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Why Do We "Fall In" LOVE?

Several years ago, I placed an ad in the newspaper, and found what I wanted.  There is nothing unusual about that, except that I was after a soul-mate, not a used car.  Having realised that there was no way in my current circumstances I was able to be physically ‘out there’ to look "available", I   thought to leave the process to our Higher Selves, the Light, fate, whatever.

I had realised that to find/attract/snare the 'right' one, I had to know what it was that I was searching for. I also had to be the complement to that which I sought.  I also had to be brave enough to trust that the higher aspects of our respective selves could work behind the scene, to direct him to look at this section of the paper, just at the time that my ad appeared.  The next leap of faith was to trust that one placement was enough, the job being accomplished by the non-tangible aspects of who we were.

I chose to word the ad in such a way that he would be intrigued enough to respond, and others would be turned off by my oddness.  And so it was.  Speaking with him on the phone was like talking with a long lost friend.  Asking him what he did in spare time, he answered ‘reading’.  Someone definitely after my own heart!

As soon as I saw him, I knew that he filled the first criteria – no bells and whistles went off.  What a relief!  I had set goals in all of this - having realised that all previous relating had been done to a formula. Knowing where that had led me, I was after more.  He did not set my heart aflutter.

Having read any number of books on the 'woundedness' of our 'inner child', and the process of recreating an aspect of the family we started from, I felt NOT being attracted could be the key.  In fact, the more 'boring' he seemed to be at that level, possibly the better.  Superficially, he was everything a person would walk away from.  In the mate selection criteria - wealth, status, looks, power were all missing.

The attraction magnet that had determined my relating before, inevitably moved onto emotional fireworks, spectacular life changes, and dramas apparently unlimited, as submerged needs, (on both sides) kindled by expectations and assumptions (on both sides) were not met. 

This time around, I felt ‘grown up’ enough to seek peace and harmony.  A second run, where we went through life as co-partners, creating a base for external living within us, rather than the outside world being a haven from the relationship and hence inner turmoil.

What was there was an openness of heart.  An immensely gentle, humble, vulnerable and accepting being who was totally there for himself/myself and us, to access.  My second inner criteria was that he had to have had a life, as I had had.  One where the edges had been worn off.  One which had challenged all that had been presented to him as ‘reality’ as a child.  One which had to forced him to remake himself.  

There before me was someone who knew who and what he was.  One who was on his own spiritual development path.  One who respected his own journey, hence that of another.  One who could operate past the spats and reactivity that usually marks the relating stage of a relationship.  (The one after the 'falling in' love/ honeymoon stage).

To find someone who was capable of holding the knowingness of the our shared love and respect, the awareness of our joint inner processes and our intention to travel along the path together, regardless of the apparent story-line and the apparent superficial mishaps, was the desired outcome.  Someone was capable of choosing to respond, rather than automatically reacting, via all the previous inner land-mines.

Here was someone who could go inside himself, and explore what lay behind the reactions that invariably appear as we all inadvertently go about our days.  A special person who knew that I was in his life in order for him to feel motivated to go beyond external blame, and into the state of unconditional acceptance.  Just as he was in mine, for the same end.

Those around me wanted to know how I worded this ad, so they could replicate the feat.  They saw the ad placement as being the whole process, rather than it being the culmination of an immense amount of inner work.  The decision to advertise was born of a faith that all was unfolding as it was to be.  The conscious decision to explore all the inner spaces that such a one, with this one may uncover to experience.  To become more of myself, through being all of me, with all of him.

"In Love"

Everyone loves being 'in love'.  Everything seems better.  Life has meaning.  Experienced in colour, rather than the usual shades of grey.  I often wonder if this is because we are attempting to move through the issues of separation, and hence the aloneness we all feel we live with, here in this place.  In recreating someone ‘on our side’, at least for the illusory period, we feel more whole- connected.

In some corner of our being, we may know a space of past connectedness, and as the only consciously available memory, be recreating the mythical mother child relationship, where one is an extension of the other.  Where it is a closed unit.  Where the outside is out there, and we are 'safe', that is totally accepted as everything that we are, totally loved, and hence totally validated, by the apparent unconditionality of the other.

This state may have only existed for a day, a week, a month, a year.  It may have always been a fairy tale.  It may have only been experienced by one of the participants.  Maybe in fantasy, played out in hopes and dreams.  Triggered by a look, a perception . . . It may have been touched at magic times of the shared lives.  It may be that which kept the sexual sparks flying.  The promise of oneness.  The need to be more than self.  Hence the filling up of the hole felt.


"Falling out of" LOVE

The gradual mismatch between that which you KNEW about the other, and the growing dawning that this was not so.  How could you have been so apparently wrong?  One explanation -perhaps it is that the other, now having 'got' you, is reverting to normal mode.  On automatic pilot.

