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Looking for that special someone has become a priority for many. Google shows over 300 million results for the search “online dating sites.” There are more than 40 million American singles heading online to find love.
It may not be easy, but most people are now able to find someone to love. But not everyone knows how to keep love alive and growing through the years. I’ve been a marriage and family counselor for more than 40 years. I’ve also been happily married for 35 years. Here are some things my wife, Carlin, and I have felt on our journey together:
Romantic love
We all know the feeling. We meet, we connect, we fall in love. When we’re in it our world is turned upside down. We’d rather be with our beloved than eat, sleep, or work. We feel on top of the world when our love is returned and crash to the depths if it looks like our love is threatened.
The desire to merge
Lust is connected with romance. We want to merge our bodies, minds, and spirits. Orgasmic intensity isn’t just about pleasure. It’s about wanting to share our hearts, souls, atoms, and electrons. We want to lose ourselves and find the divine.
It’s us against the world
We no longer feel alone. We are now part of a pair. We feel the power of two and joy of being us. We’re still in the world, but the world seems like the background. We two are the center and the world is there to support and embrace us.
Longing to create
The primal creation, the reason we are each here, is that a man and a woman came together and an intrepid sperm was welcomed by wondrous egg and we were launched into life. But in a world with too many people, we also create art, music, home, healing, and other gifts for humankind.
Disillusionment
The honeymoon time comes to an end. Disillusionment sets in. Our partner seems to change. They are not who we thought they were and they aren’t giving us what we longed to have. We wonder if we’ve made a mistake and begin turning away and looking for what is missing.
Incompatibility
Incompatibility is grounds for true love. When we become disillusioned with our partner, we often feel we’ve become incompatible. But when we recognize that disillusionment can mean letting go of illusions, we can also let go of believing that incompatibility is a bad thing. It actually allows us to learn where our wounds have been hiding.
Discovering our wounded selves
In looking away from our partner, we are forced to look within. We feel the pain of the trauma we all experience growing up in families that didn’t adequately meet our needs. We recognize that we were hoping that our partner would make us whole. We were looking for love in all the wrong places.
Embracing Illness
Everyone gets sick, but that’s not a bad thing. Sickness can be our greatest teacher, our greatest guide. I got depressed. My wife got breast cancer. We both developed heart arrhythmias. We learned the lessons of illness and healed.
Learning the mathematics of true love and addictive love
When we look for a partner to make us whole, we experience addictive love: “I’ve got to have him/her or I’ll die.” The math is ½ x ½ = ¼. The longer we’re together the smaller we become. When we look to our partner to help us heal and grow, we are on the path of true love. The math is 1 + 1 = Infinity.
Turning back towards our lover and committing to being real
Being real is not sweetness and light. It is passionate, painful, and creative. Much like making a baby and giving birth. Being real requires being part of a pair. Self-actualization is not something we do by ourselves.
Love is letting go of fear
All our unhappiness and illnesses are fear based. We’re afraid of losing what we have or not getting what we need. We always have two choices. Do we feed the fear or do we feed the love? Whichever one we feed gets stronger.
Accepting that real, lasting love is a journey, not a destination
Real, lasting love is something we create every minute of every day. It’s the most difficult thing we do in our lives. It is also the simplest. But simple isn’t always easy. Learning to love is the graduate school of life. Admission is free, but will cost you everything you have. Are you ready for the journey?
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About the book
In his new book, 12 Rules for Good Men, you’ll learn why men are the way they are and how to find real, lasting, love. Check it out here. “12 Rules is the result of Jed’s lifetime of leadership in men’s work and represents the power and wisdom of an elder of the men’s movement.”
–Mark Greene, Senior Editor, The Good Men Project.
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Originally posted on www.MenAlive.com. Reprinted with permission.
I’ll look forward to your comments. If this resonates with you, please share. If you’d like to learn more, contact me at www.MenAlive.com.
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Also by Jed Diamond
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
So, in your opinion, people who can’t or don’t want to have kids don’t have the ‘real, lasting’ love you speak of so highly…
I think it’s important to also realize that you can wind through these things over the course of your relationship. And that’s ok. That’s also normal. There are no timelines. Whoever said that marriage and a relationship are easy were wrong. But – as long as you have the desire to stay committed and keep working on the relationship, there’s always optimism and hope. I’m newly married but have been with him for a couple of years. We’ve gone through these stages at various points over the life of our relationship and I’m sure we’ll find ourselves in and out… Read more »
I think its true but where im right now feels like its over due to some members of her family who do not approve of our relationship cuz im married. Yes im married but have been separated for over a year and just sixt months ago is when I started dating this wonderful woman love her to pieces but feela like we are coming to an end right when we are at this stage wich i believe is the tipping point of a relationship cuz herr you decide to stay or go. But im trying to convice her that with… Read more »
What I find with MOST people….most couples…they get into these relationships that are easy. They don’t require much effort on either party but they stay together because of the things you mention above. It becomes difficult when they realize after they made a commitment because, hey the sex is good, that they have nothing in common….they have nothing to talk about…and then it becomes hard. I was in a lifeless marriage…I like the man still today but I have nothing in common with this person except tennis and that is no reason to stay together. I hate most couples—I think… Read more »
I can’t even correct my own typos?
Being alone can be wonderful, if you learn to love yourself. Then you’re part of the wide universe of love itself and you’re never alone. And once you are feeling this wonderful, you naturally attract another who will enjoy being wonderful with you. Of course, its never this easy since we all have wounds to heal and things to learn about ourselves, and the right partner can help us on this journey to love ourselves and love another.
So beautifully written! Especially in an age where we are led to believe that love and relationships are meant to be easy, almost ready made if I may say so. Little do people realise that it takes some amount of effort to build some thing long lasting that we can cherish for life.
Madhavi, Well said. Relationships aren’t meant to be “easy.” They’re meant to be “alive.”
This is awesome!! I’m recently married and I think we have recently found the disillusionment/incompatibility stages. Its so reassuring to hear that is is not only normal but expected. We are in a good place right now and i’m excited for our future. Thank you for your words.
Jerome, If there’s one person (like you) who has been touched by this article, it is well worth my efforts. I’ve found we have a very unrealistic view of what relationship life is really like. As a result, we needlessly suffer thinking “something is wrong with us” when, in fact, we’re just experiencing life in all its beauty and complexity.
Love is wonderful, but as you say, it is also complicated. So many factors draw us to another and so many can pull a good relationship apart. I share these thoughts so we can all learn more about love and how to allow it to grow, change, and deepen through time.
I had a love that I would say fit those qualifications yet we’re now not together. There were a lot of other factors involved. I still don’t understand it all. Truly.
So wonderful! Thank you!!
Della, thanks for the kind words. Hope you share this with others you think would find it interesting.