relationships
How to believe in love FOREVER!
“What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?” from Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson
I spent the past few days on a lovely trip down memory lane with my parents, my sister and her husband. In our case this meant a trip back to Kansas to visit with my uncle and his kids and grand kids, some of the last family we have left.
I hadn’t been back there for decades, so I thoroughly enjoyed visiting the old neighborhood of my grandparents, getting reacquainted with Uncle Bob and cousin Debbie and meeting her kids. Our family experienced a particularly poignant moment at the graveside of my grandparents.
My first observance, people are extra friendly in Kansas! That is not to say Colorado is an unfriendly state, but everyone I met anywhere in Kansas seemed so amicable and helpful.
I also had forgotten how much I enjoy Uncle Bob’s stories and his great sense of humor. He has a very understated way of cracking up just about anybody. When he got started telling about how he returned to dating after 60 years away, we were all in stitches!
After my aunt passed, Uncle Bob was awfully lonely. So after a few years, he started to think about dating. But in his case, he wasn’t very creative, so he decided to call up the only other woman he had ever dated in his entire life. Bob called up Bettie, a woman he had first dated around age 16.
They hit it off fine and soon realized that they were both single now, so they began to reminisce about back when they were high school sweethearts. Fond memories turned into a great new relationship. As luck would have it, love happens even when you’re in your seventies!
This left me contemplating what it might feel like to “break up” in your eighties. Yes, I’m sure it happens…
Have you lost your faith when it comes to love?
Did you know, the truth WILL set you free? The question is whether you have the courage to tell the truth even to yourself.
It can be quite difficult to admit that you have lost all faith in love. Because without at least the dream of someday finding love, what else is there?
Sure you can pin all of your hopes on having a fantastic career or helping others in some important ways, but most of us still need to believe that we will someday find the true love and support we need to achieve our best goals.
But if we have been devastated by love in the past, how can we believe again? Perhaps we once felt we had found “the one” and then that perfect one betrayed us so cruelly that we don’t believe our feelings will ever change. WE feel we cannot ever open our hearts again and let another in. This kind of holding on to the pain in your past, only hurts you, not them.
I did this for years, never allowing others in to comfort me. I was angry and hurt because I had lost all ability to trust others. It was only when I stopped and acknowledged my truth, that I was then able to start healing.
It is this healing process which I explain in How To Believe in LOVE Again, the soul surgery which you alone can decide to pursue when you are through denying yourself the love in your future.
“Impatient Nation” and LOVE
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein
Did any of you see this short segment from the ABC News the other night? Or were you in too much of a hurry?
We are so much the “impatient nation” these days, with a mere 250 millisecond attention span. No wonder we cannot find love. Who has time?
Love is one of those things we must properly prepare for, not dive into constantly, hoping that this one is “THE ONE.” Unless you want to spend a lifetime of dissatisfaction.
I believe we tend to attract what we are. If we are insecure, impatient and selfish, that is exactly what we tend to attract. I call this the “justice in love” rule, and I learned it from decades of personal experimentation.
How many people have you observed who spend no time alone after a bad breakup or divorce, and no effort trying to understand themselves and how they interact when it comes to love? They never seem to ask themselves: “Do I have anything to offer others when it comes to love?”
I have observed that men are even more likely than women to jump right back into dating only weeks or months after a breakup. They insist on learning nothing from their past experiences, so they will continue to make the exact same mistakes over and over again.
Making the proper investments to change my fortune in love has been one of my best ever! Learning from my own mistakes has been the best way for me to eventually find true love.
That is why I wrote my book, so others could benefit from my mistakes!