Month: August 2018

We all want real, lasting love, whether we are in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or beyond. Yet too many marriages fall apart and most people don’t know why. They mistakenly believe that they have chosen the wrong partner. After going through the grieving process, they start looking again. But after more than forty years as a marriage and family counselor I have found that most people are looking for love in all the wrong places. They don’t understand that Stage 3 is not the end, but the real beginning for achieving real, lasting love:

Stage 1: Falling In Love
Stage 2: Becoming a Couple
Stage 3: Disillusionment
Stage 4: Creating Real, Lasting Love
Stage 5: Using the Power of Two to Change the World

Stage 1: Falling in Love

Falling in love is nature’s trick to get humans to pick a mate so that our species carries on. It feels so wonderful because we are awash in hormones such as dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen.  Falling in love also feels great because we project all our hopes and dreams on our lover.

We imagine that they will fulfill our desires, give us all the things we didn’t get as children, deliver on all the promises our earlier relationships failed to fulfill. We are sure we will remain in love forever.  And because we are besotted with “love hormones,” we’re not aware of any of this.

When we’re in love, we dismiss naysayers like curmudgeon George Bernard Shaw who cautioned:

“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”

Stage 2: Becoming a Couple

At this stage our love deepens and we join together as a couple. This is a time when we have children and raise them. If we’re past the child-rearing stage, it’s the time when our couple bond deepens and develops. It’s a time of togetherness and joy. We learn what the other person likes and we expand our individual lives to begin developing a life of “the two of us.”

During this phase we experience less of the falling head-over heals “in love” feelings. We feel more bonded with our partner. We feel warm and cuddly.

The sex may not be as wild, but it’s deeply satisfying. We feel safe, cared for, cherished, and appreciated. We feel close and protected. We often think this is the ultimate level of love and we expect it to go on forever. We are often blind-sided by the turn-around of stage 3.

Stage 3: Disillusionment

No one told us about Stage 3 in understanding love and marriage. Stage 3 is where my first two marriages collapsed and for too many relationships this is the beginning of the end.

This is a period where things begin to feel bad. It can occur slowly or can feel like a switch is flipped and everything goes wrong. Little things begin to bother us. We feel less loved and cared for. We feel trapped and want to escape.

We become more irritable and angry or hurt and withdrawn. We may stay busy at work or with the family, but the dissatisfactions mount. We wonder where the person we once loved has gone.

We long for the love we once had, but we don’t know where it went or how to get it back. One or the other partner wants out or sometimes people go on “existing together,” but without really feeling intimate.

This is a time we often get sick in body, mind, and soul. In our marriage, Carlin and I both began having problems with our hearts (heartache?) and were diagnosed with atrial fibrillation.

I began having serious problems with erections. To be truthful, there were times when it was miserable, and we both thought about leaving the relationship.

But we didn’t give up, we kept going. There’s an old adage, “When you’re going through hell, don’t stop.” This seems to be true of this stage of life. The positive side of Stage 3 is that the heat burns away a lot of our illusions about ourselves and our partner.

We have an opportunity to become more loving and appreciate the person we are with, not the projections we had placed on them as our “ideal mate.”

Carlin and I have now been together over thirty-five years. We’ve moved into the next stages of love and feel blessed to have learned the skills for negotiating the stage of disillusionment and can truly enjoy the later stages of love.

Stage 4: Creating Real, Lasting Love

One of the gifts of confronting the unhappiness in Stage 3 is we can get to the core of what causes the pain and conflict. Like most people, Carlin and I grew up in families that were dysfunctional. Both my father and mother suffered from depression and my Dad tried to take his own life when I was five years old

. Carlin’s father was an angry, violent man. Her mother left him in order to protect herself and her daughter. We all have wounds and the wounds need healing if we’re to have a relationship that is real and loving.

Ongoing research from The Adverse Childhood Experience(ACE) Study demonstrates conclusively that childhood trauma can impact our physical, emotional, and relational health.

For the first time I made the connection between my father’s attempted suicide when I was five and my adult depression and erectile dysfunction.

Carlin and I learned to be allies in helping each other understand and heal our wounds. As we began to heal, the love and laughter we thought we had lost began to flow again.

We began to see each other as wonderful beings who had suffered greatly in the past and had come together to love each other and help heal our old wounds from childhood.

There’s nothing more satisfying than being with a partner who sees you and loves you for who you are. They understand that your hurtful behavior is not because you are mean and unloving, but because you have been wounded in the past and the past still lives with you. As we better understand and accept our partner, we can learn to love ourselves ever more deeply.

Stage 5: Using the Power of Two to Change the World

No one has to remind us that the world is not doing too well. There are continuous wars and conflicts. Racial violence seems to be everywhere. We wonder whether humans can survive.

I wondered, “If we can’t even find peace between two people who love each other, what chance do we have to create a world that can work for all its peoples?”

But now I look at the flip side of that question. If we can learn to overcome our differences and find real, lasting love in our relationships, perhaps we can work together to find real, lasting love in the world.

