Help me with love
10 Tips to Fall More Deeply in Love
There is nothing more exhilarating than falling in love. Getting to know someone on such a deep level, feeling butterflies as your feelings for him or her grow, there is nothing more important. The good news is that you can always fall more deeply in love with someone, whether you've been together for three months or thirty years. It just takes some work and tricks.
For a lesson on how to fall more madly in love, we turned to a psychotherapist and relationship expert, Jacqueline Schatz. She has learned tried and tested ways to bring people even closer than they thought possible through her work with couples and individuals at all stages of a relationship. "I absolutely believe you can deepen love at any stage of a relationship," she tells Brides. "Love can deepen and become richer over time."
Meet the Expert
Jacqueline Schatz MA, EdM, LMFT, is a psychotherapist and relationship expert who works with couples and individuals in New York City and North Carolina.
Read on to learn 10 actions you can take to create or strengthen love between you and your partner.
01 of 10
Don't Skip the Small Things
Building and living a life with someone is a way to grow closer to them. Things like having breakfast every morning together or talking about your days before you go to sleep can have a big impact. If you truly make someone a constant part of your day-to-day life, your connection will strengthen. "Feeling like someone is part of your life, part of your family, and part of your identity, that deepens your love," shares Schatz. "If you've made a choice to put your lives together, to share a life together, that means you aren't two separate selves, and you will grow closer."
02 of 10
Overcome Challenges Together
One of the best ways to strengthen your love is to overcome challenges together. If you are working through something difficult as a couple—maybe you are trying to have a baby or addressing debt—approach it together as a team.
If you are having trouble as an individual (Do you have a difficult boss at work or are you struggling with a demanding family member?), let your partner help you. Not only will it feel good to accomplish something together, but you will also learn new things about your partner that might amaze you. "Any challenges that come up, being able to support each other through them will deepen your love," explains Schatz. "Even if the outcome of the challenge isn’t successful, the love can be successful."
03 of 10
Have an Adventure
Life can get busy and it is too easy to fall into a rut as a couple. Make time to escape your day-to-day routine by doing something that stimulates and excites you. (Maybe you've always wanted to try rock climbing or travel somewhere exotic?). You will see a side of your partner you don't normally get to see, and that will help renew and deepen your love for him or her.
04 of 10
Repeat Activities That Made You Fall in Love
Especially if you have been together for a while, Schatz recommends remembering which activities you did when you were initially falling in love (Did you have an amazing date at a winery or an axe throwing bar?) and try to repeat those regularly.
"What made you fall in love? What were you doing together? What made you laugh together? What made you know this person more?" she poses. "You don't want to lose sight of those things. You want to remember them and infuse your relationship with them."
05 of 10
Spend Time Doing Things You Both Enjoy
A key to falling more deeply in love is to have mutual, positive experiences. That means you should do activities you both love. "Let’s say you like going to the gym together, or you like exploring a new neighborhood together, or taking a walk?" says Schatz. "It really doesn't matter what the activity is as long as it's something you both enjoy, and in doing that activity, that shared positive experience helps you deepen your love."
06 of 10
Have Honest Conversations
"Conversations are one of the primary ways couples can deepen their love. We all want to be seen and known; it is so powerful," says Schatz. "Talk about your feelings or hopes or dreams or your plans for the present or the future, or what makes you feel most loved.
If you have that conversation, by the end of it you will be more in love."
07 of 10
Work on Yourself
You have to be open to loving someone and being loved in return. And that means feeling confident about yourself, adds Schatz. "Working on yourself makes you more available for love. If you are really working on knowing yourself and knowing what you need and who you are, the easier it is to love someone."
You can work on yourself by going to therapy, journaling, or spending some time alone.
08 of 10
Try Couples Therapy
Every couple has issues, and if they are not addressed, they can be a barrier to connection and love. A good couples therapist can help you address issues, even deep ones you might not even know exist, so you can mature and grow together as partners.
09 of 10
Put Away Your Devices
In today's world, we can spend so much time on our phones that we forget to look at the person in front of us.
Deepening love requires connection and time, and devices can get in the way of that. So set aside time every day or every week to put away your phones and focus on one another. "Put your devices away, and look at each other and talk to each other," says Schatz. "Give that person your undivided attention."
10 of 10
Make a New Commitment Every Day
Schatz also believes you can choose to fall in love with someone, saying, "In some ways, love is a choice, and relationships and commitments are a choice." Every day remind yourself that you are choosing to be with this person. It will help you not to take this relationship for granted and empower you to look at your partner and relationship in a different light. Love will grow from that.
14 Ways to Be More Romantic in a Relationship
Empowering Tools to Find the Relationship You Want
Finding Love: Empowering Tools to Help You Find the Relationship You Want
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
” ― RumiWhen it comes to the pursuit of finding love, many of us feel powerless – like it’s completely outside of our control. That’s not to say that there’s any shortage of advice we get from well-intended sources of what we should do to find love, i.e., “put yourself out there,” “smile at strangers,” “try this dating site,” “have a friend set you up,” “stop dating jerks.” While these aren’t bad suggestions, they tend to scratch the surface when it comes to the deeper goal of truly finding love. No matter how many methods we try, we may still hit the same walls that leave us to believe that finding love has more to do with luck than fortitude. However, psychologist and researcher Dr. Lisa Firestone makes a strong argument that there are tangible things we can actively work on in ourselves that, not only orient us toward finding love, but help us build a solid foundation for long-lasting and satisfying relationships. Dr. Firestone, co-author of Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships, has worked with couples for more than 30 years and written extensively about romantic relationships.
Here, we hear from her about the elements that get in our way of finding love and the best advice for overcoming internal obstacles and finding the love we say we want.
