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Bryan Reeves wants to do you a favor and shatter your illusions about love.
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I’m a huge fan of disillusionment.
Having an illusion ripped away from us can be profoundly liberating.
Dorothy had to discover the Wizard of Oz was just a conman before she could discover she already had the power to get herself home.
When it comes to love, disillusionment is essential, if also profoundly painful. It’s also inevitable.
We spend most of our lives looking for love outside ourselves, expecting other people, circumstances, experiences, to give it to us. We’re looking for love in all the wrong places.
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For there’s a core reason why our relationships and … well, our entire lives, really, are so fraught with struggle and heartache:
We’re looking for love in all the wrong places.
We spend most of our lives looking for love outside ourselves, expecting other people, circumstances, experiences, to give it to us. Eventually we realize—if we’re lucky—that love from outside sources is completely unreliable. Other people inevitably disappoint us, let us down, change in ways we don’t want them to, or simply leave.
Sometimes they leave mentally or emotionally even when they stay physically.
I once married a French woman only five weeks after we met. I was fresh out of the military and felt completely disconnected from my heart. The day we married on a pristine sunset beach in South Florida, my heart already knew what my head refused to accept: this love adventure was going to destroy me.
I expected this luscious French woman to love me in all the right ways.
Pretty quickly, though, she proved she wouldn’t love me in any of the ways I really wanted!
The moment she didn’t give me what I wanted, I found a way to withdraw my love from her. I thought she was the nightmare. Turns out, I was!
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She wouldn’t kiss me good morning. She wouldn’t scratch my back. She wouldn’t let me spoon her at night. She would play with the dogs and not me when she came home from work. She wouldn’t even make love to me for most of the 8 months we were together; we didn’t even have sex during our epic honeymoon adventure in Mallorca, Spain!
Disillusionment hit me like a 105-pound French woman with a cigarette and an attitude!
Here’s the real gift: She woke me up to how conditionally I loved.
The moment she didn’t give me what I wanted, I immediately found a way to withdraw my love from her. I’d get upset, complain about her behavior, check out emotionally, stop doing things for her, even threaten to leave.
I thought she was the nightmare. Turns out, I was!
This experience was a genesis for perhaps my biggest life lesson:
The only way to lasting fulfillment in relationship is by offering my love freely without expecting anything in return for it.
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The only way to lasting fulfillment in relationship is by offering my love freely without expecting anything in return for it.
Which brings me to the Three Stages of Love.
Which stage you live in affects the quality, depth and magic of your experiences in life and love.
Stage 1 – I need you to love me.
In Stage 1, I need the outside world to appreciate me, validate me, respect me, love me. To experience love, I need the outside world to be a certain way. My parents have to approve of me. I need to make this much money. My girlfriend has to behave in ways I like. My friends have to treat me a certain way.
Oh my, what an unstable existence!
Love just evaporates the moment the world stops meeting our conditions!
If we can avoid cynicism, eventually we simply realize Stage 1 love isn’t reliable. It’s completely ephemeral, and thus not consistently fulfilling.
Disillusionment sets in.
Welcome to Stage 2.
Stage 2 – I will love myself.
I don’t need you to love me. I’ll give love to myself. I’ll take myself on dates and vacations. I’ll pamper myself with good food and clothes and trips to the spa. In fact, I’ll do something awesome for me everyday. I’ll meditate and do yoga, maybe go find myself in India. I’ll be kind to me and say affirmations in the mirror about how wonderful, beautiful, brilliant and delicious I am! I’ll say to myself, “I love you!” and I might even marry myself (self-marriage ceremonies are now coming into fashion).
I’ll develop both my masculine and feminine qualities so that I am a whole, complete individual. My life is more or less great with or without a partner. Not needing a partner feels really empowering to me, and safe.
Before long, though, I realize that safety becomes stagnant, maybe even suffocating. Although I love myself consistently which feels nice, I only give love to others when it’s appropriate and feels good, because I know they’re responsible for their own self-love, too. I may not fully accept another person’s love because I know it’s unstable.
