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Understanding The Desire To Love And Be Loved in Return

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“We are all part of the same human condition.  The yearning to love and be loved is at the heart of who we are.”  – Lynne Twist

That quote speaks to every man and every woman in every place and time!  The worlds’ greatest love stories, from the brilliantly successful ones to the dismally tragic ones, come down to the yearning to love and be loved in return.

Loving and Being Loved

In every love story, there is a quality to the relationship that is defined by how each person deals with his or her own yearning to love and be loved.

Some of us have a stronger desire to love than to be loved.  We pour ourselves out on everyone we love with abandon.  We are supportive and nurturing, even if we risk suffocating the object of our affection.  We may pour out our love in bold, brash, even bullying ways.

I am thinking of men who only need a hint that something is wrong and then swoop in to fix the problem, their loved one, and the people involved!  This also brings to mind women who turn into protective mother bears when their loved ones (cubs) are threatened.

Others who are more committed to loving than being loved show their support and nurture by being submissive, following their lover wherever he or she leads.  Even if it is to a dark place, the supportive, nurturing, I-am-totally-there-for-you individual loves the risk of loving no matter the cost.

A Stronger Desire to be Loved

Then there are those of us with a stronger desire to be loved.  As supportive as I think I am, sometimes my desire to be loved by my husband is so strong I embarrass myself!  When he is preoccupied with something, with steely focus accomplishing something, if I interrupt and thereby incur even a slight dismissal, the pout that forms on my lips is telling!

In an instant, it is all about me and my needs and desires. If I were truly one of those supportive types, wouldn’t I have seen and appreciated his preoccupation with whatever he was accomplishing?

Managing my desire to be loved and choosing to sometimes follow my yearning to love, as a priority over my yearning to be loved, is simple enough.  It can be heartbreaking to watch someone completely sabotage their relationship because nothing can satisfy the hunger for proof that their lover loves them beyond all others!

Sabotaging the Relationship

Of course, the supportive, nurturing lovers can sabotage their relationships too.  Smothering love can snuff out love, shocking the supportive individual with the level of resentment the recipient of their love feels towards them and all their loving attention!

Yet, the “yearning to love and be loved is at the heart of who we are.”  At some point in your life, I hope you were your mother’s and father’s beloved infant.  Mothers and fathers do their best.  Sometimes their best is brilliant, sometimes it is good enough, and other times it is barely adequate.

Relationship With Caregivers

Whatever your relationship with your primary caregiver; when you were an infant, someone answered your call and met your needs.  That person was an extension of you, as far as you were concerned, and when she or he was answering your needs and desires, it was as if the two of you were one.

When we fall in love with someone who falls in love with us, we see each other in a way that feels familiar.  Falling in love is the closest we come to “mother love,” that love that answers all our needs.  Even if the timing isn’t completely right; the need is answered by this person, this mother or father, who completes us.

Yearning for Love

I imagine the first time we feel the yearning to love and be loved happens the first time we realize our primary caregiver is, in fact, not an extension of us.  The distance between that person and us must be wide and terribly tangible.  Even if she is within arms reach, the sudden realization of the difference between us, of the boundaries that define each of us, must feel like a chasm.

Jump ahead twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and the lover who reminds us of how it feels to be completed by another shows up without boundaries, longing to get as close to us as we will allow.  Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual closeness are aches easily filled by our new lover.  Nobody wants that honeymoon period to end.

The Honeymoon Period Has to End

The honeymoon period ends.  For some, the ache of what feels like separation might actually stir up grief.  For others, getting some boundaries back in place, letting friends and family back in to their own and the new life they have created with their new lover is a breath of fresh air!

In whatever way you deal with the yearning to love and be loved, use it to the best advantage of your lover and yourself.  When you feel the ache of it rising in your gut, let the ache grow.  Let it come up into your chest, around your heart and throat, and breathe through it, in and out.

Appreciate the gift of having someone in your life with whom you can satisfy that desire for connection.  Let it drive you to acts of love that delight, not smother…acts of love that might even give a person some space.

Use it to value your ability to love and be loved in return.  Use it to value his or her freedom to love and be loved in return.  Use it to remind you that you two are vulnerable to each other in a way no one else is and celebrate that reality in your own heart, with lovemaking, and with respect.  The quality of your loving will blossom into something even more beautiful than it already is!

