love as your top priority
Love as a way of life: Valentine’s Day 2013
So here it is Valentine’s Day 2013, and the purveyors of cards, roses, and candy are making out like bandits. Let’s hear it for American business!
That they could take a pagan Roman holiday involving whips and young maidens, and convert that into a big guilt trip placed on all who do not buy something expensive for their loved one — now that is business acumen!
For me Valentine’s Day means very little. I have no need for my lover to prove himself today, because we live love everyday of the year.
I do fondly remember our first Valentine’s Day back in 2005, when Mike did it up big with roses and candy. It meant so much because I knew even then how much he loved me. And in the eight years since I do not remember one moment when I doubted Mike’s love for me, or wondered how important I was in his life. He shows me everyday.
Too bad so many of us can so easily mistake roses or candy for love. Why not take the time and effort to send your lover a love poem this year. Do you have it in you? It would cost you nothing, and might mean so much more than money spent to prove your love. How I treasure every card and note Mike has ever given me.
Perhaps this has the most to do with being older and wiser. Love is not about Valentine’s Day anymore — it is a way of life now. It is appreciating every day I have with a man who knows me so very well, and loves me anyway. It is a celebration of the fact that I finally realized exactly how important love was to me at age 49, and decided my highest priority was finding genuine love for once in this lifetime.
You can do this too, if it is important enough to you. If you have the courage to take the risk, forgive yourself for past mistakes, put it all out there, resolve past pain, trust your inner wisdom, and open to love again, love can happen anew in a beautiful, mature and all-encompassing way.
Resolve to live a new life, and that life will arrive right on time! Feel the fear, and do it anyway…
What does love mean?
With Valentine’s Day coming right up, a few of us might be wondering exactly what love means.
Sure, when we have it, we generally know it, but then it changes through the years, and sometimes it dies. This is often called a “midlife crisis” when one or both partners decide that love either never really existed, or else it has simply disappeared for no good reason.
Some get angry because their husband or wife does not love them anymore, or does not want to try to work things through somehow. There are so many different types of problems in relationships and each is unique. Some can be worked on, others cannot. But nothing will change if one partner blames the other for all of the problems.
What I hate to see is a husband or wife who insists on trying to shame or guilt the other partner into staying, when love is so obviously non-existent. In general I believe that we all know when it’s time to accept reality and move on. Do you really want a man you have “guilted” into staying with you? Why not believe in yourself enough to move on to something better for both of you? Grow up and leave the nastiness behind.
Unfortunately, leaving a bad relationship behind does not solve any of your own problems. Often we lose faith in love eventually, after a number of bad breakups, but there is a very good reason for this. We finally realize we will continue to attract the wrong type of relationship unless we change something inside of ourselves; the broken, mean, negative feelings we hold against ourselves.
If you think this might be you, ask yourself this question: “Would you want to marry you?”
Most of us go out looking for someone to save us in our relationships with others, but we attract what we are now, with comparable levels of generosity, caring, insecurity or self-hate.
The first rule of love is you get what you are. So who are you when it comes to love? Are you a victim, a martyr, someone who is trying to save others? I found that personal change was the only solution to my love problems.
Learn how this works with: How to Believe In Love Again: Opening to Forgiveness, Trust, and Your Own Inner Wisdom.
Give you and your friends the perfect Valentine’s Day gift, for those who really want to get it right next time!
“There’s courage in trying…”
I love to see spunk in older women. That’s why I so enjoyed watching this interview with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on 60 Minutes. Don’t miss it! What an inspiration! The take away for me was her statement about trying.
Sonia, now age 58, grew up in the South Bronx with juvenile diabetes. She knew that life was not going to come to her. She would have to go out and get it!
Raised by a single mother because her alcoholic father died when she was only nine, she knew it was all up to her to make something of herself. She saw early what life would demand of her.
Some of us come to this realization later in life. Circumstances converge, losses accumulate. Perhaps you see for the first time that you do not want to remain in the same relationship or marriage. Perhaps the plan you laid out unconsciously decades ago will not suffice. Do you then have the courage to try something different? Do you have enough time to change your life?
In the end, there’s only one way to find out, and that is to try. Find the courage inside to experiment. Open your mind to all of your possibilities. Decide that you are now ready to find a different kind of love in your life.
When I ran into my own series of midlife crises around age 46, soon after my own divorce, I took the time to sit and consider what I wanted more of in my life. What did I need to happen before I died? I decided I wanted to have a LOT more fun, while finding true love for once in this lifetime!
Going inside can be quite the challenge after decades of just doing the usual. I found remembering the child I was once, and what fun used to look and feel like is a great place to start. You may find your definition of love has also changed quite a bit over the years!
There are definitely do-overs before it’s all over, but only if you’re willing. Life is constant change, so why not make the changes you choose instead of just rolling with the punches? Take ownership of what you want to see in your future.
You may find, as I did, that there are some life-changing opportunities well-hidden in feelings of sadness. Underneath your fear of striking out on your own and finding a new way of loving yourself and others, you may find the EXCITEMENT of knowing that anything could happen!
Take the time to open to all of your possibilities today.
There IS courage in trying!
Here’s to HOPE!
I have been enjoying the website positively positive lately.
Here’s a great post well-worth reading about HOPE and LOVE in the face of tragedy and fear.
Love yourself into believing in love again!
Love can be a tough one when you’re older, recently divorced or widowed, and wondering what’s next. I know I felt relatively certain my love life was over at age 49, and then I lost my job.
