There are many myths about love. Here are some common fallacies and why they are incorrect. Do any of them apply to you and your relationships? (These were a bit too technical for the book, so we left them out and provide them exclusively here for you).
Focus on chemistry, not character
Wrong again, especially now that you know that love is not chemistry, but rather energy! Character is key to love. One reason is that your character is also comprised of energy patterns. While we all have the same chemicals, bodies with similar brains with a similar number of nerves in each, the way these nerves are connected is different in each of us. The experiences, learnings and resulting nerve connections are unique and are what make you who you are—they form your character and personality.
Science can’t specifically tell you precisely how you and your partner’s character and personality work, but you know you have one that stares back from the mirror each day. Your character cannot be easily seen, even described or its location pinpointed in scientific terms—but it exists and certainly impacts you and the world. Your character didn’t come preassembled, but was formed by life, by your experiences, by learning, by memories, by your electromagnetic circuits. As such, you are also your energy. Ultimately, you are your body, your mind and your energy. It’s how your energy interacts with that of your partner that is key to experiencing true love. So focus on the power, your power—the power of love.
Looking for love is not worth the pain of rejection
It certainly is! How else are you going to find your true love? As the adage suggests, it takes a lot of kissing frogs to find a prince. It can be challenging—even painful—meeting, dating and realizing that someone is not quite the person you seek and then breaking up with them. Dealing with other people is the hardest thing you will ever do. The first person to climb Mt. Everest, Sir Edmund Hilary, said this was harder for him than climbing the world’s tallest mountain, he once told Guy. But you have to do it to meet people. It is that simple and that hard. If you feel that you have been hurt by love, it is something else in you, not your loving quality, that feels hurt. Unless you realize this you might continue to hide your love away.
If you can’t be emotionally vulnerable then it is hard to be intimate. The two go together. Even when it looks like you have no power over a situation, you shouldn’t allow fear to paralyze you. You always have the ability to do something, even if that choice is immediately nothing. You can decide to learn from the experience, about other options that might help in the future or change your perception. The more you learn and expand your understanding, the better equipped you are to take control of yourself and situations and ultimately begin to create your own destiny. Nothing and no one can make you a victim—only yourself. Remember the anonymous quote that says “great love and great achievements involve great risk”. How much of yourself are you prepared to risk? A tip here is that when dealing with people, take note of what they do, more so than what they say. If the two don’t match, re-evaluate.
Don’t try to love again
Why try to love again, to face the potential of rejection, the challenges, the unknown, the pain? Surely it’s not just for those fleeting moments of physical pleasure that you love? There are a range of reasons we love. Love not only makes you feel better, it can also improve your health and even help you live longer. Science has proven that love:
• Reduces stress
• Can help you live longer
• Can make you smarter
• Reduces pain
• Helps you heal faster
• Lowers blood pressure
• Reduces risk of heart disease
• Can lower your cholesterol
• Has an anti-cancer effect, and
• Keeps you young.
As such, love is the greatest natural drug and healthy lifestyle. For example, a study regarding heart disease found one group of several groups of rabbits displayed 60% fewer symptoms of blocked arteries and associated symptoms, but for no apparent reason. That was, until the Ohio University study discovered the handler in charge of feeding the lucky rabbits petted each one for a few minutes before feeding. This human touch and affection was credited with reducing the affect of the toxic diet provided to all the rabbits. Repeated experiments, where one group of rabbits was similarly petted and another group was not produced similar results.
Other experiments found children who grew up in homes where there was a lot of love and affection tended to be better adjusted psychologically than those who experienced a childhood of neglect or abuse and who displayed symptoms ranging from unhappiness to anger. When young people believe their parents love them, they tend to grow into healthier adults, according to a study by University of Arizona scientists. Students who rated their parents high for loving characteristics showed levels of disease far lower than those students who rated their parents low in terms of perceived level of love provided to them.
