Is It Love?

     A young man, let's call him G was in a dilemma and asked for advise in that he felt he was losing his girlfriend and really wanted to keep her.  "she's nice people", he said, " but she and I might be breaking up." When asked the reason why, he painted the following scenario:

He met his girl some months ago and she, "rocked his world".  They had good times, they look great together, they get along very well, the sex is wonderful and they have plans to marry.  He asked her to meet his family and everyone was expecting her, however,  on the same weekend she preferred spending time with her buddies from the army (she is in the military).  She had re-enlisted along with others she knew.  For re-enlisting they each received checks for $10,000 dollars.  They planned to meet in Colorado and party together.

She promised him she would return by weekend.  After getting to Colorado, she began to entertain the idea of breaking up with him. She had had sexual encounters with one of the girls that was now in Colorado with her and although she loved him, she also had feelings for the other woman.  He stated, "I don't want to lose her" and he was sending her a text message to let her know his family will be disappointed if she doesn't show for the weekend.  She responded she just wasn't sure about their relationship.

He was so upset with her but he added, "I'm not upset that she is seeing another woman because I do not feel threatened by another woman. Maybe I would be a little upset if it were a man but not a woman."  He did not feel betrayed because she told him the truth.  He asks what must I do in this situation?                         __                       

Friend, should I go or should I stay is the correct question here.  Let's look at it through some other questions.  If you married her, is it okay for your wife to be sexually involved with another woman?  Are you content to be in a relationship where your partner is shared sexually?  Would your family be concerned about you in such a relationship?  Do you know that she wants you and only you?  You are not intimidated by the idea of another woman with your girl so does that mean you accept the possibility of never having an exclusive relationship with the woman you love?  Could she be happy loving only you?  Can she overcome her desire to have other women?  And if not, where does that leave you? Will the woman she is seeing be the beginning of others to come?  Is she in love but not with you?

He needs a hint to answer one of the questions here.  The answers to all the questions he has already seen within himself.  So here is his hint:  If you were okay with the idea of your girl seeing another woman then tell us why are you asking what you must do?

Restore Love,

J

Object of Affection

Long ago a favorite expression to define a difficult search was to describe it as "looking for a needle in a haystack."  Envision the process of doing just that.  What would be your first action?  Perhaps if you knew where the needle entered that may be a good start.  Some may even imagine using a metal detector or even a blower to level the stack.  No matter the method, the process of finding the needle could prove a very time consuming act. The time it would take to make the discovery could only be afforded by a few tenacious people who are also extremely patient.

Some people think love is as difficult to find as that needle.  Love is easy to find and even easier to bestow.  The difficulty rests in what is viewed as the object of affection.  Previously on this blog it was stated that before you can shower anyone else with love, you must first love yourself. Said before and now again, to love self does not render you as selfish or self absorbed.  To love oneself denotes that you find confidence in your being, you are secure in the thought that you have the power to execute changes in your life if changes are needed and you elect to do it.  

ometimes a person assess their state of being and find that areas of their lives need to be re-engineered.  So what do they do?  Many leave the assessment while hoping and wishing for change to come. Many others take the first step on a journey of change and cause the change that's needed because they know with every action there is a reaction.  You are the first object of your affection and this love too requires your attention and care.

To be content with who you are, knowing that you are capable of adjusting yourself if need be  equips you for interaction with others.  Discontented relationships are the way they are because discontented people are involved.  Such relationships harbor many ills.  To name a few you will find frequent disconnects in communication, anger, deception, feelings of inferiority.  Remember, one's behavior is a mirror of one's thinking.  Keep focused on  respecting and loving self and you will begin to see respect and love of/from others.  Why?  Because the object of affection is like bright lights to a moth - the glow attracts.

Many would never give a second thought to searching for a needle in a haystack.  If one were to consider doing it the first action would be the decision to carry out such a search.  It can be done, may not be so easy, but it can be done.  It all starts with you.

Restore Love.

 

Communication

An email from a reader states he placed a profile on a dating site searching for someone special. He asked to meet an intelligent woman who could be trusted and someone that he could spend some time with in hopes of it becoming long term. He received a reply to his profile from a woman who stated she is an intelligent woman and in search of an intelligent man who knows what he wants and is not afraid to express his feelings.

Ten months into the developing relationship the woman's personality took a 180 degree change from what he knew it to be. They met, began spending time together and exchanged plans they would carry out as they agreed to continue the relationship. He says they were pleased with each other initially. Suddenly without warning he could no longer understand her behavior. She complained that he was not greeting her in a manner that pleased her. She complained that he was making her cautious about him and each time they spoke she never failed to mention that she would abandon him. When he asked why was he making her cautious, she would tell him because I see you from a dbroad scope and you cannot see yourself or she would not answer the question. She told him at one point that if he could not keep up with her point of view that she would find someone who could.

