Rabbit, Rabbit.
Happy February! It’s officially the month of love.
Love is as critical for your mind and body as oxygen. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it. It’s not negotiable. The more connected you are, the healthier you will be both physically and emotionally.
But then, why is love so darn hard??
Most of us get our ideas of love from TV and the movies. It’s led to a belief that love is going to just happen. It’s going to come in our door, sweep us off our feet, sit down on our couch and Netflix & Chill with us. To be loved, to get love and keep love- you have to go out, be active and work for it.
Compound the pop-cultural influence with the modern tech-dating world and we are all a bit screwed up in the love department. Swipe left, swipe right, magical, unicorn thinking patterns. We have all fallen into the black hole of fantasy love.
Love is a skill. It takes time and practice to understand how to love and in return how we want and need to be loved. Those tingly, heart-twisting, swoon-worthy, can’t-stop-staring feeling is temporary. It’s meant to help us literally fall in love. Once that phase is over, people today so quickly question, is it over?
IT’S NOT!! This next phase is where the good stuff happens. Where the real love, the one we’ve all been desiring and yearning for happens. So, remain patient and invested in it. Conflict, understanding, differences is where you learn to love each more and deeper.
No two love stories are alike. Yes, as Gottman says, “”All happy relationships are similar and all unhappy relationships are also similar. … Is there a secret? It turns out, empirically, yes, there is a secret.” There are master and disasters of love. It’s in the way we fight, the way we repair, the seized or missed opportunities to connect & the way we express our love.
Be kind, be generous. Most important, just love. Take a risk, and love deeply. You may fall, you may get hurt, but the reward, is worth it all!
Happy Loving!
Erin