Love Should Be The Most Important Journey of Our Lives
A new way to understand our search for love and God...
In my experience, the quality of love in our lives is the single greatest determinant of our happiness when we have God in our lifes.
So many things seem urgent, but finally, it's love that gives life its
deepest meaning. And the true skills of dating are the skills of love.
Yet single people are being sold a terrible bill of goods. Look at the cover of almost any magazine that claims to help with dating and sex. What are they telling readers to do? Lose weight, dress better, stop being so needy; in other words, improve yourself if you hope to find love. Unfortunately, this type of "hold your breath and pull your stomach in" advice is doomed from the start, especially when you think if I find him I find him or her, if it happens it happens. When we grasp for a goal, like your career, understand the importance of true love in our lifes, we try to reshape and direct ourselves, we change the direction of our path and ultimate destinity, as God intended instead of mans ways !
I think there's a wiser path to finding love. And it turns out that this path is also the path to personal greatness. It is the path of our gifts. It is the path that God intended for each and everyone of us, True Love.
Let me explain with my own story:
My inability to find healthy, lasting love led me on a decades-long search. What was I doing wrong? What could I do differently? I got lots of help -- because I really needed it. One thing became painfully clear: the way I was dating had become my biggest obstacle to finding love. I was hiding my most essential self, instead of leading with it, because I thought it would scare people off. Show my soul? Maybe, but only after I knew someone loved me. Or in tiny doses, small enough to keep me safe. And therein lay the cause of my failure.
This, then, is the insight that changed me, and finally led me to the love I was seeking: our greatest gifts, our most beautiful and moving qualities are also the very places where we've become most wounded, vulnerable and insecure. Yet it is these very qualities that lead us most unerringly to love and a sense of life-mission.
I call these qualities "core gifts." They are not the same as talents or skills. They are the places of our deepest sensitivity and passion -- and they are as unique as fingerprints. More than any other factor, our relationship to these gifts determines the quality of our lives.
Yet our most painful wounds surround these gifts. So we learn to bury or cover them up, or to craft airbrushed versions of ourselves to keep them safe. Every layer of cover-up, however, moves us one step further from love.
This blog will explore the ways in which we can extricate these gifts from the wounds that keep them buried, and express them with bravery, generosity, and a fierce sense of discrimination in our dating life and in all our intimate relationships.
Ultimately, this isn't about the simple search for a mate. It's about something much greater; a discovery of the place we love from and the energy God provides to recognize your soul mate.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
PISCES FEB 23 + TAURUS MAY 17 MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN - 99% !
www.picesmatchmadeinheaven.
Yet single people are being sold a terrible bill of goods. Look at the cover of almost any magazine that claims to help with dating and sex. What are they telling readers to do? Lose weight, dress better, stop being so needy; in other words, improve yourself if you hope to find love. Unfortunately, this type of "hold your breath and pull your stomach in" advice is doomed from the start, especially when you think if I find him I find him or her, if it happens it happens. When we grasp for a goal, like your career, understand the importance of true love in our lifes, we try to reshape and direct ourselves, we change the direction of our path and ultimate destinity, as God intended instead of mans ways !
I think there's a wiser path to finding love. And it turns out that this path is also the path to personal greatness. It is the path of our gifts. It is the path that God intended for each and everyone of us, True Love.
Let me explain with my own story:
My inability to find healthy, lasting love led me on a decades-long search. What was I doing wrong? What could I do differently? I got lots of help -- because I really needed it. One thing became painfully clear: the way I was dating had become my biggest obstacle to finding love. I was hiding my most essential self, instead of leading with it, because I thought it would scare people off. Show my soul? Maybe, but only after I knew someone loved me. Or in tiny doses, small enough to keep me safe. And therein lay the cause of my failure.
This, then, is the insight that changed me, and finally led me to the love I was seeking: our greatest gifts, our most beautiful and moving qualities are also the very places where we've become most wounded, vulnerable and insecure. Yet it is these very qualities that lead us most unerringly to love and a sense of life-mission.
I call these qualities "core gifts." They are not the same as talents or skills. They are the places of our deepest sensitivity and passion -- and they are as unique as fingerprints. More than any other factor, our relationship to these gifts determines the quality of our lives.
