Woody Allen has some interesting thoughts on love. He says....
"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering, one must not love. But then, one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be
happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering
makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy, one must love or love
to suffer or suffer from too much happiness."
Sure, this is funny as hell. But I am here to remind you -- your "love life"
does NOT have to be your "suffering life."
I received an extreme amount of private emails in response to an article I wrote
a few months ago on Huffington Post about how to break free from dating
Prince and/or Princess Harmings.
I'm intuiting there's a book on this topic, and so I've been researching -
and discovered the brilliant Dr. Paul Dobransky, who theorizes on how we
fall in love -- and how best to stay in a lasting, lusting relationship.
According to Dr. D our human brain has 3 parts -- ALL of which
need to be satisfied to feel love towards our partners.
1. Our Reptilian Brain - which is all about animal attraction -
feeling that sexual chemistry - also famed for the animal
instinct of fight or flight
2. Our Mammalian Brain - which is all about emotional connection
- feeling a friendship bond.
3. Our Higher Brain - which is all about the exchange of mature
thinking and a high level of conscious processing of emotion.
The problem?
Some people don't think and act from their higher brain when
experiencing anxiety and anger.
Instead people react to anger and anxiety from their lowest brain
-- their reptilian brain -- by engaging in fight or flight -
going towards addiction, stonewalling, screaming, acting
impulsively/destructively, or turning the anger inward towards
depression.
Meaning?
If you and/or your partner are unable to properly process the
inevitable anger and anxiety which sneak into relationships, well,
then you will have an unhealthy, bad relationship!
THE CLIFF NOTES FOR THE ABOVE: Anger/anxiety will ruin your
relationship if you and/or your partner do not learn how to best
process them with your highest level of brain activity - your
maturest level of brainwaves.
Dr. D offers up a simple description for love which explains
why "improperly processed anger and anxiety" are the mighty
enemies of love.
HEALTHY LOVE = the exchange of positive emotions.
ANGER AND ANXIETY = the exchange of negative emotions.
Hence, healthy love has a hard time co-existing around
anger/anxiety.
For this reason, Dr. D warns against getting involved with people
who you up front recognize as being consistently negative, angry, anxious,
bitter, resentful - regularly reacting to life with tantrums,
addictions, and/or stonewalling.
Dr. D suggests "courage" is the number one quality which both
you and your partner need to share in common to experience
healthy love.
He describes "courage" specifically as "the decision to speak,
act, empathise, and operate from your highest self -- no matter
the anxiety and anger you are feeling."
YOUR ASSIGNMENT: If you want to make sure you and your partner
find more of this needed "courage," seek the safety of a
journal to express your anger and anxiety. Let your pen release
your pain. Let your pen be your mighty sword to slash away all
those bad feelings -- so you go at it alone on paper -- and not
with the one you love.
Dr. D also advises that if the exchange of emotions between you
and your partner becomes incredibly negative, then you might
need to tap into the courage to walk away from what is not
working -- knowing that Woody Allen's love advice is wrong. Love
is not about suffering.
Oh...and Woody Allen's also wrong about his cooking methods.
Woody instructs: "Who bothers to cook TV dinners? I suck
them frozen."
If you're going through a difficult break up, you can find tips for
bouncing back by clicking here ...
And for more happiness tips, visit www.notsalmon.com.