It's a Guy Thing (28 page)

How Can I Get the Love I Used to Have?

At the beginning of a new intimate relationship love is very graceful. You don’t have to do a lot to maintain it. Both of you give and receive. It’s a beautiful dance. We think love should always be like that. But actually, love is an action. You learn to love. It takes practice.

How do you practice relocating love when it feels like love has been “lost?” First, become familiar with your inner doubts and fears, the whole dynamic that cuts off love. Then, you learn to locate love in your heart even under difficult circumstances. It helps to set aside time every day to practice reconnecting with your love. During this time you may pray, dance or meditate. Do whatever it takes to contact the love in your heart. With practice, you can grow in your ability to love.

Love is not something you have or don’t have. Love is something you do. It is not something that comes to you. It is something you are giving or refusing to give, moment by moment.

Most people have felt moments of grace when their heart opened and love poured. It may have been spiritual love, God love. It could have been love for a child, a friend or a lover. Your heart might have even opened while looking at a great work of art.

These moments illustrate your innate capacity to love. You need only open your heart and you
are
the force of love. The practice of intimacy is to stay open even during difficult moments. It isn’t about getting love and holding on to it.

Love is who you are and what you do when you are not closing your heart. The practice of intimacy is to stay open as love.

How Do I Grow in My Ability to Love?

In any moment, you are either separating yourself from others and from the world, or opening and connecting in relationship. Be aware of the tendency to create distance between you and others. To practice love, simply stay in direct relationship and notice your tendency to pull away and withdraw from love and life.

Do you pull back when your man says certain things? Do you close down when he acts in certain ways? Do you withdraw from him when he withdraws from you? Intimate relationship is a very specific form in which to practice love, but all relationships test our love and give us an opportunity to gift with love.

The more you mature in the practice of love, the more giving you will be in relationships with your intimate partner as well as your friends. Even when they hurt you, you do not pull away or close down. As you practice love, you grow in your ability to stay open, present and connected in relationship, even when you feel hurt or angry. This open connectedness
is
love.

What Should I Do When My Relationship Feels Hellish?

When you first fall in love your heart opens and you love everyone you see. Do you know that feeling? During difficult times, you can practice opening your heart like this. It is not always easy to do. But in order to live through the more hellish parts of a relationship, you will need to exercise your capacity to love. You can practice
doing
love, even though other emotions may arise in you at the same time.

You don’t have to be namby-pamby, always saying, “I love you.” You might be arguing or crying, but it’s good to have a little thread attached to your loving self so you can always remember why you are with your man to begin with.

Your ongoing practice is to continue loving as you take each step along the path of intimacy. And the first thing you will confront on this path is the boulder of doubt—”Does he really love me?”

Don’t avoid doubt. Love
through
it. Don’t allow yourself to be overwhelmed by doubt, rather, let doubt come up
and love
. “I’m totally afraid, and I love you so much, I want to work through this.” Continue to relocate your love, and it will shine through your doubt, so that eventually your doubt becomes obsolete, useless.

The feeling of love is always in your heart, but you have to literally relocate it. Your mind will go into other areas: “What will he do in the future? Will he take me into account?” Just relocate your love. You don’t have to stop doing other things. Just relocate love. It’s always in your heart.

Where was your love before your man came into your life? Was it floating 50 feet away from you? Has this man come
along and pushed love into you? No. Love was always in you. He’s just your excuse for loving.

We use our partner as an excuse to love. But we need to become responsible for always locating our love, whether our partner is loving or not.

It’s a practical exercise. In your day-to-day life make time to relax, relocate and connect with the loving in your heart. Meditate on love; feel into love; magnify love by relaxing into it. Imagine you are in your lover’s arms. Your body is opening. Your heart is radiating love. You are making love, embracing love, breathing love. Set aside time and meditate like this, basking in the force of love. Practice relaxing your body in the energy of love, especially when your relationship feels hellish.

How Do I Get Rid of the Tension in My Relationship?

There is always a conflict between men and women in intimate relationships, a subtle tension that simultaneously attracts and repels. It may feel like a conflict, perhaps, but it is strangely pleasurable, too. It is a constant interplay of opposing forces which rarely comes to rest. The only time it comes to rest is when there is no sense of an other, such as in meditative states, in deep sleep, and in the ecstasy of sexual love-union when there is no feeling of separation. In these states, there is no polarized conflict. But as long as there is any sense of separation or difference between you and your lover, there will be a subtle tension between the forces of masculine and feminine.

Furthermore, the extreme intimacy we seek is also the intimacy we fear. We fear losing our sense of independent self in relationship, but we also desire to lose ourselves in the ecstasy of deep love. Complete union with the one we love is therefore what we most desire and most fear.

We cannot entirely rid our intimate relationship of tension. To practice intimacy, we must learn to embrace the constant, subtle tension between masculine and feminine forces. We must also relax through the paradoxical tension of our heart and understand that the complete union in love that we most seek involves the loss of self we most fear.

Should I Tell Him How Afraid I Am?

Nothing makes you more intimate than allowing your resistance, fear and anger to come up in the midst of love. This
is
intimacy. It doesn’t block intimacy. It creates intimacy. Holding in your feelings blocks intimacy. Instead, express your true feelings and trust the process of love.

For instance, you might say to your man, “I feel myself opening to you but I’m afraid of becoming needy. I don’t want to lose my own center.” In this moment, you are being intimate, dealing with your feelings, talking about them and feeling them together with your man, yet also truly expressing your fear.

Intimacy has its own intelligence. Love its own power. They will transform your old patterns. But you have to be willing to sacrifice your self-containment to allow love to do its work. You have to be willing to let go of control.

You open yourself to receiving love by giving love. You
invite trust from your man by trusting him. If you’re holding back he’ll hold back. You will become involved in a battle of holding back.

Trust love. Trust that in your love with a man you could bring up how insecure you feel. See how far giving your trust to a man will go. See how far giving your trust to love itself will go. But be intelligent about it. If it’s going to a negative place then stop it. But if it’s going to a positive place, let your doubts and fears come up and continue to trust love.

If you feel something strange is going on between you, instantly bring it up. Don’t blame him. Just say, “I’m feeling uncomfortable,” and let love do its work. Let your body relax into love. Let your breath become a breath of love, a trusting breath, a full and soft breath. Stay connected to love and hold nothing back.

Will He Always Bring Out the Worst in Me?