His Point of View

It was said that we all want love.  I think that is an accurate statement whether we will admit it or not.  We all want certain things out of life, including love.  How much are we willing to give or give up in order to get the love we want?  Most people are content with the way they live their life, although we may have unhealthy habits or we may not be rich we all like to do what we want to do, when we want to do it within the limits of our resources.  The idea of being in love is this phantom that we all chase at some point in our lives and we all have either ruined an opportunity to have love or we have been the victim of someone who ruined the opportunity to receive our love.   It seems that although we all want to be loved many of us are not willing to give up the things that are detrimental to a loving relationship or we are unwilling to do things that will strengthen a loving relationship.  Why? Because it means we can no longer do whatever we want to do, much less do those things when we want to.  Many want the benefits of receiving love and being in a relationship without having the desire to make sacrifices and practicing the discipline necessary to give up those things that we enjoy doing that are not suitable for sustaining a relationship(I won’t get into describing what those things are because we all pretty much know what those things are, its not astrophysics we are discussing here).

I have not heard of any relationship where either one, or both parties have not had to change or grow in order for the relationship to last.  In a healthy relationship both parties should grow & change for the better.  Unless one dates a doormat, we must all expect that during a relationship both parties will have to do some self evaluation and make some decisions on what each party is willing to do differently and/or stop doing in order to grow the love between the pair.   Love is not free, at a bare minimum the price is self reflection, the willingness to consider the feelings of another, and a determination to make personal changes for the betterment of the relationship.  If you are not willing to reflect on your dark side, and honestly look in the mirror and see what your faults are and decide to change those things you are not yet willing to do what it takes to make a loving relationship work.  If you are not ready to give up the bad & become open to doing things that are not primarily in your best interest; but in the best interest of your relationship and/or your partner you are not ready to participate in a loving relationship.  If you are not ready to give up the: lifestyle of a single person, self-centered behaviors, and generally anything that would cause damage to a relationship you can’t realistically believe that you are worthy of the love of someone who is willing to be dedicated to you.  Just because you can get away with inappropriate behaviors for a while does not mean that you are making the right decisions for the long term growth of your relationship.  At some point things will come crashing down and you will have no one to blame but yourself, although you will try to blame everyone else.

I read a quote this morning that said something to the effect of ” you know its love when you are willing to do more for the other person than you are willing to do for yourself.”  That statement is a good starting point in my mind, if you are willing to go farther for that other person than you generally are willing to go for yourself that’s a very good sign that you are at least in the correct mindset to have a successful relationship.  That shows that you are no longer primarily self -centered.  The other half of the equation is cutting out the things that you can get away with, but that you know are wrong… before you get caught.  If one loves their mate they would not like to see them hurt physically or emotionally and if we are able to stop doing things that we know would hurt our mate its our responsibility to end those activities as soon as possible before damage is done.

Giving up the single life means ending all these actions that single people do that we would not tell our mate about, or do in front of our mate.  Its almost like there are three entities involved the two humans who say they love each other and the relationship is its own entity.  There has to be respect between the two people involved and there must be respect for the relationship.  Although you can love and respect your mate, you can be disrespectful to the relationship and that can be just as deadly to the survival of the relationship as being disrespectful to your mate can be.  Doing or saying things that can cause doubt in the mind of others about the status of your relationship or acting in a manner that indicates that you are not in a relationship can often be just as damaging as cheating or any other action that can lead to the termination of a relationship. If we decide to be in a committed relationship we should be happy and we should be proud to say that we are in a relationship and we should be proud to carry ourselves in a manner consistent with being emotionally attached to someone.  If we do anything else we are at a minimum disrespecting the relationship and we are most likely disrespecting our mate by default.

I could not have said it better myself http://thenakedwar.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/sucker-punched-33/

Love does not endure without maintenance or nurturing.  The act of loving someone, especially one who is not a member of one’s family requires effort.  Even loving family members who continually hurt themselves, other family members, or us requires effort, but that’s a different story all together.  Over the years I have had conversations with many people who claim that once they love someone, they will forever.  Many of these people claim that it is not possible to stop loving a person once you have loved them.  I disagree whole heartedly. (continue reading…)