Yearning to Get This Thing Called Relationship?
Are you single and yearning to get it right the next time around? Or, are you in a new relationship that you’re praying will be it? In a longer-term relationship (or marriage) that’s feeling flat or troublesome? Newly split?
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
- Mother Teresa
How Can You Get What You Want?
Let’s talk. Let’s talk about the finer points of relationship — intimate and otherwise. Let’s talk, honestly, about good relationships and bad ones; about those that last, and those that don’t. Let’s talk about whom we need to be to get what we’re looking for.
You Don’t Want Someone Preaching at You About the Morality of Love?
Good. Because I won’t. Whew! There’s nothing worse for me than being in a mode of discovery and being blasted by a bunch of know-it-alls trying to sell me on their shtick. When I say that we need to look at who we need to be, I’m not talking about a self-improvement program, or tolerance, or unquestioned commitment. I am talking, however, about us taking care of ourselves in love. I’m talking about us taking ourselves seriously.
We’re All Trying to Make Sense of This Thing Called Love
If you google the word love, you will find 847,000,000 results. If you search for the word love in book titles on Amazon.com you will find 470,000+ entries. Songs about love (gone right and gone wrong) are too numerous to count. Every philosopher, religion and author of any depth has written about it.
Love is the Human Quest
As infants and children, our lives depend on it. As young adults, we seek it to find ourselves, in it.
Tell me who admires and loves you,
And I will tell you who you are.
- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
As mature adults, it seems that we cannot live productive lives until we have the safe harbor of love and relationship from which to venture and return regularly.
If we lose love, we are thrown into a torture like no other – a place where we question our very meaning.
So How Do You Find It?
Let me tell you my story. After the ending of a nine-year relationship (not to mention divorce, before that) I was very disillusioned with love. I remember walking the halls at my corporate job, dying to pull people aside and ask, “Do you really love your husband/wife? Or are you just playing the security game like everyone else?” I didn’t see very many relationships that I envied, and I was convinced that the relationships I witnessed that seemed okay would disappoint me if I knew more. I felt at odds with the rest of the world that was searching for love, or settled into it. I didn’t trust it.
I Began My Own Search
I searched– not for love, per se, but for information about love. What was this thing that had failed me too many times? Did relationships, where people could really be their authentic selves, really last? Was it possible? And what should I be hoping to create, someday, anyway?
I read book after book. Since I was finally serious about seeking a philosophy of love that I could get behind, I read with an open but discerning mind. I noted what I really liked. I noted what I didn’t like — that which felt too limiting, false, or just not for me. I noted that which sounded great, but for which I was not yet capable.
What the Experts Offer, in My Opinion
There are many schools of thought and many “programs” for relationship improvement (and life improvement) that exist. I don’t back any certain philosophy or approach, but I have found several resources that have been immensely helpful to me. My experience in looking at any of these bodies of work is that there are things that fit for me, and things that don’t. I imagine it will be the same for you.
The good news is that there is a lot out there that, when pondered, can enable us to get clear about who we are, what we want, and what fits for us. This journey of learning and discerning allows us to formulate our own philosophy of love, and most of all, it gives us confidence that we’re not just shooting in the dark. We can actually have what we want.
Who The Heck am I and Why Should You Take This Journey With Me?
Good question! Maybe you shouldn’t! And here’s why:
- I will not tell you how you should view love.
- I will not tell you that you should be married (and have kids).
- I will not tell you that GLBT, mixed-race, mixed-religion, age-differenced or otherwise “off-the-grid” relationships are bad.
- I will not tell you that you shouldn’t get divorced!
- I will not give you an exact step by step solution that will solve all of your relationship struggles.
Here’s what you can count on:
- I will present, as clearly as possible, approaches that people have used and are using to create successful relationships.
- I will give you food for thought.
- I will suggest ways that you can take care of yourself while looking for love, while in relationship, or grieving the loss of relationship.
- I will ask that you try things on for yourself and see what fits for you and what doesn’t.
- Since this human quest for love and relationship won’t be ending anytime soon, I will continue to bring new information to you so that you can keep polishing your own “relationship with relationship” (as I will mine!).
A Sidenote:
Oh, by the way, I ended up leaving that corporate job, getting a master’s degree in psychology, and becoming both a psychotherapist and a divorce coach. So if you need the credentials…. there they are. I work with great people, everyday, who become who they want to be, create the relationships they want in their lives, and end or restructure the ones that don’t work.
I look forward to having you on the journey,
Becky
