Accept Nothing Less Than The Best

Love is involuntary. Brain science tells us it's a drive like thirst. It's a craving for a specific person. It's normal, natural to "lose control" in the early stage of romance.

Love, like thirst, will make you do strange things, but knowledge is power. It's a natural addiction and treating it like an addiction can help you.

We were built to fall in love…and rise in love. Are YOU in love?

Well, first of all, know your worth. It's so difficult to put yourself first when you've been a 'couple' for however long. But it's important to recognize what you want and what you deserve in a relationship.

A lot of times, there's a point where you notice a change in the amount of effort being put in. People get comfortable and tend to take each other for granted. It's hard to come to terms with it because you feel so much love for this person that you tend to sweep it under the rug.

Modern psychologists define it as it the strong desire for emotional union with another person. But what, actually, is love. It means so many different things to different people.

Songwriters have described it, “Whenever you’re near, I hear a symphony.”

Shakespeare said, “Love is blind and lovers cannot see.” 

Aristotle said, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”

It took me a bit of time to truly accept what was happening and when I did, I had to address it .. by love, companionship, and overall understanding.

It's easy to say, 'I love you,' but to show how much you care is another story. I think the breaking point for me and where I lost a bit of trust was when I really needed my partner to be there for me and it always felt like I was a second thought.

I think long distance can also be a huge hurdle to overcome because communication is key. When you lose touch with the foundation that built your relationship, then both parties have been wronged..

You go from not seeing each other for a month to these passionate weekend love affairs that are always too short. Face Time helps, but it's not like being in the same space, feeling the same energy, embracing each other’s' essences.

Couples madly in love that lack communication and end up resenting the very reasons they fell in love.

There may come a time in your life when the proverbial rain clouds split and sun shines down upon you. Suddenly, you know what you want and are ready to pursue it with all of your efforts. This can happen within any realm of your life (i.e. personal, professional, and physical, spiritual) and when it happens, it's hard to ignore.

If you have sudden clarity about what you want in your romantic life, it can feel intimidating to decide that you are  going to start dating seriously. It's a pretty freaking brave and vulnerable move that you should be proud of for even considering!

To make sure that you don't get discouraged from the jump, there are certain things to keep in mind. To protect yourself, and foster positivity surrounding finding love, it can help to practice self-love, measure your expectations about the dating world, and consider doing intentional things that make you feel excited about finding love.

Consulting with other people in your life can help as well. You can start by telling your friends that you're ready to date seriously, or mention it to your therapist, and talk through your feelings about it, if you feel comfortable. If you want to take it a step further, you could ask your friends to set you up with someone.

If you're ready to put yourself out there for something serious, remember the following mantras.

You are enough just the way you are.

Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensue discussion or debate.  

Thank you … This is one of the most important things to remember when you're dating seriously, because the dating world can sometimes make you feel like you need to change a bunch of things about yourself to fit in.

Try to repeat this in the good times, medium times, and the not-so-great times, so that you begin to develop a habit of believing this about yourself. If you question why this matters, consider the fact that you wouldn't want a potential partner to feel like they aren't worthy of you. So, you should feel the same way about yourself!

Want to add word or two? 

It's worth waiting for the right person.

I don't like that idea that "If someone really loves you, they wouldn't hurt you" because I think going through a painful separating is enough, and you don't need to be worrying about if your ex "really loved you" or not.

You know what you had, you know what you felt, you know what the relationship meant to you. Overthinking about what your ex was thinking or feeling or why they did what they did isn't always helpful and can end if you blaming yourself.

Don't take the breakup as a time to super look over the relationship, take it to think about what you want in the future.

Your comment ….? 

 I think that romance is basic brain systems that evolved for mating and reproduction:

The sex drive or lust—the craving for sexual gratification--evolved to enable you to seek a range of potential mating partners.  After all, you can have sex with someone you aren’t in love with. You can even feel the sex drive when you are driving in your car, reading a magazine or watching a movie. Lust is not necessarily focused on a particular individual.

Romantic love, or attraction—the obsessive thinking about and craving for a particular person--evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time. 

As Kabir, the Indian poet put it: “The lane of love is narrow; there is room for only one.”

Attachment--the feeling of deep union with a long-term partner--evolved to enable you to remain with a mate at least long enough to rear a single child through infancy together as a team—although many of us remain together much longer, and enjoy the benefits of life with a partner even when there is no goal to have children.

These three brain systems--and feelings--interact in many ways to create our myriad forms of loving.

We begin our studies with attraction. Whether it’s called -Romantic love,

Obsessive love,

Passionate love,

Or infatuation, men and women of every era and every culture have been affected by this irresistible power.

The intensity of romantic love tends to last somewhere from six months to two years before turning into attachment in most relationships.

Romance is where love begins, and it seems to have the most extreme effect on human behaviour.

Special meaning: the romantic partner is the center of the world, and you like anything they like.