Here’s something I say quite often: you must learn to use your head before you give up your body, so that you don’t break your heart. While it sounds simple and straightforward in theory, most of us only learn this lesson after getting our hearts broken again and again. The problem is that when infatuation kicks in, it’s a pretty strong magnet, and often we interpret it as a sign that our Happily Ever After is on its way into our hearts again. So in many ways, it is not the other person who breaks your heart, but rather yourself. Love is something that happens internally, inside yourself. You share that energy with the person you love, and when the energy changes back from a two-person entity to a one-person entity, the change is painful. So how can you avoid that?
Learn What You Want And What You Don’t Want
Well, you can’t. Not the answer you were hoping for? Unfortunately, that’s just something we all have to deal with, just like the sun rising and setting everyday. No matter how much you want it to stop, it won’t, and unless you’re going to spend your life chasing down crazy ways to try to get the sun to do your bidding (like so many of us do with love), then you’ll just need to learn to accept that heartache is a part of the process of learning what you want and what you don’t want.
In my case, I had plenty of opportunities to learn these things, over and over again. I felt like my heart had been snapped in two hundreds of times by love, and by men. I felt like I had nothing else to dream about or to aim for, and that every time I took a chance on love again, it would just end up in sadness and abandonment. So after a lot of soul-searching, I decided to stop looking for the magic perfect relationship, and start looking for what I really wanted instead: someone who would be true to me, who would not ignore me, who would not dispose of me, and who would treat me with the love and respect I deserved.
You Deserve Love And Respect
And after many years and lots of looking, I did finally find that love and respect. What was both frustrating and enlightening, though, was that it was right here tho whole time – inside of myself, in my own heart. I was looking for that true love in the arms of another; I was looking for it in the beds of men I thought would complete me. The big moment was when I realized that I’m already complete – this is the biggest lesson on the road to becoming heart-smart.
So, with that in mind, we can now aim to share ourselves selectively with others who have similar values, people who know that a healthy relationship includes not just attraction, but real compatibility and respect. It’s time to give up chasing the sun and concentrate on getting heart-smart!
Here are five tips to get you started:
1. Seek the higher truth – you may feel that true love is something “out there,” but you need to learn and accept that it’s inside of you.
2. Given that sex automatically leads to feelings of expectation and bonding, you need to take a step back and think before taking that giant leap forward.
3. Treat the true love inside yourself accordingly – don’t compromise your integrity, your desires, and especially your safety.
4. Remember that FEELING love and being with the right person are not necessarily the same thing. That feeling can steer you wrong if you’re not smart about it.
5. Your mind is your servant; use it to develop a habit of self-inquiry so that you can best serve your soul.