Feeling Needy? Have A Clingy Partner? Find Out How To Bring Balance To An Unbalanced Relationship

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Have you ever called someone else or been called a “stalker?”  Using the term or having it used on you is a frustrated or mean way to say, “I’m sorry but I don’t love you and I need you to understand this and give me my space!”

Sometimes calling someone a “stalker” comes after several failed attempts at communicating the disparity in feelings.  Other times, used early on in that person’s affection, it is meant to belittle and humiliate.

One of the problems inherent when a person is actually stalked is the stalker invades that person’s personal space: physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and even spiritually.  The stalker is in the person’s life without invitation and without permission.

Similarly, when a person has someone in her life that has fallen in love with her and is desperate to be seen by her, this potential lover’s attention can feel needy, clingy, and invasive because he is requesting admittance at a deep level without invitation or permission.

Imbalance In Relationships

Within an established relationship, if one member of the couple is usually needier or more clinging, resentment can start to build for both of them.  For instance, if I am going through a period of insecurity and fear and I pull on my husband for reassurance repeatedly,

I resent my weakness as well as the extra power he has as the more secure one.  If I am so needy that he never has the opportunity to relax much less share his own insecurities here and there, he can resent having to be the strong one.

An imbalance of need or desire can suck the life right out of either an established, potential, or even non-existent relationship!  How do you turn the tide when you find you are the needy one and what can you do to help yourself and the relationship if you are the stronger one?

Balancing the Imbalance

The short answer to both sides is self-love!  At those times in life when you find yourself the needier, more insecure one, self-love is an incredible cure.  If you have found yourself in the needy position for what seems like most of your life, self-love is crucial!

By nurturing yourself, giving yourself your own unconditional high regard, thereby valuing who you are from the core of your being to the tips of your fingers, souls of your feet, and top of your head, you give yourself a sense of security from within that no one else can give you.  Furthermore, no one else can take it away.

Self-Love is the Answer

If you are in the position of having someone need you in a dysfunctional way, your own self-love can be the answer there too.  Your self-love will be the answer when you know that you are responsible for everything that shows up in your life.

If someone is in your life pulling on you and making life uncomfortable, or even unsafe, taking the stand that you attracted this to you, even if you do not know why, can make a difference in 1) how quickly the situation resolves itself and 2) whether or not you create the same situation again.

Why Doesn’t Matter

You do not have to know why you “created” this situation.  It may be you do not even have to do anything with or about the other person.  If you are willing to take responsibility and say to yourself, “I created this.  I do not want this situation in my life. I love myself enough to release the need for this type of dysfunction!” and really own those words, then the situation will either resolve itself or you will find opportunities to resolve it appearing.

Accepting that kind of responsibility takes courage, inner security, and love – love of self and love of other.  There are needs and desires in our lives where once met add to our lives.  Lovers’ bodies and souls longing for each other, needing each other’s touch, and desiring sexual expression is life giving!

The Danger of Allowing it to Continue

However, allowing someone to need or desire you with a desperation that strangles and threatens to snuff out life isn’t an act of love.  It is rather supporting of dysfunction that, if allowed to continue for too long, can wreck a relationship or even a life.

Unconditional positive regard of both the other and the self demands the tough love that says, “I created this…I love myself enough to release the need for this type of dysfunction.”

If you ever find yourself calling someone who has taken an interest in you a “stalker,” stop and give it some thought.  Perhaps you are being too callous with someone who chooses to risk this level of vulnerability because he or she finds you irresistible.

If they are legitimately annoying, take your attention off the other person and put it on yourself.  Take responsibility and love yourself enough to release whatever it is in you that created this situation.  Give taking that level of responsibility a try and see what happens.

The next time you find yourself needful in a way that you suspect is hurtful, take some time for yourself and love you.  Sit in front of a mirror and say, “I love you,” like you mean it!  Play music and light candles.

Make it a sacred time to give yourself your own, genuine unconditional positive regard.  The more you do it, the more your inner security will rise to the surface to guide and protect you!

You are worthy of love that helps you live a better life.  You can begin getting that kind of love by giving it to yourself.

Retrosexual Men and the Women Who Love Them

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A new book offering relationship help is coming to America!  It will cross the Atlantic from the United Kingdom, land on our shores, and insist that the time has come for men to be real men.

