10 Things To Know About Real Love

You can't find real love if you don't know what it looks like

Post published by Susan J Elliott JD, M.Ed. on Apr 12, 2015 in Getting Back Out Ther

My God, these folks don't know how to love - that's why they love so easily.  - David Herbert Lawrence
Many people want to be in relationships without really having a clue what it is all about or what they're all about.
Real love is akin to getting married, having babies or even getting a dog. Many people have some romantic fantasy about all these things without looking at the work involved or the responsibility or the commitment required. Some think more about the dj they want at the wedding, the theme colors for the wedding, the gurgling and happy baby or the fun-loving puppy. They don’t think about how to live with a person every day, dealing with a colicky baby keeping you up all night or a “mouthy” puppy who ate the sofa. Each of these wonderful things have another side that you must acknowledge going in, or else you will fail at them. Divorce rates run high, dogs are dropped off at shelters and cranky babies are often ignored or, worse, mistreated. One reason is that the responsibility inherent in marriage, parenthood and pet ownership is often ignored in exchange for the "fun" idealized version of these things.
Being able to love and be loved for many years in a good and healthy way takes work.  It takes resisting urges and pandering to basic instincts.  It's about making a decision not to do things that would wreck your relationship or hurt your partner.  And that includes things like calling someone a name, being selfish when you need to help out, not acknowledging or caring about any of your partner's needs, and having an affair.  It includes big and little things.  Love is an action, love is work and love is a decision.
It doesn't take work to be in a dysfunctional relationship or to take someone hostage.  People do it all the time...sick relationships are the same old same old over and over again.  Taking someone hostage or allowing yourself to be taken hostage is boring and predictable.  It might be chaotic, destructive and dramatic, but again, boring...same old same old.
To love someone, REALLY love someone who really loves you is about being a good and sane and supportive and caring partner...knowing how to understand and compromise...knowing to accept your partner for who he or she is without trying to change them.
It's not about taking someone away from that which they love or those which they love.  It's not about co-signing their craziness with the world...it's not about being locked into some strange desperation with each other, hoping and praying that no one cracks the shell.  Too many sick relationships depend on each person convincing the other that the world is out to get one or both of them.
Both Getting Past Your Breakup and Getting Back Out There emphasize that real love is an ENLARGING experience and sick or dysfunctional love is a NARROWING experience.  And anything that is enlarging comes with work and responsibilities.  Responsibility to self and to another. A couple must support each other's hopes, dreams, and aspirations.
GBOT outlines what a healthy relationship looks like.  If you're not there yet, you can start to work on what you will and will not do to nurture yourself and your idea of what a healthy relationship is. There are some things you can do that will GUARANTEE a healthy relationship:
1.  To find the right person, be the right person.  Before you get back into a relationship, build your life.  Do your grief work.  Finish your unfinished business.  Become OBJECTIVE about what went wrong in your last relationship and the relationships before that. Do your relationship inventory and your life inventory.  You must discover the patterns and habits that torpedoed your previous relationships before you get into a new one. If you're in a relationship and you're trying to salvage it or save it, you must figure out and heal that which has been hurting you and your relationship.  Not just you but both of you.  If one partner changes, the other partner is forced to change or leave. You cannot maintain the status quo when one of you chooses to change.
2.  To be the right person and to find real love, you must develop your boundaries.  Know what you stand for before you have to stand for it.  Is an affair a deal breaker?  Porn addiction?  Pot addiction?  Getting drunk and sloppy?  Forgetting to call?  Standing you up?  Not being financially stable?  Not paying child support? Not holding a job? Not being honest? What?  What will you NOT stand for?  You have to know this BEFORE you are tested.  You have to be able to say, "If x happens, I am out of here without argument."
Make sure you know what would be a deal breaker for you is and then make sure you break the deal if it happens...not three times or two times but ONE TIME.  Make sure you are committed to walking away the first time a deal breaker happens.  If there are other things that you think deserve a second chance then commit to walking away the second time or if it's a three-time rule, then three times.  But after 3 times, you're basically lying to yourself.  Learn to walk away for what you believe in. Otherwise you'll just be stuck in dysfunction again and bargaining with yourself in order to accept what you shouldn't accept.
3. Real love communicates in a healthy way.  Name calling is out.  Blaming and nitpicking is out. Accusations are out. Learn to begin sentences with "I feel" or "I think" or "In my opinion," and be with others who communicate similarly.  Don't let anyone project onto you what you are thinking or feeling.  Don't defend yourself against that which you're not doing.  There is much game playing in dysfunctional relationships. Healthy relationships are about forthright and honest communication, not game playing, unbridled criticism or one upmanship.  The only way to win in relationships is not to play a game.
4. Real love requires goals and aspirations, both individually and as a couple. You have to have plans and dreams and agree on the future.  You must help each other fulfill your hopes and dreams as individuals and as a couple. Figure out what you've always wanted to do and do it.  Find out what your partner wants in life and out of life. Figure out, early on, if you can and will support each other in achieving everything you've always wanted as a person and as a couple.  It is important that you figure this out very early on. You could get to a place in your relationship where you find that your hopes and dreams and what you want for your life is opposed to what your partner wants. You have to find this out early because it's so important to have a support in life and to be able to support your partner's hopes and dreams as well as to have common aspirations for you as a couple.