Getting married will make you happy
Some people believe they will be happier “if” they do this or will be perfect if they get that; “if” they become like everyone else (whom they assume are actually happy themselves). If you are unhappy and single, you could well be unhappy and married! Marriage is not a solution to personal, psychological or emotional problems. Rather, marriage exacerbates them. If you are an unhappy single person, you will be an unhappy spouse. If you are not happy with yourself and your life before marriage, work on making your single self happy first. Then any marriage will have a much better chance of success. Also, you shouldn’t get married out of fear that a better fit might not come along. Rather, open yourself to the possibilities.
Expect your partner to change after you are married
If you aren’t happy with the way your partner is now don’t get married. Never marry potential! There’s an adage that says women marry expecting that they can change their man, while men marry expecting their woman to never change. In reality, it is often the opposite, in that men rarely change and women often do. The idea that you can fundamentally change another person with your love and support is a dream seldom realized, notes author Gordon Livingstone.
Consider does your partner enjoy giving pleasure more than taking it? Can you depend on your partner to do what they say they’re going to do: or is it all words and no action? Are you, or do you want to be, like your partner? W ould you like your child if it turned out to be like him or her? Do you feel calm, content and serene with the person you are with? Can you express yourself with them? Do they make you feel good about yourself? These are important questions to answer—and almost all require a “yes” answer. Do you really think you can change all these things in another person? True love is loving someone just the way they are and supporting them to become the best person they can: not wanting to change or fix them—ever. If you seek change, change that expectation to one of expansion. Try and expand yourself, as if you do you can create a new are or realm for you and your partner to meet in and connect.
Don’t leave love
This is a hard one: only you can determine if and when to do this. Sometimes, even when you realize that a relationship isn’t a good fit, you justify staying in it with what seem like logical reasons. You may feel that you won’t find another person who accepts and loves you as much as the current partner. Or you may be afraid to be alone, so you simply settle by default. Each time you are reminded of the bad fit, you brush it under the rug and distract yourself with some other thought. Don’t!
True love means you can’t keep the energy of love bottled up inside, you have to let it flow. It doesn’t stop just because you are not paying attention to it. Though sometimes it has to be redirected if a person that you give it to stores it, uses it destructively or against you. Sometimes you will find that your love energy cannot flow. This is one of the biggest problems for relationships—one or both partner’s energy is stopped from flowing, let alone expand and balance.
In some instances, people are not allowed to express love as they need! This will lead to the end of a relationship— sooner or later. You may feel you are doing a service to the other person by staying in the relationship, but in reality, you’re hurting them by not being honest with them and yourself. When you come to the end of a relationship, it’s important to note that you will experience and progress through several stages, what Kubler-Ross called five stages of grief.
These include:
• Denial – that this can’t be happening to you
• Anger – why you? That it’s not fair! You might blame someone else
• Bargaining – where you’ll do anything to retain love. You negotiate with promises of a reformed lifestyle, to be more loving or more compliant
• Depression – you question the point of loving, even of living
• Acceptance – realizing that you are going to be okay, that you can and will love again.
If you are experiencing any of these emotions it’s worth finding more information about these phases and how to progress through them. Again, you are not alone. Life does go on and you can, and will, find new love. Maybe it will be true love next time! Above all, if your time has come to depart, say good-bye with great gratitude for all that the other person has been and shown you, for all the joys and loving moments that you shared during the encounter during your life!
No one teaches you how to love
You’ve already have learnt a lot about love, from others. You probably learnt the most from your parents: which might explain why you have trouble understanding love, as parents don’t always provide the best role models for true love. The love from and for our families and friends is generally based on expectations and conditions. Often these are not met and create even more conditions. True love has no conditions. However, you can learn from the mistakes your parents and friends made, rather than repeat them.
For example, if what you learnt from them isn’t working try a different approach; do something that hey would never have done! You have to try something different to what you have been doing in the past if you want different results. Unfortunately, some people never quite separate from one or other of their parents and their influence. This can have a huge impact on relationships. If your potential or existing partner is attached to someone else (be it a parent or another) or other things such as money, work, sports, hobbies, drugs, the Internet or something else, it might be hard for them to make you their priority—and that’s no basis for a relationship.
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Hattip to Find True Love
