Being in love is a wonderful experience, yet all too soon these in-love feelings fade away. Discover the one thing that diminishes love & how to keep it alive.
When I was 24 years old I fell madly in love. I was madly in love for three weeks, and then spent the next 30 years struggling to regain and maintain that wonderful feeling. In the course of my long marriage and in the many years I've been counseling individuals and couples, I've learned what it takes to keep love alive and what diminishes the feelings and experience of love.
The concept of what it takes to keep love alive is really quite simple, but not easy to do. The simple answer is this: love flows between two people whose hearts are open to learning and to sharing love. The hard part is keeping our heart open.
What Doesn't Work...
Before I go more deeply into what does keep love alive, I want to focus on what doesn't work. The bottom line of what diminishes or even eventually kills loving feelings is controlling behavior.
There are two major forms of controlling behavior that always result in dampening loving feelings:
· Overt control such as anger, blame, criticism and judgment, defensiveness, lecturing, teaching, righteousness, physical violence, and so on.
· Covert control such as withdrawal, withholding truth, compliance, giving oneself up, resistance, denial, and so on.
None of us like to be controlled. Most people, in the face of controlling behavior, react with their own controlling behavior. Controlling behavior diminishes love because the focus is on changing the other person rather than on changing yourself.
When the intention of your behavior is to change your partner's feelings or behavior, your behavior will often be experienced by your partner as manipulative or rejecting. Trying to change how someone feels about you or treats you with overt forms of control feels manipulative and rejecting to your partner, while covert forms of control such a compliance or "niceness," feels manipulative and inauthentic to the other person.
Love is Kept Alive When... The good news is that love CAN be kept alive, even in long-term relationships. Love is kept alive when each person is more devoted to learning about being loving to themselves and to each other than to getting love. The moment the intention is to get love, controlling behavior takes over. In any given moment, we either want to be loving and share love, or to get love. Trying to get love diminishes love.
Being loving and sharing love keeps love alive. Being loving and sharing love means:
· Through the practice of Inner Bonding, you each learn to love yourself and take responsibility for your own feelings, rather than making the other person responsible for your feelings of worth, lovability, security, happiness, joy or pain.
· Each of you have your own and your partner's highest good at heart. Each of you support your own and your partner's joy and well being. Both of you are considerate of the other person without giving yourselves up.
· Each person chooses to be honest and authentic about how you feel and what you want and don't want. You are willing to speak your truth without blame or judgment.
· Each person stays open to learning about your own and your partner's wants, needs, and fears, especially in conflict.
· Each of you stays open to learning regarding how you are abandoning yourself, which is what leads to controlling behavior.
What keeps love alive is each person's willingness to do the Inner Bonding work necessary to keep the heart open to loving and learning. Controlling behavior is motivated by fear - of loss of self and loss of other, of engulfment and rejection, of smothering and abandonment. When each person is willing to do the Inner Bonding work necessary to heal these fears, they are able to keep their hearts open more and more of the time. Love flows freely when hearts are open to loving and learning.
Practicing Inner Bonding is a powerful way of keeping love alive...
Partners who both consistently practice this process discover the great joy in sharing love. Even when it seems that there is no way to get love back, it does come back when both partners are devoted to learning to take loving care of themselves and to sharing their love with each other.
We cannot give to another what we do not have within. Inner Bonding is a process for creating so much love within that it comes spilling out, to be joyously shared with others!
Heal your relationship with Dr. Margaret’s 30-Day online relationship course: Wildly, Deeply, Joyously in Love
About Dr. Margaret Paul
Dr. Paul is the author/co-author of several best-selling books, including Do I Have To Give Up Me to Be Loved By You?, Inner Bonding, Healing Your Aloneness, The Healing Your Aloneness Workbook, Do I Have To Give Up Me to Be Loved By My Kids?, Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?, and her recent books, Diet for Divine Connection: Beyond Junk Foods and Junk Thoughts to At-Will Spiritual Connection, and The Inner Bonding Workbook: Six Steps to Heallng Yourself and Connecting with Your Divine Guidance.
Dr. Paul's books have been distributed around the world and have been translated into eleven languages.
Margaret holds a Ph.D. in psychology and is a relationship expert, noted public speaker, workshop leader, educator, chaplain, consultant and artist. She has appeared on many radio and TV shows, including the Oprah show. She has successfully worked with thousands of individuals, couples and business relationships and taught classes and seminars since 1967.
Margaret continues to work with individuals and couples throughout the world on phone and Skype. She is able to access spiritual guidance during her sessions, which enables her to work with people wherever they are in the world. Her current passion is bringing the Inner Bonding process to people throughout the world through her courses, books and SelfQuest®, the online program that teaches Inner Bonding® and is offered to prisons and schools, as well as sold to the general public.
Margaret is passionate about helping people rapidly heal the root cause of their pain and learn the path to joy and loving relationships.
In her spare time, Margaret loves to paint, make pottery, take photos, watch birds, read, ride horses, and spend time with her grandchildren.
Dr. Margaret Paul is a 2020 Thought Leader on Best Ever You.
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