Tag Archives: romance

Unfortunately, most everything we learn about love teaches us that love requires nothing but our presence. True love lasts forever, love conquers all, and if you love me you should know how I feel. The misconceptions are countless, yet so is the number of Americans trying desperately to prove they’re true. So let’s instead channel all of that frantic energy into developing a curiosity about the lessons our partner’s qualities and quirks hold for us. Once we get over thinking, “Why won’t she/he . . . ?” we stop reacting — as if they were anomalies — to the repeated dysfunctional dramas we create and experience in every single relationship. It’s only then that Mother Nature’s brilliance catches fire and we realize our partners’ traits say as much about us as they do about them.

But what if there is a method behind the madness of love’s deception? Rather than feeling duped by our partners once the proverbial honeymoon is over or shamefully deceitful towards our partners when our own true colors reveal their shady hues, we might consider that the fraud perpetrated by both parties and our unhappiness with the “truth” are actually motivators. Mother Nature’s incentive behind the blissful state of falling in love could be to compel us to look at and change things about ourselves that we otherwise wouldn’t look at or change.