Something is missing. Disillusionment is stirring.
Welcome to Stage 3.
Stage 3 – I am love, itself.
I have discovered an endless well-spring of love sourced deep within my very own heart. I can radiate love into the world because I now know I could never possibly run out! Effortlessly, I give love to myself and my partner, to bored workers at the DMV, to democrats and republicans, to the whole world. I still work towards a better world, but no longer with anxiety. I have finally learned to love everything this crazy life throws at me.
I instinctively move away from people who want to hurt me because I love myself deeply. Where I used to leave in anger, now I leave in love because I know only people in pain want others to hurt, too. Still, I’ll love them from a distance.
I’m free to live my authentic truth everyday. I don’t need validation from outside me.
Disillusionment is welcome, because I know it just points the way towards a deeper love within me that doesn’t depend on outside conditions.
If I have a partner, I love her with all of me, always curious to explore how I might make her life richer. She’s free to show up however she wants, because I simply love doing this exquisite dance with her. We’re also both free to end this dance whenever we feel that’s our deepest truth.
We let love show the way.
(Auth note: Inspired by David Deida’s 3 Stages of Intimacy)
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—Explore relationship coaching with Bryan at www.BryanReeves.com
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Sometimes just showing up is half the battle. I was not long into my second marriage when a couple of long time friends came for a visit. As always, my husband made polite small talk, made sure everyone had a drink, and then excused himself to do some ‘work’ in the den, leaving my friends and I time for a good gabfest. One of the friends said something to the effect of “is he that nice when no one is around”. I answered truthfully, “yes, he’s actually nicer when no one’s around.” Little wonder he was my soul mate for… Read more »
by ‘ loving the dogs’ i meant playing with them, just for the record.
So now that you are enlightened about loving unconditionally, if you were to go back in time would you not leave the french woman you had married? would you now be ok with her not letting you spoon her, not letting you make love to her? Is love all about putting away your own needs just to stay longer with that one person? Are you not changing the way ‘you’ are in the process of not trying to change the other person? Shouldn’t it be somewhere in between where the both of you make a few adjustments instead of one… Read more »
I totally identify with this article, being a recent (say the last year or so!) convert to Stage 3 ! I spent a good deal of “formative years” in Stage 1 and Stage 2, and believe that Stage 3 is the only place real love can exist. In Stage 3, we move beyond behaving a certain way to get our needs met, and move toward the greater good of all. That’s why saying a woman can show up HOWEVER she wants is brilliant. It shows your willingness to accept the REAL her, not the “performer” just trying to get her… Read more »
While you bring up some valid points, I absolutely disagree with your assessment here. I feel like I’m reading an article that was inspired by a mistake that you made. You chose someone you didn’t even know and without really knowing what love is. You miss the point of receiving love and that does exist. If you don’t know how to recognize it, if you don’t understand the basis of friendship, trust and respect in a reciprocal way, you miss the point completely. I am sorry things did not work out in a previous life but just because you love… Read more »
Hi V : ) I certainly don’t disagree with you. I definitely want a partner who listens well and communicates well and enthusiastically wants to give the best of themselves to the relationship. I just don’t want a partner – nor do I want to be a partner – who only gives to get, who only listens in order to be heard, who only loves in order to be loved. It’s pretty much that simple for me.
You’re welcome Stacy 🙂 I’m really glad this article speaks to you. It’s created massive insight for my own life, as well.
thank you so much for this I myself and guilty of it all…. especially the part where you say “I may not fully accept another person’s love because I know it’s unstable.” OMG I met the greatest guy and couldn’t give myself to him exactly because of that statement. AND I had no idea how to put it into words but you did it for me….. Now maybe hopefully I can work through that . I can acknowledge it and own it and try to stop doing it. I have a feeling I’m letting good men go and then complaining… Read more »