Your Ultimate Vision for Extraordinary Love

Love Junkies

If we think that this is what love is, we can never feel that it is enough. Because we rely on others to affirm and love us, we need constant reassurance that we are loved. All this is relieving our fear of not being loved. It’s fear management, not love.

I can remember being in a relationship of four years that I thought was love. The poor guy had to reassure me and pay attention to me for me to feel loved, but it wasn't love I was feeling when he paid me attention and listened to me, it was relief from fear that I might not be good enough to receive his love.

I experienced this constant attention as love, but when I finally experienced real love - love that was based on what I can give- I realised all I had lived was a relationship based on anxiety.

After a while I was very tired. So was he. No matter what he did it wasn’t enough. He’d reassure me with an act of love, and I’d feel relief for a time, then the gnawing, aching void would be back and I’d be looking for the my next fix. I was a love junkie.

When he finally tired of the pattern of feeding the ever-hungry addict he fell into bed with someone who didn't demand twenty-four hour maintenance. I didn't blame him. I was tired of myself too.

It took me another five years to dig myself out of that hole. How did I do that? I realised that no one else could make me happy. No one was responsible for my feeling love. It was all up to me.

My gift in this was my husband. When I’d feel the old feeling of need start aching at me I’d start to demand attention from Chris. He’d let me know that he wasn’t going to buy into that crap. No fix. Could turkey cure of the love addiction.

It took about five times of me wailing for attention and Chris telling me to give it up that I was finally cured. Curing myself wasn’t pain-free - I’d got used to experiencing love that way and my entire nervous system went into shock without it. I can remember my husband saying no to the demands and me going into the backyard and jumping up and down like a maniac with frustration.

The second time I did this I started to get it. If I wanted to experience real love, and not the counterfeit version I’d been settling for, I’d have to accept the gift Chris was giving me and stop asking for the fix.

Now I don’t know how to do the love junkie thing. It’s no longer part of my neurology. That tells me that changing the pattern of feeding the fear is possible. If you experience this addiction but you don’t have the partner who would tell you gently no, then do it for yourself.

The next time you go for reassurance… about whether you can trust them, where they’ve been, what they’re thinking, whether they love you… resist. I get it. It’s tough. It’s almost a physical need. But resist. The first time is tough. By the second or third time you start getting that there is another level to love that doesn't involve constant reassurance.

It is not when you let go of the need to feed the fear that you create the space for the next level of love to arrive.

One-Eyed Love

One-eyed love is where we have no idea what our partner’s values are. This  leads to us being confused about their choices, and sometimes insecure.

Trying to build a relationship with someone when we don’t know their values and rules is like trying to communicate with a Frenchman and you speak Japanese. You try hard, but there is confusion and miscommunication.

Why is values clarification important? Because most disagreements in relationships are because of a violation of our rules.

For you to experience love, your rule is that your partner must stay home on a Friday night. For your partner to experience love, his partner must give him freedom to play with his friends after a long week. Rule violation.

For you to experience health and vitality, you must exercise, even when you’re on holidays. Your partner doesn’t have health and vitality on their list of values, if they’re aware of them.

For you to experience honesty, you must tell your partner everything about your past, and they must do the same. They’re rules for honesty exclude talking about old relationships. Rules violation.

Are you seeing the patterns? People bounce through relationships, wondering why they argue and don’t see eye to eye, not even being aware that the same arguments they have over and over are always about values and rules.

What’s a recurring argument you have experienced with someone? When you think about it, what rules were violated for you to react? Perhaps you think of an argument you had and it seemed to be about money, which is a means value and not an end value, think about what your rules are around security and risk, compared to the other person.

Perhaps you valued security ahead of fun, and they wanted to spend the saving on a holiday.

Perhaps you valued adventure ahead of freedom, and wanted to spend the money on medium shares and they wanted t keep it as cash to keep their options open.

Perhaps you experience love when someone saves their money for a rainy day and they experience love when they spend money on you.

These violations of each other’s rules can only be identified by identifying each other’s values and rules. The antidote for this problem is take the time to learn what each of you value and what you rules need to be to experience love effortlessly.

When Chris and I took the time to do this, we learnt that we had similar values but different rules for meeting those values. We took the time to align them and to talk about them and understand what each other valued. That doesn’t mean we now never disagree, bit now when we do we understand why. It removes a lot of the heat from the difference because we can appreciate the other’s point of view.

Exercise:

If you’re in a relationship, take the time to discover your partner’s values and the rules they need to experience these values. Talk about the differences and similarities between your values and these.

If you’re not in a relationship and want to be, take the time with whoever you are dating to learn what they value. If they value freedom ahead of everything else, they’re unlikely to want to commit!!

Hostage Love

Hostage love is when one of the couple want to control everything that happens. It’s a form of fear, and plays out as lack of trust. It’s all wears out the hostage and the kidnapper. Eventually it either escalates or exploded, and either way no one wins.

The kidnapper is playing out their fear of  not being enough. What is the hostage out when they allow someone to control their every move? I’m going to guess every fear there is. Both players are getting their black void filled, but it’s fleeting and unsatisfactory and often creates even greater desire to have the void filled.

If you’re the hostage taker, it’s time to get honest with the fact that this isn’t love, but fear. It’s time to ask yourself: Is this as good as I want to it to get or am I ready for the the real thing? If the answer is yes, you want to experience the next level of love, then spend every moment with your partner i appreciation and gratitude, knowing that you've spent enough time in fear.

If you’re the hostage, ask yourself what needs you’re feeling  by staying there. Is it because you feel not being enough without this constant drama in your life? Whatever it is, it’s noise and b________, and it’s not love.

Is this as good as you want it to be? Or are you ready to experience a new level of love? If the answer is yes, it’s time to experience another level of love, then it’s time to take 100% responsibility for what you are allowing. Stop blaming you partner for how they treat you and own up for how you let them treat you.

I’m not talking about physical abuse here, and if that is where you’re at, it’s time you got out. Staying is saying you deserve nothing better, and you know that isn’t the case. You deserve better, right no. I’m talking about where you both are dancing the dance of fear, and you know it’s time to get off the ride.

Living is about living a Level 1 life, where you take 100% responsibility for the results that you get. In love, Level 1 Love is the same. Level 1 Love is about joy, respect, trust, communication, passion, compassion and a willingness to put the other person’s needs ahead of your own.

Level 2 Love is about getting by with a partner who meets some of your needs some of the time… and you do the same to them. It’s about knowing it could be better but the energy seems to have gone out of it. You’re happy enough but it could be better.

Level 3 Love is about putting up with what you have, even though you’re unhappy. It’s about settling for what you have, even if it’s an absence of love, because you have forgotten what real love is, or no longer believe you deserve or can achieve it. Level 3 Love is about ‘what’s in it for me’.

Exercise:

Take a couple of moments to record here what type of love you are experiencing.

Your Ultimate Vision for Extraordinary Love

Exercise:

Write down everything that you would want to experience in your ideal relationship. What would you do? Who would they be? How would you act? What would you feel? How would it inspire? What would it look like? How would this relationship change your life?

What is preventing you from experiencing this level of love? What have you valued ahead of this level of love? What rules have you chosen to prevent you experiencing it?

How are you going to change this, right now?