Love-Making from the inside Out
Introduction
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Is happily-ever-after actually attainable? Is it possible to continue to love and be loved by someone for a lifetime? Love-Making: From the Inside Out is about the very intricate process of how love is made. This book will unveil the mysterious alchemy of how love and romance are actually created on a far grander scale than just when eyes meet across a crowded room. Love is an active process that can be fashioned into something that is at once durable and yet a thing of beauty. To create love, we need to distinguish how our underlying and baffling personal issues impact our ability to make an enduring love. To engender love we need to know how conflict and personal pain can be a resource for deeper intimacy. Love is an unrivaled life experience because it flows from an open heart and a curious spirit. It's a flame that can burn for a lifetime if tended to with kindness and compassion. Relationships are a living thing, requiring both honesty and innovation to be exciting and spontaneous. With the ongoing processes of insight, tolerance and inspiration, we can build a safe and secure relationship for long term love-making.
Couples Who Made It:
- Understand how negative interactions can break their precious connection to each other.
- Have made a distinction between how they felt as children and who they are as adults.
- Are attuned to each other in a way that enables them to be truly empathic.
- Have grasped how their communications cause deeper feelings to emerge, and handle them in a way that leads to a more intimate connection.
- Understand that the core components for long-term love-making are compassion and empathy: compassion because it enables the development of precious insights into the inner world of their partner, and empathy because it's the best process for resolving conflicts.
- Recognize that the goal of love-making is to create love rather than expecting love.
The critical components for the longevity of a loving relationship lie in how we love and knowing who we are. True and abiding love is the result of being caring and kind. It requires self-reflection about what we want and who we want to be. It means that we have done some personal work to understand how experience has affected us. It necessitates that we have some knowledge about what impedes or helps us maintain an intimate connection. If we appreciate how these sometimes covert processes affect our ability to love, we will be able to work through inevitable disappointment more successfully. Clearly expressing what we need, want, and value, and our willingness to see our partner do the same, will lead to greater relational health. These basic concepts are the life-blood of every healthy relationship.Because lasting love is made, it can be both liberating and inspiring, and extend to our families and communities. Loving couples impact everyone; they offer us optimism and lead us toward deeper insights about ourselves. But most of all, loving relationships infuse us with hope for a better future and a more humane society. This book is dedicated to all those who yearn to build a loving relationship that will not only stand the test of time, but flourish.
The Journey Begins
It was a hot summer day in Santa Monica back in 1983, when Jake and Brenna walked into my office for their weekly therapy appointment. I was testing my new video recorder and wanted to try it out on them. I got their permission and started it rolling.They were an attractive couple in their mid-forties and were married just two years when their conflicts began to escalate. Jake seemed bewildered when he arrived, so I asked him what was bothering him. They had quarreled earlier that day, and he couldn't grasp why Brenna was so upset. She had accused him of raging at her about money, and she did not feel good about the way he had spoken to her. Jake denied raging and insisted that he was only trying to make his point. He was making one excuse after another.About a half-hour into their discussion with me about finances, Brenna blurted out, "Jake, you are just so cheap!" Jake, who had forgotten about the camera, bolted upright, screaming, "How dare you say that when all you do is spend, spend, and spend." He launched into a rage that left Brenna in tears. Money issues were their hot button. They had been down this road before, always with the same outcome. Brenna melted into the sofa and wept while Jake raged. This was their dance-they were a train wreck. As they were leaving, I handed Jake the videotape to review before our next session.The next day Jake phoned up horrified. He sputtered, "Who was that on the tape?" It was shocking to realize that he did not recognize himself as he was in the video. How could this be? I was filled with curiosity about how he could be so blind to himself. Although Jake's behavior was extreme, I had observed the same behavior in other patients who couldn't see how their personal issues were being expressed toward others.From such incidents, I began searching for answers as to what had caused the contradictory quality of Jake's encounter with himself and his wife. How could someone experience a powerful emotion like rage and not be aware of it? Why is it that some relationships withstand rage, infidelity, or loneliness while others break apart? What are the internal mechanisms that produce love, and compassion? How are love and intimacy created, and how are they destroyed? How does our inner world affect and create our outer world in relationships with others?What became apparent during my decades-long search into the nature of passionate attachments were the multifaceted elements that were present in all love relationships. Over the years since Jake and Brenna arrived, I have endeavored to understand what makes love last.
