Love is exhaustible. This is one of the greatest mysteries of life. Someone we profess to love so dearly can someday turn out to mean nothing to us at all. The flourishing divorce courts of our day are striking testimonies to this fact. This has made me attend weddings with mixed feelings, not knowing what the outcome of such conjugal celebrations will be a few years down the road.One of the reasons why love seems to be failing in our civilization is because a lot of us have come to believe in an automatic brand of love, that is self actualizing, self sustaining and self fulfilling in nature. Nothing can be further from the truth. Many fail in love because they have subscribed to a, once in love, always in love perspective of love. Such people believe that once you have found love, you can simply relax and effortlessly do nothing and things will turn out fine. How untrue.
The more realistic lovers have come to discover that MAKING LOVE WORK IS HARD WORK. In fact the easiest part of loving is finding whom to love, everything else is hard work from then on. Marriages are failing today because people over estimated the promises of pleasure in marriage and underestimated the role of hard work and sacrifice in making their love enterprises work. This perhaps is why double dating and double dealing doesn’t make rational sense. When you think of the volume of work it will take to make love work with a single partner,you can now imagine the exponential volume of commitment it will take to love two,three of even four at the same time.
My greatest analogy of real love is the mechanism of the fireplace that we either use for cooking or the warming up of our environments. You will agree that it is more tedious than using a professional gas or electrical heating chamber. With fireplaces you have source for the wood and painstakingly separate the wet ones from the dry ones. Then you would have to cut them into sizes that fit your burning chamber. After which there is the lighting,blowing, watching,re kindling and tidying up the entire apparatus when you are through with it.
Isn’t this a perfect picture of love? You first have to scan through hundreds of people, with the discernment to separate the wet ridiculous ones from the dry and valuable ones. You then have to refine your choices through the instrumentality of keen observation, extensive friendship and candid conflicts. Before putting them into the crucible of a committed relationship. This done, you have to ignite the fire of your love with fresh concepts and ideas, while ensuring that you keep stroking the flame of love with the wind of kind and affirming words. Of course there is the sensitivity of keeping out the dead wood of toxic attitudes and associations,while you dispose the ashes generated via combustion through the fine art of forgiveness.
In spite of all these grueling hard work some relationships run into hard times. Once passionate couples sometime become strangers who hardly communicate with one another. In some extreme cases external emotional affairs become the order of the day. What do we do when we run into such love threatening circumstances?
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CHOOSE TO REMEMBER THE GOOD TIMES: During hard times in love, we often forget the fact that the same person we claim not to love now, we used to love at one time. When our present love experiences are a threat to us,we must choose to function from the cherished personal memories of our lover. We must remember that this used to be the love of our life before things went sour. In difficult marriages, we must remind ourselves that we were not insane when we took them to the altar. We must call to mind what originally made us decide to do so. We must remember the long walks we shared together at the beginning. The endless calls we shared. The fondness,the fun,and the fantasy of the early days of our first love. Recalling a perfect memory of our good times will help rekindle the spark of love we originally felt for each other.
- LAY YOUR FINGER ON WHAT WENT WRONG AND ADDRESS IT: At what point did we stop loving each other? What conflicts or attitudes broke our love camel’s back? What event led us to give up on each other? What action quenched the flame of our love? Of course addressing it will require soul searching apologies, in fact repentance to each other, and a sincere commitment to mutual change. Self defense, self justification and accusation are lethal to this phase. They should be avoided at all cost. What matters at this point is not who is wrong, but what went wrong.
- DELIBERATELY REVIVE YOUR FIRST WORKS, SO AS TO REKINDLE YOUR FIRST LOVE: Something you did at first was responsible for what you and your lover felt at first. Something you stopped doing is responsible what you both stopped feeling. Your first love was a product of your first works. You lost your original love because you got familiar and stopped doing your original works. You must intentionally decide to get your groove back again. Love is a verb. The feelings of love will always follow the actions of love and not vice versa. This is the only way to recover what you felt.
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KNOW WHEN TO QUENCH THE CANDLE OF LOVE AND TAKE IT OUT: It is unfortunate for me to acknowledge that not all negative love conditions can be saved. This is especially so when one or both couples are stubbornly unwilling to commit to a proven process of renewal. You must realize when you have come to your wits end. Of course you must get there with a lot of prayers,patience and persistence. But if after all is said and done to no avail,you must courageously put out the flame of love with your own hands and move on with your life. Even God could not save them all,though he loved them all. To him that is joined to the living there is hope,but to the one who holds on to the dead there is only the threat of infection and mortification. Never be afraid to move on with your life.
Those who follow these principles will be honored with the privilege of love renewal and if all else fails,they will have the impetus to find love again. I believe in you.
THE GREATEST IS LOVE!!!
Deji Olabode.
Love Dynamics Global.
Enthronement Assembly Lagos.
lovedynamix@gmail.com
@lovedynamix on twitter.
BBpin; 270B1423
* Please note that all enquiries about speaking engagements and professional counseling should be sent by email to the above email address. Thanks.
* Also feel free to download our newly launched Love Dynamics app on blackberry app world. Simply click on the following link and download for free. http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/39425945
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God bless you sir and give you fresh ideas for this daily write-ups. I celebrate you sir
Ever sublime thoughts sir. May God continue to inspire you for us….
Wow, mind blowing. This is a word in season. Thank you sir. More grace!
I’m unmarried yet but I learnt a great deal. Great work you’re doing on love dynamics. May the passion never run dry Sir.