It may be that you are both now taking the other for granted, rather than treating them as the treasure they initially were in our/ their lives.  Seeing them as a part of your life, instead of the central portion of it.  Maybe this is an apppropriate situation.  So, maybe this is a gradual and mutual process.  A settling down, and a settling into a new state of calm and peaceful.

But, what if 'calm and peaceful' is a foreign concept in your recent past?  What if to get to 'calm and peaceful' required the uncovering of all the bits that you have guiltily hidden away, never possibly even to be remembered, let alone acknowledged?

What if, by getting in a little closer past the mask that is our personality on show for everyone else, your special other person has triggered a reactive site that has attached to it an immense flood of emotional intensity?  "This"s means "that"s.  These perceptions would have possibly held true, in the particular tableau that unfolded originally.  In snapshot of time. In a still frame of a movie.

But time moves on, whereas the memories, and the emotional charges, like mind snapshots, stay constant.  Unlike a movie, we can not rewind and re-experience, from a different angle.  All we can do is to relive as we initially perceived it.  At the time.  Stuck forever in the perceived hurts and dangers, we framed it with and through.  Hence fears, perceived as real at the time, stuck to any number of unlikely triggers.  Time bombs.

Later, in a loving relationship . . .

Someone says or does something that triggers off a site.  You think the measure of your upset is due to the other person, and their actions.  Hence, it is all their fault, and you, being blameless, are angry.  Simple. . . . .  You consider all the distress you are feeling as a new problem.  That would  not have been, except for the other person. (It is all their 'fault', even though you chose to interpret something that they said as something that you would have meant, had you said exactly the same words, or in the same situation that you think that they were in when they said and meant - actually something else.

So you choose to react as though you are being attacked in some aspect of yourself. Taking something personally, that was not intended.  Not realising that the part of you that feels so justifiably right, is actually a hurt reaction from the past.  Instead, attributing the whole process to the catalyst, the inadvertent bystander (the one especially chosen to do just this for you, at whatever cost to their own calm and peace - your partner) rather than recognising the gift of your previously hidden, guarded, dark shadow.

Choosing to blame the person who 'made you' angry/ sad/ less than where you thought you 'had a right' to be . . . . . rather than thanking them for alerting you to a part of yourself that previously had been hidden from even you.

The emotional energy tied up by this has no doubt tried to get your attention in other ways, possibly giving you gentler opportunities to resolve the inner conflict. . .  Possibly sidelining you in depression, fatigue, despondency and low energy for life states. Eventually, something that you have great attachment to - in this case, the illusion of an inclusive togetherness, that has in the past, appeared to recreate a wholeness of self - now at stake because . . . . . . did/ said . . . . . . .

Where in all of this life there has been the re-creation of that which set your present blueprint via your parents, and their own peculiar version of reality?  Maybe you can see that, regardless of your conscious intentions, it is as though there is a gremlin in your system that has an agenda separate to yours.  A saboteur.  One that manages to set a situation up where due to a complication of misunderstandings, a massive web of disharmony is apparently created.

A part of you yearns for the rush of specialness you felt when you were adored, caressed and idolised.  They probably do too.  But, now, it all seems like a faraway dream.

What Happened?

Possibly what we do not know is that there is a very important reason that we attract the one we find ourselves with.  The process of us becoming bonded to the other then sets us up for choices.  Apparently hard choices.  Ones where we have to accept all that we have thought of as 'real', till then, or to embark on a different course, where we are outside our safety zones.  What prods us along?


A Different Version of 'Falling in' Love

What if . . . . . we are more likely to learn a lesson when we have most at stake?
What if we are only able to deviate from the well worn SAFE path of what we believe, if we are challenged massively?  What if we are in our own movie?  That all that we experience as real in our early lives sets us up so that we then automatically react in a certain way, at a pivotal time in our lives, resulting in a set of circumstances that then reshape where we are going from then on?

What if we, then having to clear whatever this is, cannot go back to where we were, and the future that we took to be 'ours', ever again?  Would our personality driven ego necessarily chose a situation to change?  What perceived truths would we need to uncover on our journey?

So, we get some help - we meet up with someone with whom the lessons are sugar-coated.      We 'fall in love'. . . . . . 'Falling' implies a carelessness.
                  'In love' implies that this is not a usual state of being.

The excitement of two complimentary sets of 'wounded' reactive sites recognising each other.  The then possibility, unbeknownst to our conscious minds (which our personalities believe to be all that we are), of their healing.  Of course we are going to want to spend all our time thinking about them, when we are not with them.  Of course we wish to stay intoxicated.  Of course we mourn this state after its passing.