Yet our most painful wounds surround these gifts. So we learn to bury or cover them up, or to craft airbrushed versions of ourselves to keep them safe. Every layer of cover-up, however, moves us one step further from love.
This blog will explore the ways in which we can extricate these gifts from the wounds that keep them buried, and express them with bravery, generosity, and a fierce sense of discrimination in our dating life and in all our intimate relationships.
Ultimately, this isn't about the simple search for a mate. It's about something much greater; a discovery of the place we love from and the energy God provides to recognize your soul mate.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
www.picesmatchmadeinheaven.
In Relationships, Respect + Love = "Healthy Relationship"...
Mix Respect with Love, you have what few will ever find...
If you were to ask me if my parents loved me, I would, like Tevye and Golda in Fiddler on the Roof, have to pause and think.
In the family I grew up in, love
was a term used rather exclusively as the valediction in friendly
letters. It was rarely said aloud. We also weren’t big on hugging or
kissing. It was awkward for me when I left home and entered a different
culture, where people regularly hug and kiss at greetings and goodbyes
whether or not they actually love one another. I still feel a bit
awkward about it. Praise sometimes taken to be an expression of love was likewise nearly absent in the family I grew up in.
The self-esteem movement, thank goodness, hadn’t yet begun; or, if it had, my parents didn’t know about it or didn’t approve of it. They would have considered it unseemly to tell me or my siblings that we were wonderful, smart, or special, and even more unseemly to brag about us to others. In fact, I think my mother had an intuitive understanding of the value of humility and the dangers of pride. She paid no attention to the grades we got in school, seeing them as irrelevant to anything important in life. If I boasted about a grade, which I recall doing on one or two occasions, she would subtly put me in my place by asking me some question about the subject, a question that would make me realize how little I really understood. For example, she might ask, “What is a quadratic equation used for?”
So, back to the question, did my parents love me? What is love? It’s a positively valenced term used for things that we feel attached to and fond of. We can love humanity, our country, our dog, money, a new set of clothes, our car, ourselves, our spouse, our children. I don’t know how attached my mother and stepfather felt to me. I’m glad they weren’t so attached that they had difficulty letting me out of their sight. They certainly cared for me and seemed to enjoy my company. So, yes, I suppose they loved me.
But what I felt most from my parents, for which I was and am most grateful, was respect. When I expressed an idea or asked a question they took it seriously. And as part of respect they trusted me. They seemed to believe that my siblings and I had good judgment and didn’t need much watching or advising, even when we were little children. They never said that, they just showed it. And because they respected me, I found it easy to respect them. Because they didn't offer much unsolicited advice, I asked them for advice when I needed it.
I think my parents’ beliefs that we were responsible and trustworthy became self-fulfilling prophecies. I have seen many cases, in other families, where the opposite set of beliefs became self-fulfilling prophecies. I have seen kids whose parents loved them enormously—as indexed by the affection and praise showered upon the kids—but didn’t seem to respect them. The parents were so attached that they couldn’t let go and they paid little attention to their children’s real needs, wishes, and ideas. They talked down to their children, as if their short stature meant that they were stupid, even though they often told their children how smart they were.
Of course, in any discussion like this, we are to some extent playing with semantics. You might want to define love in such a way that it includes respect, and includes the ability to let go, in which case I would have to agree with you that love trumps everything. But if we define the terms in such a way that love can exist without respect, and respect can exist without love, then I would say that bliss lies in the combination of the two, but if I had to settle for just one or the other I would choose respect.
It is useful, I think, to compare and contrast parent-child relationships with husband-wife relationships. In both of these, respect is absolutely essential for the relationship to work. Love without respect is dangerous; it can crush the other person, sometimes literally To respect is to understand that the other person is not you, not an extension of you, not a reflection of you, not your toy, not your pet, not your product. In a relationship of respect, your task is to understand the other person as a unique individual and learn how to mesh your needs with his or hers and help that person achieve what he or she wants to achieve. Your task is not to control the other person or try to change him or her in a direction that you desire but he or she does not. I think this applies as much to parent-child relationships as to husband-wife relationships.
