My wife, Marina Smirnova, and I always conduct the training “Personal life: the joy of close relationships” together. What a joy it is to tell people that love is possible! It is curious: many, if not all, dream of love, but as soon as people begin to live together, real life begins — love is somehow quickly forgotten … Is this right? Marina and I are sure — no, not right. If you value each other and want to love each other, you will do it, and you will do it every day: just like you cook breakfast and go to work.
It’s easy if love for you is not only a feeling, but also your choice.
Love is a reflection of a person’s personality. The love we are accustomed to is not what we do, it is what happens to us, what we fall into. Scientifically speaking, such love is a reactive attitude, it is an involuntary behavioral and emotional response of a human organism to what has influenced him in this direction.
Stimulus is a response. The carrot attracts the rabbit. A beautiful girl arouses desire in a young man.
However, people can be not only organisms, sometimes they have a mind and will, and then they can be responsible for their choices and their feelings. In this case, other love is possible, rare love, love as a choice, decision and behavior. This is a person’s choice to love and this is love as a behavior — like what a person does every day.
The reasons for the choice may be different, including emotional involvement, but if a person has made a choice and committed to love, this is his responsibility. See Ten Year Pledge
Abraham Lincoln gave his wife, Mary Todd, a ring that read «Love is Forever». It was his choice and his obligation, and he fulfilled this obligation: he loved his wife (a woman with a rather complex character) all his life. About this — Irving Stone’s novel «Love is eternal, or Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln», as well as Daniel Epstein: «The Lincolns. Portrait of a Marriage.
Question of Xenia
If love is a volitional act, then it turns out that absolutely any person can be loved. But in other articles I read that some person is called “unpromising” for love and life with him. So it turns out that some people are better suited for love, some are worse? And how to determine a person worthy of putting love into him?
Everything that will be written below will be clear to few people. If you don’t understand, then it’s just not about you. But people are different, and there are those for whom love is a giving attitude and a choice. And then these people do not really fall into love, but, living in love as a background of life, they choose those to whom they give their love. It can be parents, children, a cause that a person devotes himself to, and it can be a man or woman to whom you also want to devote your life, for many years of your life. This is a choice, and a very responsible choice, just like building a city here or there.
Until all the following questions, we tacitly assume that you are a worthy being and surrounded by other worthy people. Choose from whom — there is. This is not always the case, but you can only choose when there is someone to choose from. As a result, we assume that you have provided yourself with a choice.
The first question is the most difficult, this is the question: “Who needs me?” (“Who needs me?”) It may very well be that you will meet an amazing wonderful person and quickly realize that he does not need you in any way, he is completely fine without you and is no better with you. So this is not your place, take care of other people or just business. You must be where you are needed, where you are useful. And if you understand that you can really be useful (useful) to this person, you can make his (her) life warmer, more beautiful, happier and stronger — perhaps this is your place.
Formula: the more worthy a person is and the more you can give him, the more correct your choice.
And the limitation: if this person is not interested in you, then no matter what you think about yourself, this person does not need you. Cross out.
The second question is simpler: “What does this person give me?” You will be able to give your loved one more if you yourself (let’s in the feminine form) are easy and joyful with him, if you are charged from him, if you have a symbiosis with him, if both of you become stronger next to each other. If you get a lot from this person, great, because the richer and stronger you are, the more you can give everything your loved one needs.
The third question is about priorities. If you are a worthy person, then not only you are looking for, but they are also looking for you, and you have a choice. Then you need to consider priorities. Maybe this is a super worthy person, and you can give him a lot, but it’s difficult for you, it’s hard, you may not be enough for a long time. But the person is simpler, but it’s easy for you to work with him, and it seems that your investments in him will be more effective.
From experience, it is easy to get confused in all these issues and disassemblies, because, in addition to the mind, we also have emotions, and enthusiastic people tend to invent something that does not exist and that no one else sees. In order to put everything on the shelves and figure it out without cheating, it can be (oddly enough) useful to talk with smart and experienced people who know you and the person (those people) you are thinking about. Matters of the heart and it seems to concern only you, but it is in such matters that a look from the outside can be very useful.