Our expectations around love are unrealistic

After decades of being married, I realized only recently that I had based my relationship on completely unrealistic expectations around love.

I believed that love is something that we get from other people, special people with specific qualities, who fall in love with us and make us feel good. I’d been in love before and the only thing I’ve learned from it is that it did not last because it was not with the right person.

Love is fully self-sourced. And it is our responsibility to cultivate it from within.

It was only through finally understanding this precious nugget of truth that I have been able to come back to a life of passion, vibrancy, and meaning. I have become a better mother, a better partner, and now have the privilege of guiding others to reconnect to their own love supply and become fully self-sourced in love and in life.

When we enter our relationships not as beggars, but as generous givers from the overflow of our own love supply, our relationships become transformed.

Love is an energy rising due to something that correlates to our attachment wounds. Yes, the person with whom we develop a romantic story has something that we want. But it is not love.

That something we seek is connection—a safe space where we can finally take off our masks and be ourselves, where our own vulnerability is reflected back to us through the admiring eyes of another. We want to be reassured that we are lovable and worthy, regardless of how imperfect we think we are. It gets complicated when we seek acceptance from others before we’ve worked on accepting ourselves.

Read my article for Elephant Journal: There is only One Way to Find Love—Unlearn Everything.