He said the reason she gave for all these "requirements" is that she wanted the relationship to be better than other couples. She wanted everyone to see that they were happy when they appear in public. She began to ridicule him. She criticized him for not agreeing with her. If he disagreed with her she would get angry and result to insults of his character and the caliber of person he is.
He says she would yell, hang up the phone, close out their chat window or tell him suddenly she had something important to do.

After many such examples of her demands, he says he stopped for a moment to think it through.
It seemed she wanted to have the appearance of being in a loving relationship for public approval regardless of how miserable they were behind closed doors. He wrote, "she did not care that I wanted to offer her perpetual love and to bring her into my life as my partner where she could fulfill her fantasy. What she cared about was how other people would view our relationship." He states, " she abandoned me but I already knew she would because she threatened to do so in every conversation we had." He closed with he was glad that he had hidden the fact of his wealth or she may have revealed another personality to be with him because of the money.
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The response here is so simple and I use an adage to summarize:
"...CANNOT SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES."

Also, to this reader, when meeting other people there is no certainty of true character (so few people reveal true characters initially). Communication is perhaps the best way to explore the vast geography of another persons mental makeup thus helping you to identify who they are and why they do what they do. In this scenario, it may have been a good action for her to go away. Being abandoned may not feel good to you now but from what you describe you may have gotten the better end of this chaos. You may have wanted to make her the object of love but what did she have in mind for you?

Restore Love

Goodbye to A Married Man

A reader emailed to tell of ending her relationship with a married man; actually he left her. She said she loved him and he just walked away from her. She reasoned with herself that she did not want him to leave his wife nor did she want to ruin his status in the community. She went on to say that she was feeling such pain after the breakup. She stated that in her thoughts she hears that she should end everything and at the same time she hears that she should hang on. She referred to them as voices.

The email was extremely sad. To know that someone rejects the love within themselves because they have been rejected by another is always a sad state. The negativeness that is created when one feels rejected can sometimes cloud the thinking. But to this young reader and others in similar circumstances Rise Up. In order to love anyone at all there must first be love for yourself. Who are You? What is your worth? think of the love within you. It is more precious than all the gold and valuables in this world.

In spending time with the married man, you were honest in your commitment to him, perhaps your intentions were to show him how much you loved him by "excusing or dismissing" the marriage, his family and his "community status" in order to spend a little time with him. And trust that a little time is all you will ever spend in situations such as this. He may say he loves you. He may give you a gift or two, he may provide a place for you to live and transportation, take you shopping, he may take you out to dinner and even feed you from his fork. But the bottom line is he can never offer you what you really desire. That is to be by his side, to walk proudly as the man who loves you and the one you love.

There will always be excuses, reasons why he must stay with his wife, there will always be sneaking about as a rat that scurries in the night pinching crumbs; hiding for fear of being caught. Some men have been known to go as far as meetings in far away places to safeguard not being discovered by wife or relatives or someone from the community.
To put the perverbial icing on this cake, this man will cause you to hate the wife for the way she treats him. He will cause you to feel how you are the woman he wished he had wait to marry. You- being faithful - explain to your friends and relatives, how he really does not love his wife, or how the wife mistreats him, or how he and the wife maintain a presence for the child/children.
Then comes the trickey portion when he has to escape from you because remember your love is genuine and commited. You are in love with him so he must escape this before he gets in too deep.

In this getaway, all the compassion he may have expressed is no longer there. All the little nothings he whispered in your ears are probably screams or a stern voice unfamiliar to you now.
He finds fault with all you do and no matter how stressed you may become about it, he isn't the least bit concerned about your "feelings". His heart becomes rigid and cold. His actions toward you filled with contempt, where he may have smiled upon seeing you he now shows a grimace. He may say something such as " I do love you but..." or "I want you to be happy" or "its best for us both that I go". Sometimes, given the character, he could even blame you or your lack of "something" to please him for breaking the two of you apart.

Truth be told, what abuse by you to yourself and by him to you. First of all this type of relationship is based on lies. Secondly, it is primarily a relationship where the man in this case and (this includes the married women) are impelled to further their "happiness" through genital eroticism. This affords him his greatest gratification. The underlying idea here is sex is love.

Again, if you find yourself in such a relationship Rise up. You owe it to yourself to discover the goodness within you. You owe it to yourself to love without irrational behavior that lends itself when you are programmed by that bleeding heart that tells you, "I Love You...".
If a man cannot totally commit to his wife and family then he is a liar and thief. He lies to you and robs you of time, your values and your love.

Today, stand before your mirror, look yourself in the eyes and say I Love You.
Say to yourself, I will discover within my life genuine love and not crumbs thrown to me by someone rotely telling me they love me.
Say, I seek genuine love of another person rooted in my own capacity to love.
repeat each day as you smile , appreciating the face you see there. Someday soon you
will be very surprised at what you discover.

Restore Love,
MJ

Just Some Words?

