Shift the focus in your life from yourself, beyond your family and friends, to your partner – and if you do that while also shifting the focus from physical things to intangible love – you have a much better chance of developing true love.
The secret is relatively easy to do: focus on your energy, the power, of love.
As Mother Teresa suggested it isn’t what you do, but the amount of love that you do it with that counts most. Or as musician John Lennon said, it matters not whom you love or how you love, only that you love.
At some stage in your life you’ll reach a point where what’s most important to you is your own personal growth. Yes, that’s right, you’ll ultimately want validation that your life has been worthwhile and has meaning.
We have found this validation is the basic pivotal point – the crux – that determines whether a relationship will survive, die or flourish into true love.
This is what you are seeking to determine when you are dating – whether you realise it or not – and assessing potential partners or evaluating an existing relationship.
If you’re in a relationship and your partner lets you grow – even if they don’t actively encourage it – you’ll most likely remain with them. You might do this even if they exert control over or abuse you. Whereas if they blatantly hinder or stop your personal growth you’ll most likely seek to escape.
A problem is that we often we seek other people, things and even objects, to help us grow. This is why working and having children are such a big part of life; they provide a form of validation, of worthiness, of meaning – and do so better than most other approaches.
The only other thing that validates each of us more, makes life more meaningful, is love.
If you have a partner who validates you, appreciates you and what you do then you have an extraordinary love, a true love.
If your partner is not doing this for you, and this is where many relationships run into trouble, then you may begin to resent them.
You may even seek someone whom you feel or think validates you, seemingly makes your life more worthwhile.
Do you seek a partner, or want your current partner if you have one, to do this for you – to accept you, approve you and solve your problems for you?
Most of us want this, as it make us feel worthy.
Men quite often don’t know what to say or do and they withdraw. Rather than risk directing energy into the wrong action for their partner, they simply stop giving it.