My take on Love 

LOVE: simple and complicated ....
pure yet intricate, desirable and sometimes elusive...

As a relationship educator, I think I have always tried to reconcile the mystery and the mastery of love – how the two are linked and how they play out in committed or intimate relationships.  I think my mission has always been to share insights and stories about love, sex and romance, in order to help inspire people to think in new ways and communicate openly so as to enjoy more fulfilling personal relationships.

Without a doubt, love has baffled, mystified, intrigued and challenged people throughout history. For centuries, philosophers and writers, poets and scholars have long tried to unravel the mystery of Love. It has been described and written about from many perspectives: from platonic to romantic, sexual to passionate, obsessive to forbidden and companionate to divine. Culturally speaking, love has been the subject of songs, literature, and art more often than any other emotion. Even movies, daytime talk shows, and soap operas have largely influenced our emotional indoctrination of love. And the ongoing quest to demystify the meaning of love continues, as today, one can also find the topic of Love to be its own field of study... kind of like a relationship science. Anthropologists, biologists, psychologists and scientists alike continue to research not only the many faces of love- but also the dynamics of love- trying to explain the human heart’s mysteries in order to help us better understand this complex phenomenon.

All I know is what I have observed in my own life as well as with my work with individuals and couples: that love is generally thought of in terms of either romance or companionship, with intimacy as being the soul of true love. And, even if love typically begins in the heat of passion and eventually cools into the quiet glow of companionship, most people, if asked, would want love to be a continued mix of intimacy, passion and commitment.

So how do we get that?

The thing I always hear from couples is that it takes hard work to sustain a successful loving relationship….that, in order to feel connected, you really need to learn to communicate well! This is where I always follow up with a “Yes, but it also requires passion, pleasure and play. Couples need to learn to do that, too!” Good communication is one thing, but when couples base their relationships on friendship, fondness and fun, they usually also find joy and happiness in their lives. Workshop skills and structure can become immensely helpful to enhancing couple communication, but without routinely preserving the positive side of life, couples may soon find their skills to be waning. So, what I believe to be true is that communication skills become even more effective when couples also make time to love and enjoy one another.

Personally, I find it bamboozling (I just love that word) as to why it is that we enter this world full of curiosity, laughter and joy and continue to develop these play skills for many years to come, only to find ourselves too “grown up” or too “caught up” in our roles and responsibilities, way too fast! Even more so, as parenting couples, we’ll often find excuses not to do enjoyable things, or only when and if it involves our kids. How different this seems from the early days of courtship! Remember how in the beginning, we would stop at nothing to get together, to go out and enjoy each other’s company? We felt so connected! Even sex was more fun because we actually planned on it and looked forward to it. The sad truth is that after being together a long time, many couples become busier and stop dating or making special times a priority. And research reminds us, time again, that if couples would take the time for fun and pleasure in their relationship, they would actually help prevent boredom or growing apart in their relationships- even help rejuvenate themselves during busier or more stressful times. Did you know that doing something new together can actually bolster dopamine levels in our brain, making us feel even more excited or interested in one another?

Along with having fun for fun’s sake, what many of us also fail to realize is that fun can actually preserve us and act as a powerful buffer against conflict down the road. When couples make time for fun and friendship with each other, they not only keep the spark alive, they also laugh and bring humour to their lives. In essence, couples create a positive impression of their lives. This exchange in positive sentiment somehow gets stored in the brain, and kindly reminds us that we can still feel good about each other, and can be the best of friends, even in the worst of times. So, really, what we are doing when we aren’t fighting can actually have a lot to do with the way we eventually repair or resolve our conflicts. However, with the many things vying for our time in everyday life, we also need to keep in mind that fun oftentimes requires planning…. This means we cannot always leave it up to spontaneity. Instead, by scheduling and trying new things together, we can shake up the familiar expectations or patterns in our life, even deepen our friendship.

In my experience, I have always noticed how the quality of communication (not to mention satisfaction) immediately improves when couples feel that they matter to each other. When couples give off the message that they are a priority in each other’s life, whether by words or by their actions, they seem to continue to uphold the kindness, consideration and expressions of affection that first brought them to each other. In other words, they create an environment which continues to nurture their relationship and helps it grow. This is why I strongly believe that making time for each other is the lifeblood of an intimate relationship, and having fun together becomes the glue….because it is exactly these type of loving qualities that keep reigniting in a couple’s life. Without some quality time together, the connection between a couple withers and becomes increasingly difficult to reconnect. Deliberately planning and scheduling pleasurable activities together can not only naturally offset any potential demise from creeping into a couple’s life, but can also richly contribute to their shared sense of history.

But can too much togetherness be too much?

In addition to our coupleship, I believe it’s important that we take time for ourselves as well as for our friends. Being “velcroed at the hip” can be sickly sweet at times. I think the more you allow for your partner to become their “own” person, the more interesting the relationship can be. Balance is key. Leo Buscaglia once said: “Don’t smother each other…no one can grow in the shade”.

A relationship grows when both partners trust and feel safe with each other. When we are accepted for who we are in the relationship, I think we then feel secure enough to allow the right mix of autonomy and commitment to develop in our relationship. When we choke each other’s freedom we can’t breathe inside the relationship.

When each one of us can express strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way, we can have an intimate relationship.

When each one of us can feel good about ourselves without constantly requiring our partner’s praise and validation, then we can have an intimate relationship.

When each one of us can tell each other “our” personal truth, out of caring and commitment for our relationship, instead of arguing our point to death or “needing to convince or change the other”, we have true intimacy.

When each one of us can take care of ourselves in order to fulfill ourselves or feel better connected to our own unique spirit (think hobbies, sports, leisure), then we are more capable of growing and sharing more intimately.

For example, I believe personal growth is required in order to enhance a couple’s sex life and intimacy, especially in committed relationships. Intimate relationships grow and evolve because of the couple. By being intentional, such as describing erotica to one another, sharing fantasies together- recognizing that our partner has an individual sexuality, replete with different experiences, ideas and desires- in the end, becomes more than just becoming known to each other; it’s also about becoming more of an authentic person. However, this also means learning to risk being ourselves with each other….not always easy. I think it helps to understand that love begins with accepting ourselves- first. Then we can appreciate that it takes personal growth to sustain relationship harmony.

In the end, when it comes to loving relationships, it always helps when you can talk about Love.