Let’s face it ~ Love Gets Messy Sometimes!
Have you ever heard yourself say, ‘This can’t be love’ or ‘I think I’ve fallen out of love? Maybe you’ve had the experience of losing respect for your partner or friend for a time. You’ve ‘had it’ and you want to take a break! Or, you might even be an expert at dreaming an exit strategy.
If you’ve been in a committed relationship, you may know what I am talking about. Love does get messy at times. Knowing how to clean up the mess and return to an even stronger connection is an art. Learning this art requires your attention and action to be committed to a life of grwoing the Love that is always inside of you. When you are devoted to becoming a Courageous Lover you consistently ask yourself, “What Would Love Do Now?”
10 Ways to become a Courageous Lover
1. Vulnerability Rocks Your Relationship
Get real and be yourself. If you want to be loved for who you truly are, why pretend? Risk being vulnerable by taking off any masks of protection that cover over your fears, feelings and thoughts. Good relationships demand the strength that true vulnerability offers. Commit to Loving!
2. Bury the ‘Right/Wrong’ Game
Give it up, once and for all. Choose happiness over being right. When two people with unique dreaming minds create a relationship there is bound to be disagreement. Agree to disagree, respect each others differences and let go of your need to ‘be right’. Choose happy over being ‘right’ and everyone wins!
3. Embrace the Messiness
Relationships get crazy messy sometimes. Let yourself and your partner be in these challenging spaces without making a big dramatic story about it. Give up your exit strategies. Often the hardest and most confusing of times opens you into new agreements with each other. Relationships are about growth!
4. Make No Assumptions
Asking questions rather than making assumptions is a straight path to intimacy. Making assumptions about what your partner is feeling or why they do what they do keeps your mind spinning its stories. To deepen the heart of your relationship, ask questions with the intention of truly listening. Listening is the first act of Love!
5. Retreat and Return
Love opens the heart of relationship while fear shuts it down. Everyone steps away from their beloveds at times. Hurt, frustration and disagreements send us away to contemplate and reorganize our self. The real power arises in knowing when to take space and when to return. Choose to return to Love!
6. Speak Up
Do you become silent when you desperately want to connect? It takes courage to access the power of your voice and say what is really going on inside of you. Use ‘I’ statements and speak from your own experience. Squelching your voice is a set up for disconnection and resentment. Communication is the foundation for great sex!
7. Live With Respect
Holding ‘high standards’ of creating a View of how your partner needs to be for you to be happy doesn’t work. This lack of acceptance and disrespect damages the best of relationships. Supporting your partner to live their life in their way is the biggest gift you can offer them. Learn the Power of Respect!
8. Get Mad when You’re Mad
It is refreshing when anger is expressed cleanly. Anger is a secondary emotion that arises from hurt, fear or frustration. Dumping anger or taking passive-aggressive actions shuts down the openness of love. Embrace and express anger as it arises in the moment and use it as a signpost to discover the deeper feeling underneath. Then let go and move on!
9. Take Responsibility
Be accountable for your own emotions, thoughts and actions. No one causes you to feel or do anything. You do what you do because of you and not because of others. As you realize this truth, you give up victim stance. Responsibility Frees You!
10. Be The True Lover
You are the source of Love in your life. No one can give you this experience. Self-acceptance, self-respect and self-trust create this golden elixir called Love. Fill up first and offer your abundant heart into life. Expressing your Love is a direct route to Happiness!