5. As a prelude to finding real love, learn to be discriminating in all your relationships with family, friends, acquaintances, and co-workers.  Learn to make choices and not just let friendships and professional relationships "happen." Don't spend time with family just because they're family. Choose to only have those in your life who are loving, respectful, honest and open, and care about you.  Choose people who KNOW trust is earned and once broken, it's next to impossible to get it back.  Choose people who do not keep you guessing.  Choose people that you don't need to wonder "Gee, what does that behavior mean?" or "How do they really feel?" or "Do they miss me?" or "Do they love me?"
Choose people who say what they mean and mean what they say.  Choose people who are not ambivalent about you or their relationship with you.  Insist on dedication and commitment and if it's not there, say goodbye.  Don't put up with people who say, "I'm confused." or "I don't know." or "I gotta be me." or "You're a problem." or "I want to be a good partner, but I don't know how."  You get what you put up with.  If you want less nonsense in your life, stop putting up with nonsense. If you start by ferreting out those in your life who are not romantic partners, you will find it easier to reject those who will not make good and healthy partners for you. Real love is discriminating and insists upon loving treatment no matter what.
6.  STOP BEING A VICTIM.  Stop thinking you have no control over what happens TO you.  It doesn't just happen without your permission.  Take some control over your own life.  Most people who are stuck in sick patterns (including me when I was) are stuck in a mudpit of denial, justification and rationalization.  Learn to call yourself on your own rationalizations.  Stop believing your own justifications and rationalizations that keep you stuck and "victimized." No one is going to feel sorry for you and no one should. You need to untangle yourself from any need you might have to be pitied. You might not even realize it, but if you find yourself telling stories in which you were taken advantage of or someone did you wrong and the stories are to generate sympathy, stop and realize that going through as a victim is not attractive to healthy people. Take charge of your life and yourself and what happens to you day in and day out.
7.  Live with PURPOSE. Spend some quiet time alone each day without interruption to think about your life and how it's structured. Think about what you need to do to "get better" in different areas.  Learn to meditate by getting quiet and relaxing.  Meditation is not sitting on a pillow going "ohmmmm," it's just learning to calm down and go inward without distraction.  Living purposefully is the opposite of living randomly. It's about thinking about what you're doing when you're doing it.  It's about not looking at your phone every 10 minutes, it's about not mindlessly surfing the internet or checking Facebook 200 times a day.  It's about having your head where your feet are. Look around you, see what's going on where you are at this very minute.
Learn to be disciplined and control your urges from being tied to your phone, to diving into ice cream when you're not happy to not doing many things without really thinking about it . It's about doing the "tough" things like sitting with your feelings, going to the gym or dentist and eating healthy. Spend some time each day thinking about your impulses and your somewhat mindless behavior and ways in which you can improve in self-control and self-discipline. Quiet time each day is so important to building a healhty life. Try to stretch it out. Set goals for yourself in building the amount of time you can spend every day in quiet meditation and purposeful action and purposeful inaction.  Having a say in everything you do and everything you don't do is important to being healthy and being capable of giving and receiving real love.
It is also important, when you do get to a relationship, to continue to cultivate this practice and to have your own "me time" and alone time each and every day.
8. Know that real love does not hurt.  Yes there are misunderstandings and upsets and disappointments in every relationship but in healthy relationships they are not a regular happening. Real love and really loving relationships are consistent and not always that easy but they tend to run smoothly because everyone is working at it.  If it's a hassle, it doesn't need to be that way.  Know that life and love can and should run smoothly most of the time.  Love is what helps you deal with the curves that life throws at you.  It's not what makes things more difficult.  Love, real love, is support in a crazy world, not something that makes your life even crazier. Real love gives each other the benefit of the doubt without being a fool about it. Pick your battles and don't fight over everything. Don't be with people who turn everything into an argument or a challenge. It's exhausting and doesn't need to be that way. Healthy people find that mind numbing and refuse to live that way.
9. Real love does not ask us to sacrifice that which we love.  Not our interests, not our hobbies, not our people...friends and family.  If someone is asking you to do that, it's not healthy and not good for you.  If you're willing to do that without even being asked, even worse.
It's normal to be cocoon'd in a new relationship but after a short period of time, you have to get back to the things and the people you love. Keep your life balanced and full of that which you love and those whom you love.  If you give up what you love and the people you love, you will look around one day and realize you can't leave this relationship because you have nothing else. You may need to rework the ratios of how much time you give to each of your interests and loved ones, but it's important that nothing is treated as an afterthought or something that you could live without.
10. The most important thing to know about real love is that love is an action from you and to you.  NO MATTER WHAT.  And act it and insist on it every single day. Every single day, whether in a relationship or not, you must affirm that love is what you do, not what you say, and you must insist upon it with everyone in your life. If it's a "non-love" relationship (i.e. professional), respect is an action and you must be treated with respect in all your relationships.
Stop idealizing love.  Forget movies and music and poetry. Real love is a complicated reality based on a very simple concept: love is an action. It is what you DO, not what you say. Love is the way you treat someone. Love is being a good friend and a good partner to someone you are romantically involved with.  It's about showing someone you love how you feel each and every day. Mistreating someone and saying, "You know I love you..." is not okay to do or to accept. If you love someone, you do not mistreat or disrespect them. If you live by the notion that "love is an action," you will never ever ever get go wrong.
If people understood what real love entailed they would be less inclined to go in and out of relationships where they will experience anything but...
Use your time OUT of a relationship wisely...to build what you need to be IN a healthy relationship...and then build it.