Four Major Themes Emerged
No matter how much love and passion there is in the beginning of a relationship, for love to last a lifetime it must be actively made, created by a collaborative process whereby couples work together to make and maintain an emotional connection. The key to love-making is our ability to use self-knowledge and teamwork to resolve conflicts. If these things are done properly, the resolution process will lead to a deeper intimacy. The challenge for loving couples is to become the kind of people who are worthy of being loved, and to develop an atmosphere within and between each other where it can thrive. And finally, the goal of love-making is to form a loving relationship that is both safe and secure, a touchstone for comfort and harmony.An important facet of long-term relationships is the commitment couples make toward maintaining their connection with each other. The deeper our commitment to love-making the greater the possibility it will remain vital and alive. Creating an enduring emotional connection does take energy and focus, but the miracle is that love can last and become more satisfying over time. Lasting love is made from the concerted effort of two people crafting their own unique relationship from the sweat and toil of daily life and from all the difficulties, hardships, and conflicts that arise in sharing a life together.Having a firm grasp on how to reprocess lost connections is an essential relationship skill for keeping love alive. Creating a high-energy emotional bond with discernable methods for withstanding the inevitable storms confronting us all is the goal of love-making. Critical to understanding how intimacy is created and maintained is to accept that it is a function of and is intertwined with our inner life. The outcome of working through our personal issues is that we become more compassionate, understanding, respectful, and empathic toward others because it is happening inside. The more we're able to be inwardly accepting, the more we're able to be outwardly tolerant. Understanding how our life experience affects our sense of who we are is an important part of building an authentic emotional life with our mate.Part of what it means to love another person is to accept that we are intimately bound to each other, not only for our basic need to be loved and connected, but also because we have made a commitment to persevere. Recognizing that an emotional connection with others is essential for our psychological health is the essential pathway toward a more fulfilling life. However, commitment does not mean that we have license to act badly. Our dedication to each other must be based on our willingness to listen attentively and behave respectfully. People frequently ask, "Why are relationships so resistant to change? We read books, we go to seminars, yet our problems persist." Unraveling the secrets of how love is made requires a bigger perspective than what can be found in seminars, books, or television self-help programs. Distinguishing who we are from who we are with is half the battle. By constructing a psychological map of the territories below the surface and beneath the armor that we construct to protect us, we will be less likely to dump our personal pain onto those we love.Another fundamental quality of love-making is the ability to form strong attachments and from this create a safe and secure relationship. Safety and security are the cornerstones of all lasting love relationships. They allow us to open up about feelings, fears, and our secrets. In this way, self-knowledge, trust, and safety create the basic conditions for intimacy, enabling couples to comfort each other in times of stress and continue loving each other.
How This Book Is Organized
- Chapter One centers on a discussion about how to create love from everyday life.
- Chapter Two begins an odyssey through the straits and narrows of relationship life by defining and describing intimacy and how to keep it.
- Chapter Three considers conflict and the role it plays in creating intimacy.
- Chapter Four shows us how myths and fantasy contribute to our relationship and how they can provide valuable insights into ourselves and others.
- Chapter Five explores the role of sexuality in our relationship life.
- Chapter Six opens with a characterization of what makes us happy and conversely what makes us unhappy and how to look at them both constructively. It concludes with a look at how moods and fear affect the way we love or the way we defend against loving.
- Chapter Seven is an exposition on the value of creative complaining and how to unlock the doors of negativity without breaking our precious connection with our partner.
- Chapter Eight is a discussion of why monogamy matters and the effect of extramarital affairs on intimacy and trust.
- Chapter Nine defines shame, anger and rage, and explains how they impact us and our ability to love. It's a detailed presentation of how shame affects us, and a crucial chapter for all those who suffer from the issues of anger and shame.
- Chapter Ten discusses how couples can beat the odds and come out on top.
- Chapter Eleven is about what it takes to live happily ever after, summarizing the important elements of love-making.
Simply put, we get out of relationships what we put into them.
Relationship happiness is a direct result of deliberate actions that elevate and intensify feelings or shut them down, depending on how we behave. We need to be willing to express the hard truths such as how afraid or hurt or unlovable we feel, or that we don't trust love can last. The goal is to discover the truth within ourselves and communicate it, not to injure, but to engage our partner in a process that leads to greater closeness and love.
If we are willing to risk opening our hearts and minds, we will find ourselves in a universe that we never knew existed. Binding our heart with another and finding its strength uncovers what is so precious about life. Love is what gives life its color and fills us with its meaning. It's what keeps us sane and feeds our soul. As we build a loving relationship we allow ourselves to love someone for who they are, not in spite of it, and we can create a vision of who we are from behind our lover's eyes.