Enough with men learning how to be caring, sensitive males, asserts Dave Besley, author of “The Retrosexual Manual.”  It is time for men to be true to themselves and quit pandering to the women in their lives!

What is Retrosexual?

Dave’s book has a particularly British feel as he calls retrosexual men “blokes” and metrosexual men “prats.”  In a short amount of time, a reader can have the colloquialisms down and get the man’s point.

Dave is a man on a mission.  He says the change men have surrendered to during the past two decades has been like a “social osmosis.”  Making men feel like half-men, half women, they have become “strange, uncomfortable beings whose self-esteem has been eroded, whose needs had been ignored and desires suppressed.”

Tired of being asked to be a metrosexual male himself, Dave decided to fight back.  In “The Retrosexual Manual,” Dave encourages men to be tough and dominant as he says they were designed to be.  Using the success of his own relationship as an example, Dave asserts that the retrosexual male is the kind of man women truly desire.

What Kind of Man Do Women Really Want?

In case you missed the news when the term “metrosexual” male became popular within the past few years, a metrosexual male is a man who gives a lot of attention to his appearance in terms of clothes, hair and skin care products, even indulging in facials and visits to spas.

The metrosexual male was the result of the feminist pendulum swinging to its widest point for those men who worked hard to be everything their women wanted.  Dave calls these types of men a woman’s perfect accessory.  In such a man, she has a male best friend and confidant with whom she can have sex.

In spite of Dave Besley’s in-your-face approach, the pendulum swinging back to center for both men and women is a breath of fresh air.  I do not think we need to return to the romantic relationships of the 1950’s and 60’s, as he suggests.

I do believe we have arrived at a place where equality of the sexes embraces men and women loving themselves and each other enough to embrace their differences as well as their similarities…

Relationships in the Post-Modern, Post-Feminist Era

In this post-modern, post-feminist era, we live with the fact that we did not reach some of the highest ideals of the modern and feminist periods of history.  In the modern period, we expected to find a cure for cancer.  We didn’t.

Feminists expected to create a world where we treat men and women fairly in the workplace.  Even though more women are working at jobs and careers once deemed inappropriate for them, and some women are the top breadwinners in their homes, the goal of equal pay for equal work wasn’t reached.

In addition, in this present era, we live with the consequences of lives that move so fast, we have lost touch with rites of passage that would allow men and women to identify with their same sex parent in such a way that their relationships with their romantic partners and their children would improve ten-fold.

What allows a man to be a man isn’t being brutish and domineering.  What allows a woman to be a woman isn’t being sweet and submissive.  Some men and women are those things, but those things are not the defining factors of the masculine and feminine.

The thing that frees up a man to be a man is he resonating with his own masculine center.  Then his way of being and the actions that flow from that center have potency and purpose.

The thing that frees up a woman to be a woman is she resonating with her own feminine center.  Then her way of being and the actions that flow from that center bring her fulfillment and purpose.

What It Means For Men and For Women

Therefore, you can find men pursuing all kinds of dreams that may or may not look masculine; yet, the juice that drives them to take purposeful action comes from their masculine center.  Those men are accepting of who they are.

They do not have to look to women to affirm their masculinity.  Furthermore, women’s accomplishments do not threaten them because they know who they are as men.

Similarly, you can find women pursuing all kinds of dreams that may or may not look feminine; yet, the juice that fuels their fulfillment comes from their feminine center.  They do not have to take care of the men in their lives in order to find fulfillment, nor do they have to compete with the men in their lives in order to feel seen and heard.

Retrosexual Relationships

In their romantic relationships, men whose potency comes from their masculine center of being and women whose fulfillment comes from their feminine center of being are freer to celebrate each other’s essence and accomplishments, rejoicing in their own essence and accomplishments as well.

Such lovers bring confidence, security, playfulness, and passion to the bedroom as well as all other aspects of their relationship!

Let’s take advantage of this time when men and women are coming back to center.  We can quit trying so hard to be like each other.

A woman can be a powerful contributor to society without being “ballsy.”  She can also create time to relax, unwind, and tap into the soft, sexy, center of her being that is receptive and alive with a slow burning kundalini fire that is just waiting for inspiration to ignite.