I believe that every couple has an opportunity to use the “power of two” to address some aspect of the world’s problems that touch their lives.

Source: http://menalive.com/stages-of-love/

ecently, I was going through the newsletter archive of my friend Christian Carter, who as you know, is one of the leading experts in dating advice for women.

There was one particular issue in which the title literally jumped out at me.

It’s called, “Five Reasons Men Leave Women They Love”.

A pretty bold announcement for an article.

As contradictory as this statement may seem, I know from personal experience that things like this do tend to happen.

I once left a woman I loved.

Why did I do it you ask?

I’ll tell you in a minute, let’s first go through Christian’s five reasons why men leave women they actually love.

But before I do this, let me make something clear beforehand:

The reasons that will be stated in the following are NOT putting the women at fault for the men leaving.

It’s almost never one person alone who’s at fault, (there are exceptions).

As I’ve said many times over, a break-up is nobody’s fault – it’s just an occurrence of incompatibility.

Please keep that in mind while you continue to read.

Reason #1: The “Pleasure Principle”

Christian is referring to the old principle that we all seek pleasure and avoid pain. This is a basic human driving force behind everything we do.

He states that men tend to walk away if there is too much “pain” in the relationship, in forms of arguing and “freaking out” about things she doesn’t like about him.

This has a huge impact on the decision whether he is willing to put more energy into the preservation of the relationship, or whether he moves on.

My take on this is that it’s not necessarily an exclusive reason for men to break up. Nobody likes to be in a relationship where there’s no healthy communication about problems and frictions.

It doesn’t mean that you have to slug down everything you don’t like about him or her, it just means that you have to develop the skill of communication in a healthy and productive way, (see reason #5).

Reason #2: Emotional Experience And The Future

Christian claims that a man draws conclusions from how a woman acts on the “little things” to what she would do when the sh** really hits the fan.

This is a tough one, (sounds even a little sexist).

When I read this reason, everything in me screamed, “NO, this isn’t true”. But on second thought, aren’t we all doing this?

Aren’t we – especially in the beginning of a relationship – constantly testing and predicting whether he or she is “future-proofed”?

And would we split up IF we came to the conclusion that he or she is NOT?

I leave that question in the room… you’ll soon know why.

Reason #3: Lost Feelings Of Attraction

Ok, this is a big one. And a stereotype as well.

Do men leave women who they no longer find attractive even if they love them?

Before I tell you what Christian thinks, let me tell you what my opinion on this one is.

I’m going to phrase this blatantly: I think that only “bad men material” leave a woman whom he is no longer attracted to, given the relationship is promising and there are feelings involved, (i.e. it’s not just a “physical” thing by mutual consent).

“Good men” will work out their own issues, (yes, losing attraction to his wife/girlfriend might be the man’s own fault), they will take all measures necessary to re-kindle that spark of attraction.

But Christian rightly isn’t exclusively talking about sexual attraction, he also says that:

I think that this is a very solid point. The feeling of connection with your partner is of utmost importance and if you lose it, then you are in trouble.

Christian continues by claiming that the main mistake women make in this situation is to try to re-establish connection by “fixing things”, by talking about it or “working on the relationship”.

A man wants to DO things together to know his relationship is working, (not talk).

I couldn’t agree more on this. This is one of the main differences between men and women when they try to fix a relationship.

My tip for you is to set “memory beacons” for your relationship by “experiencing” together. By experiences, I mean things you do together, challenges you master together, enjoyments you live through together.

All the things that really connect you.

Reason #4: The “Neediness” of Codependence

This is, of course, a classic which is applicable equally to women AND men, (in fact, this has a far more devastating effect to the relationship when men are behaving this way).

IF this relationship is everything to you – your life’s purpose – and you have nothing else going on in your life, you are neglecting friends, your work, your hobbies, all the things that define who YOU are… then you will appear as needy, (or co-dependent).

And neediness in a relationship is one of the biggest turn-offs ever to men AND women.

After your break-up, were you wondering where all your friends went that you used to have plenty of contact with? Are you wondering why all the things that used to give you pleasure don’t anymore? Are you wondering who you became?

The reason for all of these questions is that you lost yourself during the relationship.

Reason #5: “She’s Trying To Fix Me…”

I have to admit that this one got me thinking.

Christian writes that despite the common misconception that people can’t really change, men CAN change for a woman, but they have to do it out of self-interest.

A man needs his OWN reasons to change.

So according to Christian, a woman can take advantage of that fact by understanding HIS personal reasons for doing the work for a better relationship.

What most women are doing wrong is that they are trying to make the man understand how it affects HER, not HIM.

Christian suggests that you work WITH your man, instead of against him.

He concludes by writing that one of the most important things is creating that emotional experience with a man. Because if a man is deeply committed to you and the relationship, every “issue” you might have are just bumps on the road… they cannot hurt you.

But if there is no commitment from his side, then every little problem is going to leave him “irritated, frustrated, and
have him wanting to blame you and withdraw”.

Source: https://lovesagame.com/5-reasons-men-break-up-with-women-they-love/