Love ...And the Passion Slaves

What is Love?

Love can be truly unconditional and impossible to measure like that of a love between a mother and a child. Love has also many dimensions to it and can change from one relationship to another. For some it’s a kind of madness, an adrenalin rush of emotions that makes an ordinary life seem less so and if asked to define love they may look to Hollywood for help.

Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that, what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. I say find someone you can love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back - Movie: Meet Joe Black (1998)

Love Addiction

The kind of love referred to in quote above is romantic love and it is the most powerful sensation you will ever feel. In romantic love, you develop an intense attachment to another and will do all kinds of crazy things to be with your love, to have their love, to be their only love. It’s staying up all night together talking, and whizzing through work the following day feeling energised and totally hyped waiting to spend more time with your loved one. If you’re feeling this way now about someone be reassured, you’re not completely mad. Scientists tell us these intense feelings of passion have a biological basis to them and when in a heightened state of romantic love your body is literally flooded with amphetamine like chemicals. Your focus becomes finely tuned like a heat-seeking missile with one direction only -towards that of your loved one. You’re constantly thinking about the person you’ve decided is ‘the one.’ You are love addicted

Euphoria

In this euphoric state, you idealise your loved one, bestowing on them qualities and attributes far beyond what any one human being could possess. If, through this fog you see your loved one has imperfections you minimise them, even considering them adorable. At last, you say, my dreams are finally realised; this is the person that will make me feel whole, the soulmate I’ve been waiting for. And because your feelings are so intense you convince yourself that what you’re feeling is real. This madness, this addiction you declare to all must be love.

Burn Out

However, with every high, there is a low and although the euphoric period varies with each couple, it will end at some point. It's nature's way of preventing us from burning out completely. While making all those grand gestures is fun even exhilarating it can become exhausting. And so you enter the next stage of the relationship, the low, the period of disillusionment.

Do I Know You?

For some the period of disillusionment is unsettling and questions surface like, ‘Who is this person I’m with?’ Realisation has dawned that your soulmate sees things differently to you, has opinions that are at odd with yours, and most perplexing of all they can be boring/loud/obnoxious or silly at times. This is a time for you to move on quickly, feeling justified in doing so by a belief that says without the high, something is wrong with the relationship. ‘I got it wrong, he/she wasn’t right for me.'

Acceptance
Others will move from the period of disillusionment into the next phase the ‘mature love’ stage. This is when the relationship takes on deeper meaning; it's a place of calm, friendship, commitment, intimacy and most of all acceptance of one another -just as you are. It’s having faith and trust in one another that if you’re worried, concerned, or vulnerable there is someone who will listen and hear you.

Love - A Decision?

While you might not want to hear this, when you tell yourself “I can’t help how I feel,” the truth is you can! When we speak of love, we tend to think of our heart yet love does not come from the heart it comes from the brain. It is a cognitive process...and it involves choice. 

I am making a decision to no longer love you or

I am making a decision to love you.

Love is not a feeling ...the reality is, it is an action, an activity and it requires courage, effort, wisdom and practice. 

For the passion slaves not realising this, the search for the 'real' soulmate will continue for as long as they believe the problem lies with the person they love rather than their ideas about love or the expectations they set for a partner. Equally, happiness, for them, will remain elusive as it soars and dives with each love addiction.