Do you want a loving relationship? Most people do. Yet, most of my clients are either struggling to find a loving relationship, or struggling to create one with their partner. Why is this so hard for so many people?
The reason is that most people haven't a clue regarding what actually creates a loving relationship. They haven't a clue because their parents didn't have a clue and neither did any of their other role models.
I'd like for you to imagine two clear glass bottles. And I'd like for you to imagine that the energy of love is the color violet. One of the bottles is empty and the other is full of violet -- so full that the violet is spilling out of the bottle.
What does this have to do with creating a loving relationship? Everything!
Imagine you are empty -- like the empty bottle. Inner emptiness indicates a lack of love -- a lack of violet, which comes from one thing -- self-abandonment.
Inner emptiness feels awful, so you try to get filled in various ways. Perhaps you use substance addictions to try to fill up -- food, alcohol, drugs. Perhaps you are addicted to pulling on others, trying to have control over getting their violet -- thinking that if you can get enough of their attention, love, approval, or sex, you will feel full.
There are many ways we've each learned to try to control getting love. What do you do? Do you give yourself up? Are you overly nice? Do you become needy, demanding, angry, critical? How do you pull on others for their love?
The problem is that everything you do to try to have control over getting another's love creates problems in a relationship. Controlling behavior often triggers the other's controlling behavior and soon you are caught in a vicious circle of anger, withdrawal, resistance or compliance -- all of which have negative consequences for a relationship.
Since we attract at our common level of woundedness -- which is our common level of self-abandonment -- it is likely that, if you are empty, you will meet someone who is also empty. At the beginning of the relationship, you try to fill each other by being on your best behavior, but since you are both empty, problems soon emerge. Neither of you have love to share so both of you end up with the same emptiness you had before you met. You then might conclude that you picked the wrong person, but this isn't the issue. The issue is that you don't have love to share because of your own emptiness, due to your own self-abandonment -- your own self-rejection.
Let's go back to the bottles. How did the one that is full of violet -- of love -- get that way? How do you get full of love so that you have plenty to share with a partner? Learning to fill yourself with overflowing love is the key to creating a loving relationship.
We live in a universe of love -- of violet. Imagine that surrounding you into infinity is the violet that is love. The person, like the bottle, who is full of love, has learned to access the love that is always available to all of us.
How To Access Love From the Universe
How do you do this? How do you access love from the universe so that you don't have to try to get love from others?
The key to this is your intent. If your intent is to have control over getting love and avoiding pain, then you will not be able to access the violet of the universe. Trying to control closes the heart and cuts off access to the Source of unconditional love that is God.
When your intent is to learn to be loving, starting with loving yourself and then sharing your love with others, your heart opens and you automatically receive love from the Source. The full person is a person who is openhearted and receiving love from the universe, and then sharing their love with their partner and others. When two people are filling themselves with love, and are loving themselves and sharing their love with each other, they create a loving relationship.
Instead of rejecting and abandoning themselves by avoiding responsibility for their own feelings with various addictions, loving people take full responsibility for their own pain and joy so that they are not needy of someone doing this for them. As I hope you can see, emptiness and neediness create the controlling behaviors that cause relationship problems. Taking responsibility for learning to love yourself, and filling yourself with love to share, creates loving relationships.
Start now with learning to love yourself by taking our free Inner Bonding eCourse.
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a relationship expert, best-selling author, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® self-healing process, recommended by actress Lindsay Wagner and singer Alanis Morissette, and featured on Oprah. To begin learning how to love and connect with yourself so that you can connect with others, take advantage of our free Inner Bonding eCourse, receive Free Help, and take our 12-Week eCourse, "The Intimate Relationship Toolbox" - the first two weeks are free! Discover SelfQuest®, a transformational self-healing/conflict resolution computer program. Phone or Skype sessions with Dr. Margaret Paul.
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