A man can be a powerful contributor to society in whatever way he chooses without being condemned for either being too domineering or soft a male!  He can approach his romantic partner with the confidence to seduce her and love her deeply, madly, passionately!

Put them together and you have a power couple that takes time to nurture their relationship and themselves even as they make a powerful difference in the world around them!

Five Tips for Creating Soulful Intimacy In Your Relationship

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There are times in life when we experience intimacy in natural, spontaneous ways.  Consider love at first glance.

Someone who was a stranger is now in your life 24/7 and crazy about you!  Suddenly, parts of your life that were private are now on display to the one you love but with whom love hasn’t been tested.

For instance, putting potato chips on your sandwich in front of him or her makes you feel awkward with the intimacy of the exposure of a funny, little detail of your life!  The first time you get naked together makes you tingle all over from the vulnerability.  Intimacy that is the result of love at first glance is easy.

It is when we have been in love for a while that we need to turn our attention once again to intimacy.  We can create the kind of intimacy that will set our souls aflame!  Following are five tips for creating soulful intimacy.

Speak and listen in a new way

Men and women communicate differently.  Men like to get right to the point; therefore, they only have so much time and attention when it comes to listening.  They want you to get to the point!  Women, on the other hand, like to share nuances of insights and feelings when they communicate.  Getting to the point for a woman might take several meandering twists and turns first.

One way to create soulful intimacy is to speak and listen in such a way that your partner feels seen and heard.  When a woman gets right to the point, her man hears her in a completely new way, which is gratifying for both of them!  When she listens with focused attention, he feels heard and appreciates this.

When he listens to her meandering thoughts and expressed feelings, she feels cherished.  When he takes the risk to speak of his feelings, philosophy, and personal experience, she feels honored.

Without trying to morph into the opposite sex’s viewpoint, just every once in a while speak and listen the way he or she does.  As simple as it sounds, doing so will make you feel you are taking one of those risks that makes you feel the kind of vulnerability that creates a fresh spurt of intimacy in the air between you.

Get imaginative with touch

Think of times when you are together on a regular basis other than when you are making love.  Watching television together, preparing a meal, grocery shopping…things like this.

Consider where you might touch your lover in a place that usually goes ignored.  The inside of the arm, neck, ears, and small of the back are possibilities.  Perhaps it has just been too long since you were in the habit of resting your hands on each other’s thighs when sitting together.

Make a habit of reaching over and touching each other in ways that communicate, “You are my beloved, I am yours, and that is wonderful.”  Always take a moment or two and be present with your touch.  Look at him or her and feel your love and appreciation for the privilege of loving each other.

Lighten up and have fun

If life has been weighing on you and making you far too serious too much of the time, find things for you and your lover to laugh about.  Learning to laugh at yourself, admitting to your flaws in humorous ways, acknowledges the fact that the two of share intimate knowledge of one another that goes beyond the physical.  It heightens your sense of togetherness.

Be sensitive, though.  Be sure to laugh with your partner, not at them.  Invite their compassion, not their competitive edge.

Find reasons to genuinely appreciate your lover’s extended family

Perhaps it is so that we will move out there and start our own families, but most people have a difficult time dealing with each other’s extended family members.  An easy and even lazy way for couples to create intimacy is to gossip and put down their own and each other’s family members.

A better way is to discover what you can truly appreciate in at least one member of your lover’s extended family and communicate that to your lover and the family member.  When you genuinely care for those he or she loves, your lover feels appreciated too.  Whenever we feel seen or appreciated, soulful intimacy grows.

Be present for sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and textures

When you are in that love at first glance relationship, everything about your lover is new, mysterious, and desirable.

The way his skin tastes, the scent of her body, the curve of her hips, the light in his hair, the way her pinky toe lies at a different angle from the rest, and his “innie” belly button are just a few of many things that capture the attention, the heart, and the kundalini!  With all your senses heightened, you are present for everything.

In the beginning, it can be overwhelming.  As time goes on, it can seem to disappear forever.  It doesn’t have to.

Simply be present the next time she undresses in front of you and let yourself relish how you admire her beauty.  Be present the next time he gets out of the shower and relish how you admire all his masculine features.  Breathe softly through your mouth and feel your body relax and open to your lover.

When you practice just these five tips for creating soulful intimacy (not to mention the many more your own imagination can discover), closing the gap for even greater physical intimacy is sure to follow!