Falling in love
Why are you lonely?
I know this probably seems very simplistic, but it is actually quite true.
Somewhere along the line we decide we can no longer risk being open to love, and so we put up a big, sometimes unconscious, wall around ourselves, and then expect others to fight their way through it to reach us.
Guess what? Most won’t bother! And it is your job to work through all the reasons why you built this wall instead of a bridge, if you ever hope to feel true love and intimacy again.
Is that easy? No, or you would have done it by now. This will require some serious emotional work on your part. So how much do you want to feel honest, unconditional love for once in this lifetime?
I decided that was my top priority about ten years ago. I worked my way through my natural urge to build walls, and eventually decided I could risk building a few bridges instead. Then I found true love for the first time EVER at age 49.
Want to know how? I share my own thoughts and process in my book How to Believe In Love Again.
Online dating more common, and more likely to lead to marriage!
More than one third of recent marriages in the USA started online, according to a study out this week. It presents more evidence of just how much technology has taken hold of our love lives.
The research, based on a survey of more than 19,000 individuals who married between 2005 and 2012, also found relationships that began online are happier, and less likely to split up than those started offline.
These new findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, set the percentage of married couples who have met online at almost 35% — which gives us our first broad look at the overall percentage of new marriages resulting from online relationships. About 45% of couples met on dating sites; the rest met on online social networks, chat rooms, instant messaging or other online forums.
Sociologist Michael Rosenfeld of Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., says the numbers seem “reasonable.”
In his own research, published last year in the American Sociological Review, Rosenfeld said that 22% of newly formed couples had met online, “but couples who meet online are more likely to progress to marriage than couples who meet in other ways.” His new analysis of nationally representative data found that of 926 unmarried couples followed from 2009 to 2011, those who met online were twice as likely to marry as those who met offline.
This was all true for my husband Mike and I. We met through Match.com at age 49, and are still happily married at 58!
Learn more about these studies over at USA Today!
Welcome Happy Spring Flowers!
This is what my backyard looks like this morning! If this doesn’t cheer you up, then you aren’t trying!
We’re having a delayed springtime here in northern Colorado because we’ve had our best snows just in the past few weeks. We had a record low just two weeks ago! The trees are afraid to leaf out, but they are finally ready to bloom.
Spring is MY season, the season of growth and renewal! I love everything about it! It makes me feel alive again after a long, dreary winter.
Spring is also the BEST time to fall in love! So get out there and make your dreams come true! Believe to receive everything you ever dreamed of and MORE!
Watch out for those darn expectations!
It only took me forty years to figure out just how tricky expectations can be. Have you ever noticed that life never turns out as expected? And if you can finally let go of expectations, you will never be disappointed. This goes triple for dating.
Probably the main reason I was so successful when I started dating again at age 49, was that I had absolutely NO expectations. No one could have convinced me to expect the love of my life to turn up at my door on that day back in January 2005. I was actually just trying to attract more men to my dating service inventory at the time.
Sure I wanted to fall in love again, who doesn’t? But I certainly wasn’t expecting it!
The problem begins when we get this picture in our heads of exactly what’s next in our lives. I know, we call that visualizing, and some think it is the best way to manifest what you desire. There is some truth to that, but please don’t mistake your visualizations for exact expectations.
Yes my new friend Mike, who turned up one day out of the blue, was amazing to me. But he was also so different than I would have ever expected. Our educational backgrounds were quite diverse, our interests couldn’t have been more different, and he even looked different than anyone I had pictured myself with previously.
If I had let any of these “pictures in my head” tell me that this wasn’t like it was “supposed to be,” I would have missed out on the love of my life.
Lesson learned! Eight years later, I still struggle every day not to let the picture in my head get in the way of my best reality.
What’s happened to love in America?
“Love’s in need of love today, don’t delay, send yours in right away. Hate’s going ’round breaking many hearts. Stop it please, before it’s gone too far.” – Stevie Wonder
When I listen to the arguments before our Supreme Court this week, I can only wonder how our country ever wandered so far off the path of fairness and righteousness. I’m sure those in other countries must look at us in wonder too! Shame on us!
So, let me get this straight. It is illegal for hundreds of thousands of American citizens to marry the one they love, because a few idiots in Washington or in their state capital told us so. And if they go to Canada or somewhere else where they can legally get married, it will not be legal in their own country.
These facts are so far beyond simple sexism or racism. I mean sure, we have a history of being terrible to non-European-Americans and women, but did we ever tell Blacks, Latinos, or Asians they couldn’t get married?
This minority of Americans aren’t asking for much. They are not asking for “special treatment.” They are asking for the right to get married, a right that the rest of us all take for granted.
Sometimes I stop and think about how I would feel if the government told me I couldn’t marry the one I love, and share things like home ownership and health insurance with this person.
This injustice makes me wonder what happened to freedom in America? If we are not free to love whomever we choose, is it any wonder why so many of us have lost our faith in love?