Going only on my desire to try something completely different, I started my own dating service. There I spent some serious time learning from hundreds of 40+ singles about what it feels like to know that you are too young to give up on love, and yet fearful that you may be too disillusioned to ever believe again. What I discovered is that there are quite a few of us who have lost our faith in love, and that included me!
So I got busy and figured out how to change that. With my natural stubborn streak and an extensive background in psychology, I used decades of personal experience with love and disappointment to turn my around my attitude. I began by finally valuing my mysterious intuitive personal guidance system and not interrupt it constantly with more “rational” assessments of my situation. I also acknowledged how important it was for me to forgive myself for everything in my past, but how do I do that?
Slowly I created a formula which included finding new self-respect for where I was at, appreciating how I got there, and then finding various ways to love myself into believing in love again. I saw that I felt afraid of love for many good reasons, so I began searching out those experiences in my past that were keeping me stuck in my old way of thinking. My formula included focusing on my own unique shame and trust issues, forgiving myself for past mistakes, listening to my inner wisdom, and utilizing cathartic techniques to change my beliefs about what love might have to offer me now.
I knew I was on the right track when I met the love of my life a few months before age 50…
Six years after that fateful meeting, and five years after our marriage, I completed my book: How To Believe In Love Again: Opening to Forgiveness, Trust, and Your Own Inner Wisdom. Pick up this book when you are ready to acknowledge that you have lost your faith in love, and getting it back it your highest priority.
How is love different as we age?
“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”
My husband and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary this week.
Looks like we’ve finally made it past those dangerous first five years, but there has never been any doubt with us.
Why is that? Maturity I guess, and lots of previous experience with divorce and living alone. In other words, we may be slow, but we are trainable.
When you fall in love at age 49, and especially the way we did, you know when you’ve met your match. We both feel mighty lucky, after decades of trying!
We both had finally learned the most important lesson when it comes to marriage: choose a partner with similar core values, someone you naturally share genuine friendship with. Find a partner you would choose as a friend, a BEST friend!
Ask yourself, if we weren’t in love, would we still be friends?
When the excitement and passion we all experience when we first fall in love wears off, what will there be to keep us together? Romantic love is short lived and generally insufficient to maintain a long successful marriage. The love you think you feel when you first meet is often a mirage, for deep love develops slowly with each shared joy and challenge.
After the intense physical attraction wears off, will you share similar activities and interests? Will there be that dependable friendship and intimacy that comes from years of shared laughter and tears? What will you be sharing for a lifetime with this person you care so much about now?
One thing you should share is feeling more concern for your partner’s well-being than yourself, in a healthy way.
Laura Lee Carter, author of How To Believe In Love Again: Opening to Forgiveness, Trust, and Your Own Inner Wisdom.
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World…
Without love in your heart – you’ve got nothing! This is the conclusion I came to in the midst of my own midlife crisis.
I had recently left a bad marriage and the only career I had ever known had vaporized before my eyes, but I realized that finding one genuine love before I died was my highest priority.
Why? Because in the long run, love is what sustains us.
Most of us hate to admit this. I was in denial for most of my adult life. Facing the truth hurt too much. Because if love was so important to my own happiness, and I never found it, the consequences were too grim to face.
I enjoyed watching the film Seeking a Friend for the End of the World this week. There’s nothing like the end of the world to get your priorities in order!
What if you knew the world would end in three weeks? What would quickly rise to the top of your ‘to do” list? This film asks this question, and then answers it beautifully.
As I watched this funny, completely unpredictable, and yet somehow serious film, I imagined what I would do, realizing that this was really an expose on the entire world going through a midlife crisis under a very strict deadline.
A proper midlife crisis feels like the world is ending, but generally we have more than three weeks to come to terms with the choices we’ve made, and resolve our unfinished business. This film made me glad that I had some time after my own crisis to change my life and then reap the rewards of those changes.
See this funny, thoughtful, thought-provoking film if you ever wonder what the end will feel like.
This is your moment – Take it!
Are you waiting for something to happen before you can believe in love again? You will wait FOREVER!
I know it sometimes seems impossible to believe that there is someone out there who will come and love you. I know I had lost all faith myself after first my divorce in 2001, and then getting dumped from my job in 2004. Optimism was out the window!
And yet I also know that the man I had been waiting to meet forever lived only ten miles away, and he was struggling to believe just as much as I was.
As soon as I did my work on myself, getting past my past heartbreak, I was ready to believe again. And then I met him!
I’m afraid we all believe it is the mechanics of meeting the right one that stands in our way. But this is simply not true. It isn’t about which dating site you choose or how you act on your first date.
It is about first forgiving yourself for past mistakes, and then preparing yourself to believe in your own judgment and inner wisdom this time. Because even if you met the right person today, you wouldn’t know it if you feel bad about yourself.
And if I could find a way to feel good about myself as I sat there unemployed and divorced, you can too. It just takes a dedicated effort on your part and the proper tools. That is my gift to you!
In my book How To Believe In Love Again, I walk you through this process. I explain how early trauma has caused your problems with trust, and created self-shame deep in your heart. Then I show you how to work through these difficulties.
Self-healing is where you begin to prepare for future love. Then you must begin to trust your inner wisdom again, for it can tell you what you need to do next to heal your heart.
I know this all may sound hard, but how much do you want to find love again, and know you have finally succeeded this time?
