Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Cycle of Love Stage

Cycle of LoveStage One:Falling in LoveIn the beginning of a relationship the world is great. You truly think that the sun IS shining brighter than before. You notice for the first time ever how absolutely beautiful that old oak tree on Main Drive is. You wake up in the morning with the sweetest feelings of warmth. Thereis a sparkle in your eyes and a new spring in your walk! You are falling in Love!We fall in love with somebody not because of who they are but because of how they make us feel about ourselves. They are attracted to us so therefore we suddenly feel very attractive and grow in our self-esteem.The more they are attracted to us the better we feel, and the better we feel the more we are attracted back to them for making us feel THIS GOOD. In turn, they feel the same feelings and emotions as us because we are making them feel good about themselves, too! What a great cycle of love; we actually fall in love with each other for making us feel so great about ourselves. They show admiration and appreciation for our accomplishments, goals, lifestyles--therefore we gain a renewed self-confidence and pride, we must be great!They are patient and accepting of our shortcomings, faults, and flaws (they even think our shortcomings are cute!) and therefore we must have over exaggerated our faults and we now find a perfect contentment and acceptance of ourselves. We suddenly feel we truly are lovable, attractive, cute, smart, needed, wanted, special, talented, and just totally awesome! Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could always feel this in love with OURSELVES!!!!????

Stage Two:Being in LoveGiving to each other, makes each happy. They have made us feel so happy and we want to make them happy in return. We want to assure their happiness to guarantee them in our lives and hearts forever. We delight in showing our love, our acceptance and our appreciation with the other. Their happiness is of the utmost importance to us. We demonstrate appreciation of their impact in our lives by giving them little gifts. We relish in making them as happy as they have made usfeel by doing little things for them and caring about them. We meet each other's basic emotional needs. It is in this stage that we start to notice those little things about our mates that make them so adorable! Their crooked smile, the way they walk, the feel of their lovemaking, the smell of their skin, the touch of their hand."Being in Love" is different from "Falling in Love". We now feel love toward our mates because we appreciate them more for who they are as opposed to how they made us feel about ourselves. We actually become addicted, in a sense, to the routine of them and the familiarity of a certain lifestyle that we share as a couple. We are hooked. We have become a whole.

Stage Three:Expecting LoveWe have reached the stage where we are in loving relationship. We feel safe, protected, secure, content. Our vulnerabilities we wear on our sleeves with no fear of them being taken advantage of. Our emotions are free-flowing, open, and trusting. Yet, sometimes when we open ourselves up to trusting emotions we can get confused in our beliefs that this trust is somehow being violated by our significant other...especially if we somehow feel our emotional needs are notbeing met or our loving ways are not being appreciated. We subconsciously seek and expect certain proofs, respects, and validations of our feelings. For instance, he wants to go bowling with his buddies tonight and she is nervously fretting over an important job interview tomorrow. He leaves and she mistakingly resents him. "If he loved me he would have known how much I needed him to be with me tonight!" Because she loved the other she had openly gave to him, willing and freely, but now she feels hurt and anger that her needs weren't respected, acknowledged, or important. She has come to expect certain actions from him that reaffirmed his love and made her feel validated, and he didn't do that by electing to not stay with her. She starts to question his love for her...

Stage Four:Questioning the Others Love IntentIt is at this stage when we are more likely to feel anger, hurt, and betrayal if we feel our needs are not being fulfilled. Hurt emotions overwhelm logic and judgment. We get defensive and egotistical. We are selfish. We start to put ourselves #1 and often feel indignant "If he loved me he would do this, or not have done that, etc." We start to withdraw from doing those little things for our significant other, after all if our needs aren't met then why should we meet theirs (This will show him/her how much he/she hurt me!). Even though we may have withdrawn 'giving' we start to expect even more in return. We demand certain signs from them as a show of their love and how much they are SORRY that they have unintentionally hurt us. Our mates, in turn, realize that we have withdrawn our love and proceeds to protect themselves too by doing just the opposite of what we want from them. They withdraw their loving ways, too. Now, neither of us are getting our emotional needs met. The relationship has now become a showdown between two selfish people who's only attempt is to protect their own selves at all costs!

Stage Five:Hiding From LoveWe withdraw from one another, forming an impenetrable wall of protection from the pain. The pain and hurt we feel is from the feeling that we gave of our love so freely, and did not have it either validated, nor appreciated. In this stage, in order to protect ourselves from hurt and pain, we become very good at convincing ourselves that we don't need, want, love, or even LIKE the other person. We separate from them, if not in our physical environment, in our mental and emotional environment. We dwell on all the bad things about the other. We may even invent flaws in our mates just to convince ourselves that we don't hurt. If this stage is left untreated we eventually fall prey to the final stage...

Stage Six:Falling Out of LoveOur hearts are heavy and empty. We feel betrayed, hurt, resentful. How could they allow such ruin? We do not feel good about ourselves. The sun has stopped shining, the old oak tree is wicked looking, with gnarled twisted branches, your eyes have dark circles under them and there is a dragging shuffle in your walk. You have fallen out of love. Author unknown~

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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