Love brings bliss to both types of relationships, but only if tempered by respect. Love adds joy and provides the emotional bonds that help carry the relationship through hard times. The attachment aspect of love is even more valuable in our relationship with our spouse than in that with our children, because marriage, at least in principle, is forever. My children have moved on, and I had to be prepared for that right from their beginning; but my wife and I will be together until death do us part. It is not unseemly to speak of my wife as my “better half,” but it would be unseemly to speak of my child in such terms. Our children do not and should not see themselves as part of us; their job is to move on, beyond us, into a future that we will never know. And if we see them as part of us, we will be torn apart when they leave.
Love is not all you need, nor all your wife or husband needs, and certainly not all your children need. We all need respect, especially from those who are closest and most intimately connected with us.
And now, what are your responses to this little essay? What have been your family experiences with love, or respect, or the absence of one or the other? If you had to choose just one or the other, which would you choose; or does the the question even make sense? I've read elsewhere of studies indicating that women want love more than respect and men want respect more than love. It fits an old stereotype, but I find it hard to believe. It seems to me that women, even more than men, have suffered when love directed toward them is not accompanied by respect. This blog is a forum for discussion, and your views and knowledge are valued and taken seriously, by me and by other readers.
The self-esteem movement, thank goodness, hadn’t yet begun; or, if it had, my parents didn’t know about it or didn’t approve of it. They would have considered it unseemly to tell me or my siblings that we were wonderful, smart, or special, and even more unseemly to brag about us to others. In fact, I think my mother had an intuitive understanding of the value of humility and the dangers of pride. She paid no attention to the grades we got in school, seeing them as irrelevant to anything important in life. If I boasted about a grade, which I recall doing on one or two occasions, she would subtly put me in my place by asking me some question about the subject, a question that would make me realize how little I really understood. For example, she might ask, “What is a quadratic equation used for?”
So, back to the question, did my parents love me? What is love? It’s a positively valenced term used for things that we feel attached to and fond of. We can love humanity, our country, our dog, money, a new set of clothes, our car, ourselves, our spouse, our children. I don’t know how attached my mother and stepfather felt to me. I’m glad they weren’t so attached that they had difficulty letting me out of their sight. They certainly cared for me and seemed to enjoy my company. So, yes, I suppose they loved me.
But what I felt most from my parents, for which I was and am most grateful, was respect. When I expressed an idea or asked a question they took it seriously. And as part of respect they trusted me. They seemed to believe that my siblings and I had good judgment and didn’t need much watching or advising, even when we were little children. They never said that, they just showed it. And because they respected me, I found it easy to respect them. Because they didn't offer much unsolicited advice, I asked them for advice when I needed it.
I think my parents’ beliefs that we were responsible and trustworthy became self-fulfilling prophecies. I have seen many cases, in other families, where the opposite set of beliefs became self-fulfilling prophecies. I have seen kids whose parents loved them enormously—as indexed by the affection and praise showered upon the kids—but didn’t seem to respect them. The parents were so attached that they couldn’t let go and they paid little attention to their children’s real needs, wishes, and ideas. They talked down to their children, as if their short stature meant that they were stupid, even though they often told their children how smart they were.
Of course, in any discussion like this, we are to some extent playing with semantics. You might want to define love in such a way that it includes respect, and includes the ability to let go, in which case I would have to agree with you that love trumps everything. But if we define the terms in such a way that love can exist without respect, and respect can exist without love, then I would say that bliss lies in the combination of the two, but if I had to settle for just one or the other I would choose respect.
It is useful, I think, to compare and contrast parent-child relationships with husband-wife relationships. In both of these, respect is absolutely essential for the relationship to work. Love without respect is dangerous; it can crush the other person, sometimes literally To respect is to understand that the other person is not you, not an extension of you, not a reflection of you, not your toy, not your pet, not your product. In a relationship of respect, your task is to understand the other person as a unique individual and learn how to mesh your needs with his or hers and help that person achieve what he or she wants to achieve. Your task is not to control the other person or try to change him or her in a direction that you desire but he or she does not. I think this applies as much to parent-child relationships as to husband-wife relationships.
