fear of loss leading to threats, drama, tears, begging and eventually misery and deterioration in the relationship.

Further, we can only love others if we love ourselves. In other words, we need to give ourselves the freedom to choose; the freedom not to be forced into doing things just because we have to. We need to work on ourselves and get a healthy attitude.