Perhaps you have never seen a healthy relationship.
Maybe your parents’ relationship was a mess, divorce was all around you, or you have never known two real live humans who were happily in love with each other over the long haul.
Do you live your life settling for a second rate relationship?
Maybe that translates to pining after someone who has always been unavailable, perhaps feeling invisible in your relationship, or living a parallel life with your partner with whom you don’t actually care to even spend too much of your time. Maybe it means you don’t feel supported, you aren’t heard, or perhaps you are even disrespected. Or maybe you go around and around in circular arguments, never actually reaching each other or connecting, but spinning around each other like frustrated planets in orbit.
And maybe it means that you’ve just sucked it up and chalked it up to the tragedy of love, like so many others who have gone before you.
Have you thrown up your hands, and said, “that’s just the way it is”?
If so, there’s a part of you that I bet is curious for something more, something greater, something more fulfilling…after all, you probably wouldn’t be reading this if there wasn’t a small part of you that believed in something better.
And because you’re human, resilient, and wired to grow toward love, you know better.
You know you deserve more.
Despite all you have been told and shown, your desire is there to have a strong, satisfying and connected partnership with your beloved.
While at one point in the not so distant past, it was believed that people are set in their ways after they become adults, all the research is now showing us otherwise.
Our brains are plastic and they are shaped and re-shaped by relationships.
In other words: It’s not too late to have success in love. It is never too late unless you make it so.
So how can you be successful with love if you have never been before?
Just like you’d be successful with anything else.
Start here:
Make a decision.
Decide that no matter what, you will be successful in love. That you will do whatever it takes so that you can enjoy this emotion/phenomenon/human experience that has been so held up and so sacred throughout the ages, and it can be yours. I don’t mean in a fleeting way, but in a lasting, permanent way, so that it can be integrated into your life and spill out in all directions to support you and help you stand stronger.
Trust that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
Whether that teacher shows up as your partner, a coach, a therapist, a mentor, or an experience, stay open to it.
Dr. Sue Johnson is a leading psychologist in this area of love, and she has created a highly researched and highly effective method of helping couples out of distress and into connection. I’ve seen her speak countless times, and every time I see her in action, I learn something new, even though her message is always the same.
This week I saw her speak on Mind Body Green. What stood out for me this time was her determination to figure out how love worked.
She challenged the truth of the ages that love was a mystery, and made the decision, “I am going to figure this out.”
What stood out for me in this talk in particular actually had nothing to do with love, but had everything to do with her determination and decision to figure it out.
And so it is: Love is figured out.
The code has been cracked. A road map exists. Those who have never experienced the terrain of a healthy romantic relationship now have access to a GPS system that can safely take them there.
As difficult as it is to travel a new path, the map is here. The hard work spanning decades has been done to solve the puzzle of love for you and for the rest of us so that we can enjoy it and make it easier for generations to come to profit from it.
Thank you, Sue Johnson, and your colleagues who have put so much into solving this riddle of the ages.
Where does your success with love then start?
With your decision.
Love positively impacts every aspect of your life. My advice is to make it your #1 priority.
If you’ve made your decision and you’d like to enlist my help, click on the purple heart at the bottom of the screen to schedule a complimentary consultation and we’ll get started.
And make sure to check out Sue’s talk on Mind Body Green: How to Make Love Last in the Age of Instant Gratification, and let me know what you think in the comments below.
Cheers to your best relationship,
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