The Business of Love-Part 2

In last week’s article “The Business of Love-Part 1” I talked about how the kissing cousins of intimacy and vulnerability are essential choices and actions (or what I call business) for realizing happiness and success in love and life relationships. In today’s article, I am sharing more about what is essential for your happiness and satisfaction to flourish in your love and and life relationships.

So what other business is essential for your happiness and satisfaction in life and love?

1. Correcting the habit of tending to others more or before tending to yourself.

Most women are challenged by this habit of generations. Being told serving others is noble and appropriate to being a woman is not a bad message or choice, but a message often leaving women devoid of time and energy to care for themselves. I call this mortgaging yourself to buy acceptance, appreciation, or even love and the price women pay is anger, resentment, and negativity with others. Simply put, you cannot give to another what you yourself do not have to give yourself.

2. Learning how relationships in life and love have their ages and stages.

This wisdom can bring you patience and ease when your the needs and nature of your relationship shifts and changes are required. Relationships reflect the needs and the natures of the people in them and to resist change is to resist what you or your loved one needs. As people change-and we all do-different choices are required for maintaining happiness and satisfaction in their relationships. (And did you know relationships shift focus every 7 years?).

3. Realizing what you’ve been taught about men and women-their needs and nature-is not accurate nor useful for happiness and satisfaction in contemporary relationships.

You can love your parents-and, patterns they passed onto you need not be ones you live your life by. Much of what you have been taught-consciously and unconsciously-about women, men, and their relationships, is simply not accurate. Most of what is unsuccessful and leads to unhappiness in relationships can be fixed really quite easily, once you update your learning and understanding of the needs and nature of women, men, and their relationships.

4. Making the mistake of judging what comes your way in your live or love relationship as reflecting your value or even another's love.

The truth is, what comes your way in life and in love comes to you for reminding you of your capacity, your caliber, and your compassion. The largesse of your soul (and life) does not set you up to fail nor to feel unloved. The challenges which come your way in your relationships simply require your unique responses for making your love and your life “more”.

There is so much more which makes up the business of love and relationships in life.....learning how your personality will excel at rationalizations and justifications for continuing what is not working in your relationships vs the quieter voice of your soul urging your surrender to love, the fear you are taught about emotions hijacking you vs learning to decipher the wisdom emotions bring you, the habits and norms which damage your relationships in life and love, and more. Your relationships can be powerful, wonderful, life-changing when you update your learning about the nature and needs of women and men.

The Business of Love

I have come to appreciate how love in relationships need more than the emotion of love for happiness and success in love to last. When working in India in my 20's, I looked upon their tradition of arranged marriages as lacking the romance of love. My learning and the wisdom of my own experiences has taught me differently. The emotion of love is a verb, which means love needs action to tend and care for it. The actions of caring and tending of love I call the business of love and while I get a few wrinkled noses at putting the words business and love in the same sentence, noses relax and heads nod instead when I explain what I mean.

So what exactly is the business of love?

The business of love are the actions you take to tend to and care for who and what you love. The business of love can be as basic as making food you know your beloved enjoys and the business of love can be as complex as changing the unconscious patterns at the bottom of an affair. What is common to both the simple and complex business of love is your willingness to choose the intimacy and it’s kissing cousin vulnerability, love requires.

Intimacy begins with yourself-with your willingness to tell the truth about what you want, need, are feeling, fear, etc.  For relationships to be happy and successful, whether in love or in life, being willing to be vulnerable-not control-is required. Risky? Only if you are willing to settle for a very small and shallow version of life and love in order to avoid the risks of intimacy and vulnerability love requires. The intimacy of relationship you have with yourself is the level of intimacy you can offer and receive from another in love.

I know talking about the business of love can feel....well, kinda anti-love. And, learning about the nature and needs of women and men, the ages and stages of relationship, is required learning for creating happy and successful contemporary relationships vs relying on the defaults you've been handed by those you love. Love requires not only talking about what you want and don't like, love requires your conscious courage, commitment, and clarity in action.

Relationships offer us heaven...and relationships can be hell. We are not taught about relationships nor are we in possession of much accurate wisdom on the nature and needs of women or men. Is it any surprise your relationships of love often mirror family patterns you already know you don't like? And by the way, the business of love is essential learning for relationships of friendship and business as well. 

I'll be sharing more about tending and caring for love in relationships in my next article "The Business of Love-Part 2", including the important differences between your personality and your soul when it comes to love.