Opinion
26th December 2018
By Steve Mutua
As much as we long for deeply satisfying, fully intimate love, most people spend more time struggling with loneliness, disconnection and hurt feelings than they do enjoying the joyous celebration that love can be.What causes this disconnect? Why is it that what we most deeply want is also so hard to get and keep?
The reason is this: Love has the power to bring up all of our hidden desires, our deepest and oldest longings and our past hurts.It acts as a “cosmic searchlight,” revealing problems that we aren’t aware of that wreak havoc on great relationships.And these problems manifest themselves as symptoms like withdrawal, anger, anxiety, irritation and loneliness. Most of the time, we don’t even realize what’s happening.
All we know is that our partner seems suddenly distant and inconsiderate, or we feel an undercurrent of anger and disgust with them. We don’t know that our hidden emotions and fears are at work.We react to the symptoms , and ignore the real cause. We unintentionally shut love out, instead of letting it in.Because we misunderstand the problem, we misunderstand the solution,Here’s what we want to do:
Run away,End the relationship. Blame the other person. Seek solace and comfort elsewhere But our problems won’t go away if we run. They’ll rear their ugly head the next time we get into a relationship. And the next time.
They’ll repeat over and over again, and often get bigger , until we understand what’s
REALLY going on. But once we learn it, we can STOP these hidden forces from running our love lives, and make conscious choices to create the relationship we’ve always wanted.We can experience the endless joy and energy love promises, and restore the hope and gratitude we once felt.