Children, preteen girls, were overheard talking today.
Their conversation stemmed today's blog.
One young girl says, "why love, I mean what is that anyway, right?"
The other responded, "I mean people say it all the time, I hate to
hear it. Like when people say it, you don't know if they're telling the truth or if
they just want something from you or want you to do something."
One of the girls, imitated in a deep comical voice, "I Looove Yew". Both began to giggle hilariously.
As their laughter subsided, they looked at each other smiling and one said, "yea, rrright!" They burst into laughter again.

Some adults view the word love in the same manner. As just a word in order to get something or entice someone do something for them.
The statement that one of the girls made, "... people say it all the time...", interpreted without any validity. Could it be that she has witnessed empty relationships that now shape her view of love? Could it be she has stopped trusting those who say this to her? It could.

There is no love without trust, there is no love without action, there is no empty love. Yes, there are those who use the "I Love You" card to prey on the emotions of others as a means to an end. These wretches developed from some system where they never experienced genuine love or bitterness behind losing such love. As some of them grew and developed they never felt a need for or anyone to give them love and affection. With some others, they were shown love and affection but somehow lost it.
No matter which group, they now view love as a weakness of others. Their existence, a way of brute survival and their "I Love You" simply a plot, a ploy, some words to throw out to another in order to acquire something; they use it as a method to control the mind and being of another individual. How wrong is this??

Their way of being applies to the lower end of the human spectrum simply because love to such "types" is null. To see their hearts, visualize the dried sun bleached animal skull that lies in the desert. To see their minds, visualize a maggot infested, rotting carcass along a country road.
Sad and disgusting but the association is very close.

Let's Restore Love.

Beginning to End

Poetry expresses much in so few words.
A long relationship over 2, over 15, over 25
years can sometimes be summed up
in just a few words.

Its been a long time
 when near to you
 I was.
 Our closeness I
 once felt
 now as ice melts.
 Is it me, Is it you
 who pulls away from
 whom?
 My heart screams out
 a bellowing cry,
 why, sweetie, why?
 Only you know the answer that brought
 sadness to my soul
 only you know the answer that turned my heart cold.
 Someday joy on my path will come.
 The treasures I'll carry
 when your soul touched mine
 in passionate states as we intertwined
 so sweetly , so sweetly, but love did not grow,
 you never allowed your love to flow
 instead you placed obstacles in our path
 and one plus one equaled three in your math.
 Its ok and all is well
 despite the fact that I went through hell.
 Now as I heal and caress my wounds I turn again
 to be in tune.
 and so without you I will grow,
my heart will heal and I will know,
 but it will be a memory
 my love for you, your love for me.
 Time will test all that we do
 your love for me
 my love for you
 and with our new loves, as we reminisce
 respect each other
 respect the mind for it created
 all that we felt
 for it is what makes
 love so real, so grand,
 Never tiring to say I love you more & more each day
 Never speaking harsh words to generate pain
 to do this we will gain.
 The rewards of love can only be known
 when it is nurtured, when it has grown.
 let us be free, enough to be
 me loving you
 you loving me.

>

But It Hurts

A woman cried today because she says her "man" left her and it hurts so badly. Her description was, I feel like I'm dying. He don't want to talk to me, he don't want to smile at me, he don't want to see me around, he didn't even kiss me goodbye. Indeed he's gone.

She then said something that so many people say after a breakup. I just don't understand how he could do this. She said, "how could he just up and leave me without any consideration for my feelings." "How could he say he love me on yesterday and today walk out on me as if I were a total stranger. She started searching herself aloud. "I did'nt do anything to make him want to leave. We were doing so well. We spent time together, we laughed and joked around together."

As she sat there relating all the wonderful parts of the relationship that should have held it together the tears rolled down her face. Her body seemed frail from a night of grief and tears.
She wanted so much to be with him but he was no where to be found. He had walked out of her life as if changing his clothes. She just could not understand.

After going over the wonderful parts of the relationship, she again sifted her mind for answers to the riddle; how could he do this?? The answer to this riddle cannot be summed in a few words.
Think of this woman and ask yourself - how can a man or a woman willingly walk away from a relationship where there is love between the two? How is that possible?
Now think of the people you love. To be away from them for an extended period of time causes
sadness, loneliness, a longing to be there with them. So what happened here?

What happened here is affection without commitment. In an earlier blog on this page it was stated that sometimes the way a person treats another is often mistaken for love and rather than saying I love you , what should be said is "the way you treat me feels good" or better yet "I like the way you treat me." All good feelings cannot be labeled love but that is what happens many times. A good feeling is mistaken for love.

Love, as stated in these pages, requires committment. "Come what may" is the attitude required. Love creates balance in our lives when the reciprocity of love is felt. When any two people, regardless of the relationship type, commit to loving one another, they are preparing mind, heart/ soul, to weather whatever storms occur in the relationship. If one does not want to commit to the work needed in developing the relationship then the togetherness cannot be considered love. It is just two people having a good time and when the infactuation for the other person wears thin then the question is asked as tears flow like rain, "how could he/she do this to me??"