Possibly the more the sense of attraction, the more tension between, the more likely we are, after the flush of lust, and all the deliciousness of "falling in love", to experience the sparks flying, to push us into SELF exploration.  Maybe the only way to get us to move off the safe-base, is to challenge us.  Possibly that is what really had us together in the first place - a great opportunity for us to work with, and hopefully accomplish wholeness and resolution in the areas where our original family opened up the programmes.

Of what?  Hurt in all its forms.  And, overlying the hurts: the self righteous justifications, and personally held 'normal' states of payback, of retribution. . . . . He doesn't say "I love you", enough, which 'means' (to you) that he is . .  incapable of intimacy, a bloke - so what would he know, not able to verbalise his inner self, not really wanting to be with you, you not being good enough, him waiting for the REAL Ms Right to come along . . . . whatever, depending on YOUR inner needs to be surfaced and resolved.  Whatever your greatest fear - it is probably lying in wait.

So, feeling justifiably angered, (a close relation of the perceived hurt), payback begins.
Eventually the setting up of a mini war - when will the shots stop firing?  When all realise that love engenders love and hate engenders hate.  That there is no room for hurt feelings in a relationship of two people 'in love'.  Thus, if hurt surfaces, and the one feeling the hurt does not identify it as their own, which has surfaced to be explored and cleared, but instead BLAMES the other for instigating their state of discomfort, the scene is set.  Each gradually retreating behind a safety screen.

The mask usually reserved for those who are unsafe, 'non-self', then comes up.  There is now separation.  The magic that just was, is now a memory.  Painfully reminding both of how easy it once was/ appeared to be.  How it can pretend to still be, if energy is put into 'not hurting the other one's feelings'.  Hence second guessing starts.  Assumptions. Being what you perceive the other wants you to be, say or do.  Learning to 'not rock the boat'.

Never really feeling as though you are connecting with a real person, as the other is also attempting to tiptoe back into the state of grace you both initially glimpsed with the other. The sparring of the masks.  Talking to other like minded ones, to shore up your ‘rightness’, and their ‘wrongness’.

Eventually self may realise that a lie is being lived.  Resentment may boil over, often helpfully fuelled by alterations in the vulnerability/ self preservation stakes by the menstrual cycle's effects on body chemistry.

When asked what is wrong by the other, the improbability of being honest with them, as you cannot be honest with yourself.  The process of self-deception may hide the real inner person from themselves.  This set-up works beautifully.

By the time the needs - the ones that appeared to be fulfilled in the heady days when the two of you shared yourselves solely with each other, when all others receded into the background of 'otherness', (whilst you both lived in a fairy tale), surface as being unmet, you both are entangled in each others lives.  A joint pet, apartment, experiences, children, property - and it all seems too hard to rip it up and start again.  Cutting your losses, you choose to muddle through, giving up the freedom of being yourself. . . .

STOP The other was initially attracted to the real one. The one who had energy, spark, life.         The one who was there before the compliance and the underlying resentment.

The other no longer seems to be the special person you thought they were initially, either.
You may even feel duped.  Both of you.  Maybe your process is mirroring theirs.

That they, as you also did, presented a side of themselves that is usually hidden, and you took that one to be 'the real' one.  As it seemed 'safe', just as you opened up, and in a state of vulnerability were acknowledged for all that you are by them, they also saw themselves reflected back through you, to them.  It is likely that the soft, open, vulnerable one IS still there.  In both of you.

It is all going according to plan.  The trick is to recognise that this process was the intention of your two soul forces getting you together initially.  Thus, the situations that you have jointly experienced have been to give you the material to work through.  It is not a situation of fault. It may be inappropriate to see the other as an enemy.  You and they have set this up. (somewhere else, not conscious in the sense that we perceive 'conscious' to be)

How to move beyond Reactivity?

This may not be comfortable on the personality front.  In beginning self exploration, the  easiest road is one where there is no judgement of good or bad, just experience.  The simplest course is thus the one you resist the most as a personality driven ego.  Look at the core belief that holds you (what you believe is "right") together.  This is easy to discover.  What is behind what "makes" you angry?

Not what, or who, 'makes' you angry, but what belief does that anger mask?

If you set up "The Rules" so that there has to always be a GOOD and a BAD side, then there is a 'right' and a 'wrong' outcome.  It is possible that your first process is actually to reframe what your personal parameters are - what 'reality' is.  Then, rather than working inside what you believe to be reality, you may find everything different, and not 'a problem', as in the redefinition, the moving of the goal-posts, the previous difficulty is now totally easy.

