Love doesn’t die…unless you kill it. Love between two romantic partners doesn’t just wither and fade away. You don’t simply fall in love with someone new when you’re already in love with someone else. Truly loving another individual isn’t easy, but it’s not as mysterious as you’d sometimes like to think, either.
There are many people who will argue that the love they felt for their former partners simply went away. It evaporated. Over time, they’ll say, they just fell out of love.
Not true.
Either you didn’t have genuine love for one another in the first place, or you honestly were in love at one time and the two of you didn’t know how to maintain it. You didn’t know how to nurture the intimacy.
Intimate relationships are tremendously challenging to maintain. The skyrocketing divorce rate is testament to the difficulty of making love last. So why do we end up not loving the very individuals who we used to love? Used to love madly!
Love can be defined not only by enjoyment, sexual attraction and shared values, it also means that you place the loved one’s interests at a high priority. You want the one you love to succeed. To be happy, to find fulfillment in life in general, not just with you. If you love someone, you want the very best for her.
Most relationships start in a white-hot flurry of attraction and laughter, passion and possibilities. In those moments, you can’t imagine not always loving this other person. You can’t imagine it, no matter that he is ridiculously whiny when he gets a cold. Even the fact that she hangs her bras on the bedroom doorknob is only mildly annoying when you’re still fascinated by the idea of her without her bra.
Relationships, however, have a day-to-day reality for which most individuals are unprepared. Living together, or just having close interaction over time, brings the opportunity for conflict. All couples have conflict. Heck, all human beings have conflict with one another. Conflict is a part of life. We don’t always agree with anyone, no matter how much we like or love them.
Even if you’re okay with people disagreeing with you, conflict with a loved one can seem threatening and scary. This person, who used to thing you were wonderful, who usually laughs at your jokes and who at one time always wanted to be with you, suddenly isn’t laughing. It’s at this moment, you might not feel loved and this wonderful relationship seems threatened.
Conflict doesn’t mean you aren’t loved. It just means that you are two individuals who need to learn to deal with differences.
Maybe you fight over money. You have conflict with one or the other of you spending too much time at work. Your ex keeps calling and you don’t want to hang up on him because that seems mean, but your new love feels jealous that you still talk to your former lover. Whatever the specific situation, you will have conflict in your relationship. And it will feel bad.
Some people try to avoid fighting, particularly if disagreement means yelling and screaming abuse at one another. So you try to always get along and you hope that problems will disappear.
They won’t.
Even though conflict and the emotions that come with it–anger, disappointment, hurt, and frustration–can be very difficult to deal with, you need to talk about the differences between you. Not scream, not give your lover the silent treatment. You need to truly communicate. You need to learn to say what bothers you, to share your feelings, and to listen–really hard–to the other person’s view of the problems.
Unless you learn to handle conflicts openly and find resolution in relationships, you will not stay in love with your loved one. No one wants to be in a relationship when he always feels like he loses. Constant defeat isn’t sexy.
Talk. Listen. Work through issues…or your love will die. Not dealing with conflict is just a slow way of killing love.