Love brings bliss to both types of relationships, but only if tempered by respect. Love adds joy and provides the emotional bonds that help carry the relationship through hard times. The attachment aspect of love is even more valuable in our relationship with our spouse than in that with our children, because marriage, at least in principle, is forever. My children have moved on, and I had to be prepared for that right from their beginning; but my wife and I will be together until death do us part. It is not unseemly to speak of my wife as my “better half,” but it would be unseemly to speak of my child in such terms. Our children do not and should not see themselves as part of us; their job is to move on, beyond us, into a future that we will never know. And if we see them as part of us, we will be torn apart when they leave.
Love is not all you need, nor all your wife or husband needs, and certainly not all your children need. We all need respect, especially from those who are closest and most intimately connected with us.
And now, what are your responses to this little essay? What have been your family experiences with love, or respect, or the absence of one or the other? If you had to choose just one or the other, which would you choose; or does the the question even make sense? I've read elsewhere of studies indicating that women want love more than respect and men want respect more than love. It fits an old stereotype, but I find it hard to believe. It seems to me that women, even more than men, have suffered when love directed toward them is not accompanied by respect. This blog is a forum for discussion, and your views and knowledge are valued and taken seriously, by me and by other readers.
God Bless,
Kendra Young
Im very sure you are on to something important with this article. I am a fish (feb 25th), fell for a taurus (may 18th) back in 2011. In 2009 when I met him.....right at the time actually that I met him for the first time through an initial interview at his place of work, I was studying love and respect. I was in a marriage that had been crippled since the very beginning and was only staying in it (with a scorpio) for the kids. I wasn't in love when I was married to my ex, at all, I had his daughter and wanted her to be happy. I wont go into that too much....focus..... but I didn't realize it at the time, looking back I see it very well but I couldn't respect my husband. I tried for years to make our relationship work, I moved away from my mother to give him the chance to fully provide for our family so that I could try to learn to respect this man I found myself laying beside at night, this man that I didn't like and that I felt obligated to sexually. I had to finally start numbing myself with medication if I was going to have to live like that any longer. There are many things I could name here that were reasons why I couldn't respect him, but at the end of the day it goes back to respect being the key. I believe you are 100% in your thinking of choosing respect over love because to respect leads to love and then a cycle can begin that will include love naturally. I would choose respect - of the two.
ReplyDeleteI saw how my eyes started to open up to this Taurus man once he began to show himself comfortably with me. I found something in him that I had not been able to find in any other man to date. He taught me what respect was by showing it to me first. This gets me every time.......
I had worked for this company for a year while my husband was overseas. This time was peaceful in that I was able to live day to day without the pressure of a forced relationship / sex etc... This gave me time to look at my life from a different perspective. I was reading the bible all the time and listening to the audio book for love and respect every morning and on the way home from work... so the topic was fresh on my mind. My boss at work was an ego maniac among other descriptive words...and a man a few years older than myself sat in the office next to him. A tall, quiet man thats presence was felt but never forced.... a man I had no clue would soon have my heart and mind in the palm of his hands but would let me learn from my own mistakes that just as quickly as I could feel all that I felt, it could leave me completely empty through my own mishandling.
ReplyDeleteOne year into working with him, I found myself working for him.... a few weeks or maybe a few months into working for him I found myself in tears over his first try at showing me how important respect was in my life. He had seen in me my value and was the only man I had ever known that had praised me. He didnt vocalize his acceptance of my work as much as it just showed, he really liked what I was doing and he made me aware of that through small talk and by taking me under his wing when the (ego maniac) was ready to pull my plug. He showed me that he valued me and went to bat for me. After that I took his praise for granted (unknowingly at the time) - mostly because I was numbed by medication and also because I had not lived this reality before. I didnt know I was receiving his respect (and love) until it was taken back. While meeting with him before picking up my (then husband) from the airport for Christmas.... he called me into his office to tell me he couldnt give me the promotion I was expecting and it was because I wasnt being respectful...he found a very loving and gentle way to communicate that message. When I felt the respect pull back like that it made even my then numb heart hurt and I cried that day before I met my husband. I didnt know why that had affected me so much until I looked back at all of this.
Long story short - that had affected me so much that I decided to get off the pain medication. This part has a story in it as well but before I continue....maybe I will post this and see if you are still around writing for this blog...I saw a in loving memory dedication from back in sept 2013? To answer specifics....yes the question makes more sense than any question I have ever heard and I think you would be very interested in my story as it is very much in sync with your thinking.