It may be that a need you have to be 'right' was seeded in the unsafe state of your early life, possibly in a family when if you were not 'right' or 'good', unpleasant situations happened.  The resultant fear tied into the feeling of trepidation, led to self-abasement, and, now as an adult, may haunt you still.  Set you off.  You ask - "how to get past my anger?"

The first step - acknowledge that to was your CHOICE to feel the energy that came up as  ANGER.  That under anger is hurt. Beyond it all is a realtive ignorance of the process. Our return to ourselves as whole units. In light. In love.

Back to the Play/Movie we 'Live' in . . .

Underneath the pain of knowing at some level of the untruths. The desperate sexual coupling attempting to recreate what was, and what spilled out at such times. The gradual realisation that what is missing is the essence of self (theirs) connecting to the essence of self (yours). The bodies are the vehicles as expressions of that which has been consciously been shut down.
To prevent further apparent betrayal.

It is likely that at this stage of relating, all thoughts of fairy tale are gone. The trick here is to realise that the one that was in your life as the perfect partner was perfect for your, and their, mutual growth. 'Happy ever after' is the process we aspire to, in finding the person best able to assist us in undoing that which has most recently (in our soul growth), been put there.
Put there?

Yes, like playing Monopoly, and landing in jail. A temporary state, where set evasive actions  need taking in order to restart the previous state of play. Looking at the sojourn here in this body, in this 'life' as an elaborate ploy for us to learn an aspect of a soul lesson, to enhance an aspect of our loving acceptance, minus judgement. To remind ourselves of that in order to live 'happy ever after', we have to undo that which was so lovingly sought out and experienced, from our conception forward. No coincidences. All with a purpose.
That they are/were our perfect partner.

The 'happy ever after' part happens not necessarily WITH them, but possibly through their having past through our lives. Our choices to explore what their being in our lives meant to us. The 'happy ever after' bit, not as a sham, but really, happens if and when we explore OURselves, the way we wish they would explore THEMselves. Us acknowledging that within our apparent 'imperfection', we have created all that we need to move on.

The 'happy ever after' sequence in a movie is a moment frozen in time.
We have all got stores of them, as memories.
In real life, we have the opportunity to grow, not UP, as children do, but IN(wards).

We choose our co actors very carefully. Sacking them in the middle of the movie we so carefully chose to 'live' in, may mean we redo it a cosmic scale, our own personal Groundhog Day.
In all of this is the answer to why it is that we are here in human form?
To experience. All that is possible.
To accept as simply experience al that comes our way, without ascribing value on any of it.

How are we at the point things happen, to know the value of that experience, the sequence of events and the reasons behind them?

Maybe, finally, regardless of the effort expended in the past, THIS time, we will be so uncomfortable in the repeat performance of some aspect of our stuckness, and of our resultant resistence to change, that we do something different. We no longer choose to hold grudges, hatred and fears. We let go. Forgive. Give up the past. Hurts. Stories. Live now as though it was the very first now. No expectations, no rememberings of what happened last time . . . .

Not from "I am right, and in my rightness, I choose to grant you dispensation", but, "I now understand that you were in my life as a gift, to help me to 'get' something that I have previously missed." That I accept a different way of living, perceiving, being, could be that everything has happened for me to experience, and choose to change. And, that once the story line is discarded, and the issues that incidents trigger become
focus, not the DISTRACTION, true relating, true compassion for self and others, true freedom from fear, hurt and anger, hence healing, can be.

Perhaps we choose lovers/ partners/ mates, to help us discover the issues that stop us from merging with ourselves. Perhaps we focus on the other, forgetting that we choose those who reflect  back to us what it is that we are blind to within ourselves.

What of my Soulmate?

Perfect. 
Not YET 'happy ever after'. Maybe never to be so in this time/ space
Not necessarily always comfortable, not always what my personality would wish to be happening, but always the prompt I need to move past that which is holding me back within myself.

We all are raised within the illusion that there is a special someone, who will transform us. The pop songs, the love ballads, the tales in woman's magazines, the fairy stories, Hollywood and the total cultural expectations all groom us to define ourselves WITHIN a happy couple. Not happy, regardless of external relationships. To be defined WITHIN one. If not in one, somehow deficient.

What if we really go through the coupling process to experience a part of life that we need?
That where we currently find ourselves IS perfect, not forever, but in that moment, maybe to spur us on and out of it. Focussing on the process, rather the destination.

Maybe all the energy expended in trying to stay together, of resurrecting what was, and of being whatever it takes to stay put, is the very reason that there is such turmoil. In the letting go of the desired outcome, anything is possible. The worst thing that you currently judge as unimaginable may, when you change perspective, be the only way out of your current reactvity, and suffering.

Maybe a successful marriage/ relationship is one where one or both transform themselves.
The marker of success being an inner opening. A letting go. And a freeing of the spirit