Love Relationship Advice Column

Besides being the nicest four letter word on the planet, what is love? There are five aspects of love that I will cover. Love is first and foremost goodwill for another person. Goodwill is a choice we make, so love is a choice to have goodwill for another.

Another important aspect of love is passion. Passion is being physically aroused and attracted to someone. Passion does not have to be sexual. It can be warm, positive feelings for another. Passion gets a great deal of positive press when love is the topic. The feeling of being ‘in love’ is what most people refer to as passion. Being ‘in love’ feels wonderful, and when you lose the ‘in love’ feeling or feel less of it, you can become very depressed, disappointed or scared your relationship will end for lack of love. For this reason, most of us want passion in our love relationship.

Intimacy is also an important aspect of love. Intimacy is frequently used to describe a relationship that is sexual. Intimacy, however, is more than a sexual relationship. Intimacy is feeling close or connected, and it is developed over time through the skills of verbal and non-verbal communication. A love relationship requires partners to know each other emotionally, mentally and physically. When you feel close and connected, you feel known, understood, appreciated and accepted.

The last aspect of love that is very important is commitment. Commitment is promising to love another through thick and thin. Commitment is necessary to create the security that is needed for passion and intimacy. If commitment is lacking, it can negatively affect the feeling of passion in a love relationship and the amount of intimacy that is shared. Without security the safety to reveal oneself freely is diminished, and the warm feelings of passion can disappear.

If you have any questions about what love is, please don’t hesitate to reply to me.

All my best,

Sandra Dawson, MA
America’s Most Loving Relationship Expert

When you have a fight with your partner, do you call each other names? Do you criticize each other?  I am sure you don’t feel good after exchanges like this and you also don’t resolve the issue that triggered the harsh treatment in the first place.  Am I right?  Do you want to change this pattern and start to help each other heal?  If so, keep reading.  The most important skill you can develop to rekindle passion in your love relationship is the skill of listening.  The value of listening is greatly underestimated.  Think about some of your happiest moments.  They may have been when you were given a compliment, or when someone truly understood what you were saying.  In both cases, communication barriers were removed by the skill of listening and responding in a way that the speaker desired.  This is the essence of listening.  Give this gift to your partner, and enjoy rekindling passion in your love relationship.

I want to break down the skill of listening into three components and I want to recommend that you decide to use these three components the minute a fight starts.  Instead of continuing to escalate, step back, and remember these three words:

* paraphrase, which means to repeat back what your partner has just said to you.

* validate, which means to affirm that your partner is making sense to you.

* empathize, which means to put yourself in your partner’s shoes and imagine how they are feeling.

The best way to remove communication barriers and rekindle passion in your love relationship is to use these skills instead of escalating a fight.  If you want to increase intimacy and feel more connected to your partner, your ability to listen will be the single most important skill for you to improve.  It is the only way the two of you can create emotional safety, which is necessary for passion.  And while you are showing your partner your new ability, don’t forget to say how deeply sorry you are for your harsh words.  Love is having to say you are sorry, and really meaning it.  While you are at it, you can also tell your partner what you appreciate about him or her.  Just imagine what your life would be like if you removed the communication barriers of criticism and name calling, and replaced them with empathy, validation and appreciation.  Imagine how happy you would be feeling, and how passionate your relationship would become again.   Turn your dream of true love into a reality by removing the communication barriers of criticism and name calling starting now.

Do whatever it takes to improve your listening skills, and look forward to feeling closer to your partner than you ever have.  If you think this is too hard and that you will not be able to calm yourself down, go to my website, www.adviceforloverelationships.com and click on Sandra’s eBook.  You can benefit greatly from learning “How to Fall Madly in Love with Yourself.”  When you truly love yourself, it is much easier to respond calmly in upsetting situations instead of reacting harshly.  Believe in yourself, expect the best and get it, and rekindle passion in your love relationship starting now.

All my best,

Sandra Dawson, MA
America’s Most Loving Relationship Expert

www.adviceforloverelationships.com

When we fall in love, we are experiencing an illusion.  We think and feel deeply that the person we are in love with will love us exactly the way we want to be loved.  In fact, but unconsciously, we want our lover to heal our past emotional injuries.  Our expectations are unconscious.  In other words, we don’t know this is what we expect.  Actually, we just think we are getting that kind of love, and our feelings become very strong.  We connect and bond to each other and want to be together forever.  We feel loved like we have always wanted to feel loved.

At some point in our love relationship, a conflict develops, and we feel unloved.  We never thought for a second that the behavior our partner is displaying now, would be behavior we would ever have to deal with again.  We become scared.  We can become critical, judgemental, and contemptuous.  We engage in behavior that then causes our partner to feel unloved.  Now we are in what is called a “power struggle.”  We both want the other person to change, so that we can feel loved and safe again.

When both people in a love relationship feel unloved and unsafe, changing behavior is the last thing each partner wants to do.  Both partners are adamant about wanting the other to change.  How does this get resolved?

The solution is based on healing the injuries that caused each person to have an illusion about love in the first place.  This leads to defining what is meant by an illusion.  If you look up the definition of illusion, it is as follows:

      “something that deceives by producing a false impression”

Our lover isn’t intentionally deceiving us.  We are deceiving ourselves, because we need a certain behavior to feel whole again.  If that behavior is not displayed, we go back to feeling unloved and unsafe…which is exactly how we felt as children.  It is our worst fear, if we haven’t healed this emotional injury.  If we have an illusion that love relationships are perfect, that they have no conflicts or differences, then we know for sure we have unhealed injuries from our past.

When we can accept that no one is perfect, that our fears from the past cannot be healed by unconscious behavior that is constant from a mate, and that gently talking about what is upsetting us without blaming, we have made the most significant progress we can make toward giving up the illusions of love and moving toward a truly peaceful, loving and conscious love relationship.

For more information please click here to contact me.

All my best,

Sandra Dawson, MA
America’s Most Loving Relationship Expert
www.adviceforloverelationships.com

One of the most difficult things to understand in life is how your past is impacting and/or possibly sabotaging your love relationship.  I know you want your love relationship to succeed.  You want to feel loved and you want to give your love freely, but the arguments you are having with your partner are getting in the way.  Passion is slowly disappearing and you are scared that your relationship will not survive.  Please don’t give up.  Please keep reading.

During the romantic stage with the love of your life, everything flowed smoothly, and you were so happy.  Then the illusion of perfect love and bliss was shattered.  I will explain why I said “illusion” in a moment.  Your partner said or did something that immediately angered you, and now you feel completely justified in telling him or her that their behavior is unacceptable. 

You are mistakeningly thinking that relationships do not have conflicts in them.  You fell in love falsely believing in the illusion that you will live happily every after.  Most of us do this.  We do it because it feels better to have an illusion of love and safety than face the pain of our past.  Healing our past is hard work, so we create a fantasy to protect ourselves.  Then we find ourselves in a bind.  We don’t feel safe with the one person we thought we could be completely safe with. There are many reasons for this and I want to write several blogs to go into this topic in depth.  Healing our past is the only way out of the bind, and the best way to keep our love alive and well. Please let me know if you are interested in knowing more about this.

All my best,
Sandra Dawson, MA
America’s Most Loving Relationship Expert
www.adviceforloverelationships.com