When no words are required..... This is what feeling safe and being loved looks like.

Secrecy and Erosion of Trust in a Relationship.

I often hear that if you don't trust someone you should not be with them. That is pure NUTS ! This works for folks that are just starting to date, but is really bad advice to someone with a life invested, a mortgage, and kids. You may have had implicit trust at the beginning, but something has changed. Life stress, distance between you, the proverbial "we just grew apart" nonsense. Trust requires attention. It must be demonstrated.

Trust requires transparency and openness. It requires that one not lock ANY part of their life away. Your spouse may not know WHAT you have hidden, or IF you have anything hidden, but if you have locked things away with passwords, deleted files or phone logs. he or she will subconsciously be uneasy. Trust is something that must always be demonstrated, continually. Your level of intimacy will NEVER be more than your level of trust.

As a mentor many years ago told me: " being "trust" worthy is of little value IF you do not APPEAR to be "trust" worthy. Live an open life with your spouse. No locked doors, no secrets.  Answer every question in truth and without irritability until your partner is secure as many times as it takes. Your relationship is only as secure as the least secure person in it. Leave no room to doubt where your heart and commitment lie.

This Crazy Thing Called Love

WHAT IS THIS crazy thing called "love"?  The English language does not have a real word for the love we share with a life partner.

No wonder we don’t know what love is. We are confused over our passion for pizza and our passion for another person. We mistake loving a suit and loving the person in it.

We are looking for and expecting from another person the "feeling" of euphoria, of comfort, and of pleasure. We find ourselves in love with the feeling we get, instead of the feeling we give to another. We are all looking to receive love, but somehow forget that "real love" is not in what is in it for us. "Real", "true" love is what you will sacrifice and give to another without expecting a return for yourself.  Real love is seen in action, not in feeling, or in getting.  Feelings come and go. Do not allow the sacrifice, passion, and comfort you give each other every day to depend on them.

The Greeks left no room for misunderstanding.  They understood the danger that could occur when saying to someone “I love you” when what you really meant to say was “I love you”.  (Confused… read on).

To be absolutely clear, one Greek speaking to another had six different options to make themselves understood:

1. EROS represents the love that is passion, desire, sexual, and intimate. This is the “Love” of young ( and not so young) “lovers” along with all the temporary insanity and losing control that comes with it.  This “Love” is the fire that can provide elevated feelings of euphoria, comfort, sustenance, warmth, and protection.  It can also burn and destroy many lives when not properly contained.

2. PHILIA represents the love you may have for your friends and the people you care about.  Philia is the love that exists among brothers and sisters.  Not just biological brothers and sisters, but brothers/sisters in a common endeavor or community.  Philia would also represent the love between parents and children.

3. LUDUS represents a kind of playful love; children at play or young lovers flirting. 

4. AGAPE represents a “selfless” “sacrificial” love that we extend to others, both family and stranger alike.

5. PRAGMA represents the “mature” love that would develop between long married couples over the years. “Pragma was about making compromises to help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance”.  [*1]

“The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that we expend too much energy on "falling in love" and need to learn more how to "stand in love." Pragma is precisely about standing in love—making an effort to give love rather than just receive it. With about a third [closer to half] of first marriages in the U.S. ending through divorce or separation . . . . the Greeks would surely think we should bring a serious dose of pragma into our relationships”. [*1]

6. PHILAUTIA represents self “Love”; both the “good” “self love” and the narcissistic “love of self”.

We can each go through life experiencing and sharing all six forms of love with many people in our lives.  This is what makes our lives richer and full.

After 46 years of [continuous, uninterrupted]  marriage  [yes, to the same woman]  I can speak with a reasonable degree of authority here.  If you want your marriage not only to go the distance but to thrive, I strongly recommend that you try every day to incorporate ALL six versions of Greek “Love” [less the narcissistic half of “Philautia”]  with the ONE person you have vowed to love and care for a lifetime.  Maybe, throw in an extra heavy dose of the “Agape” love every day along the way.  With your spouse you should not need to differentiate what kind of love you have for each other… it should be all the variable shades of meaning in the Greek less selfishness rolled into one.

You can “Love” and be “Loved” by many people in your life.  But if you are in a valued committed relationship growing in PRAGMA “Love” NEVER… EVER… allow yourself to give or receive EROS  or LUDUS “Love” from anyone other than your mate.  Remember EROS  is also the fire that destroys when boundaries are too weak to contain it.
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[*1]  Roman Krznaric   

http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/the-ancient-greeks-6-words-for-love-and-why-knowing-them-can-change-your-life

[Roman Krznaric is an Australian cultural thinker and cofounder of The School of Life in London. This article is based on his new book, How Should We Live? Great Ideas from the Past for Everyday Life (BlueBridge). His website is www.romankrznaric.com and he tweets at @romankrznaric.]

The Elusive Fantasy

IT IS NOT just men who live in a fantasy world of visual "perfection". It is not just men who live in a fantasy world that provokes them to a visceral desire to seek that younger, slimmer, more adoring, easier to get along with woman, who is more able and willing to meet their perceived needs. 

Women too it appears are lured into a desire to make their reality the fantasy they can not escape; the one that "out there" is that man "that gets me", "listens to me", "thinks I am beautiful", "whose touch can make me melt", ... oh.... and, oh.... yes .... has the body of an ancient warrior, and will age like Sean Connery..

Fantasies are always made of the good stuff. Fantasies have no mortgages, dirty diapers, screaming children, hard to get along in-laws, or illness.

Fantasy is the diametric opposite of reality, and will always be as illusive as that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.