Many of us have had naive notions about love, what it is and how it works. 

We fall in love and after a certain amount of time, most of us (and maybe all of us honest ones) fall out of love or at least fall somewhat out of love.  And we ask, “How did this happen?  How did this passionate, fun, exciting relationship end up like this?  Let’s talk about three harsh realities about love.

• Love involves hard work.

It is inevitable that we will fall out of love.  Falling in love involves feelings; the automatic kind that just emerges from our psyche and our sexual organs.  Staying in love requires work.  Staying in love requires listening when we do not want to, thinking of the other person as well as ourselves and learning to stay open when some other parts of us wants to close up.  Relationships eventually will trigger the same pain we had as a child.  If we were abandoned, we will begin feeling abandoned by our partner.  If we were criticized, we will feel attacked and criticized by our partner.  If we felt like a victim, we will feel like a victim with our partner.  If we saw abuse, we may abuse our partner.

The solution starts with accepting that these intimate relationships despite being challenging at times, can be gateways to healing some of our deepest wounds.  But we need to do the work.

• This hard work is all about paying attention to aspects of yourself, your partner and life itself in ways you have not paid attention to before.

This means that you need to be humble, open and intentionally self-aware.  When you act in a hurtful way, rather than look for the problem in your partner, get curious about what in YOU is driving that reaction.  Look at your partner as just a stimulus for your reaction.  If your partner does the same process, now you have a good chance of transforming pain into joy.

Love is about paying attention, not being lazy and not expecting things to always come easily.  Likewise, pay attention to your partner.  Be interested, be inquisitive, and get out of yourself.  Do the work of shifting your attention to outside of yourself and into this mysterious person whom is your partner.  You may think you know your partner, but believe me; there is a lot more to know.

One of my favorite sayings is- “If your relationship is boring, you’re just not paying attention.”   One of my favorite songs is “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson.  Here is a snippet of the lyrics:

I’m starting with the man in the mirror

I’m asking him to change his ways

And no message could have been any clearer

If you wanna make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and then make a change

What his song is describing is that work of attention.  Without it there is no lasting love.

• Unless you keep becoming more of yourself, love is not healthy and will not last.

Intimate relationships can lead us to over adapt and sacrifice our self-respect, our identity and our “true self” in order to “maintain” the relationship.  Conflict avoidant relationships do not work for this reason because in consistently avoiding conflict, one or both partners stop living from their deepest self; their true center.

Yes, we need to compromise and we need to drop our agenda to meet our partner’s.  When it stops being a choice, if we are not making these compromises from a place of conscious strength; if we are “giving in” out of some fear, we deaden ourselves little by little and ultimately the relationship deadens along with us.  Love requires expansion; a continual moving past our fear lines; our boundaries.  We need to risk being ourselves over and over again in our relationships.

Self-expression, self-exploration and conscious mature negotiation is the only way love becomes the dominant experience in long term relationships. 

In mature compromise, there is no loss of self because you are coming from effectiveness, from attending to the needs of your lover/partner.  When in conflict, there is a time to stay firm and a time to yield and that depends on the context and what your intuition (not your fear) is saying to you.  Another way of saying that is that love requires courage; the courage to be rejected, to get disagreement, to open up when you want to close and to hold on to who you are even when your partner has strong opinions as well.

I am absolutely, 100% convinced of the great rewards of long-term love.

Being willing to do the work, pay attention and to be your true self even in moments of conflict are necessary. Without them, this “experience” of love can most definitely be felt as harsh and ultimately non-rewarding.

These harsh realities of love sometimes make it necessary to get a good relationship therapist to help you become “eligible” for these great rewards.  Our past can make this difficult, but the good news is this:  For the great majority of us, we can turn the harsh realities of love into growth, emotional muscular development and great freedom of expression.

Here’s to getting the love you want!