Sticking to Our Defenses
One of the primary ways we get in our own way when it comes to finding love is by maintaining certain psychological defenses. These defenses come from adaptations we’ve made to painful experiences, often very early in our lives. As Dr. Firestone wrote. “This process [of becoming defended] begins long before we start dating, in our childhoods when hurtful interactions and dynamics lead us to put up walls or perceive the world through a filter that can negatively impact us as adults. These adaptations can cause us to become increasingly self-protective and closed off.”
Dynamics that hurt us in our early lives may have taught us to keep our guard up, not to trust too easily, or to expect people to behave a certain way in relationships.
We may assume potential partners will be dishonest, unreliable, or uninterested, because our earliest caretakers were dishonest, dismissive, or rejecting. Or, we may expect people to be demanding, intrusive, or to want too much from us, because we had a parent who was controlling, inconsiderate, or emotionally hungry. As a result, we build barriers around ourselves in which we feel self-protective (i.e.,“you don’t need anyone else anyway”) or self-critical (i.e., “there’s something wrong with you that you have to fix if you want anyone to love you”). Our deepest defenses, which stream from old experiences, can lead us to act aloof, insecure, or simply not ourselves when making romantic connections.
Following Unhealthy Attractions
When people act on their defenses, they often choose less than ideal romantic partners. It sounds counterintuitive, but many of us are unconsciously driven to repeat and recreate negative patterns and dynamics from our past. As a result, we may be attracted to people who have qualities that are similar to people from our history.
For example, we may be drawn to someone who isn’t emotionally available or find ourselves feeling especially lit up around someone who takes charge and pursues us aggressively.
It’s important to consider that these initial enticements aren’t always in our best interest and won’t always lead to long-term, loving relationships. For instance, if being quiet and withdrawn was a defense we used to get our needs met in our original family, we may only feel a “spark” with someone who’s outgoing and controls the situation. However, if we’re aiming to find lasting love, this dynamic could prove limiting in the long run. We may retreat more and more into our shell, while our partner controls more and more of the life we share. We may ultimately wind up feeling lost or resentful in the relationship.
Giving in to Our Fear of Intimacy
Dr. Robert Firestone, psychologist and author of Fear of Intimacy (also father to Dr. Lisa Firestone), has presented a case for why most people are, to varying degrees, afraid of closeness.
“Most people say that they want love and positive acknowledgment, but relatively few people can tolerate real love and respect from another person, because it threatens their defenses’” said Dr. Firestone. “They tend to retreat, pass over it and sometimes react with actual aggression.” We may experience this fear by having actual anxiety about getting too close (i.e., losing ourselves or our independence, having our heart broken, bring rejected, abandoned, or let down). Or, we may experience this fear on a more unconscious level, suddenly feeling more irritable or drawn to punish or push the other person away. These fears tend to deepen, the more a person starts to mean to us, which helps explain our ambivalence toward and resistance to finding love.
Learn more about the fear of intimacy
Listening to Our Inner Critic
The language of our defense system and our fear of intimacy is what both Drs. Robert and Lisa Firestone often refer to as the “critical inner voice.
” People preserve their defenses and their fears by maintaining an old, negative image of themselves, in which they essentially see themselves as unlovable or unable to find a loving relationship. As Dr. Lisa Firestone said, “We all possess ‘critical inner voices’ that tell us we are too fat, too ugly, too old or too different. When we listen to these “voices,” we engage in behaviors that push people away.”
From the minute we start dating or even thinking about dating, our minds tend to be flooded with not only negative, undermining thoughts toward ourselves, but critical and suspicious thoughts toward others. These “voices” reflect a way of seeing ourselves that is often rooted in our past. It shows up in the self-soothing advice of, “Don’t go out tonight. You’re too shy. You’ll only feel humiliated and let down.” It bombards us with criticisms like, “You’re so pathetic. No one here even notices you.” It rears its ugly head when it warns, “You’ll never find anyone you like. People just let you down.
” The goal of this “voice” is to hold us back, to make us stick with our defenses and give in to fear. Even when it sounds self-protective, it keeps us from having the self-assurance to really go after what we want.
Learn more about the critical inner voice
Being Picky
Our defenses can leave us feeling more selective, not in a positive, self-possessed way, but in a more cynical and limiting way that can lead us to hone in on and magnify the flaws in the people we meet. Our critical inner voices don’t just take aim at us, but the people to whom we may potentially feel an attraction. For some people, these voices start in from the get go. “She seems too loud.” “He sounds like he could be needy.” “She’ll get too serious.” “He’s probably boring.” For some people, these thoughts creep in the moment they start to feel closer to someone. “Maybe we should slow things down.” “She isn’t that great.” “He’s actually kind of high-maintenance.
” The nitpicky ways we start to become toward a partner or potential partner can keep us from being open and actually getting to know someone. In addition, the very qualities that put us off are sometimes the things we think we supposedly want or things that would make us happy, for example, if a partner “likes us too much” or is “too affectionate.” It’s valuable to consider where our pickiness comes from and what we may be ruling out by listening to our critical inner voice.
Avoiding Competition
Sometimes finding love means having to be vulnerable and put ourselves out there. This can feel especially scary when we realize that we’ll have to enter a certain degree of competition. This isn’t to say that we have to approach dating like athletes or make any enemies along the way, but we have to accept the reality that we may have to face competitive feelings, both in ourselves and others. As Dr. Firestone stated, “Our fear of competition can lead us to avoid putting ourselves out there.
We may be afraid of looking like a fool or of not being chosen. We may even have fears about winning the competition, thinking we will hurt another person’s feelings.” Going after what we want can feel intimidating, but being willing to acknowledge the competitive feelings that arise can help us avoid turning against ourselves by putting ourselves down, or even turning against others by being cynical or critical, rather than simply facing that we want something and feel competitive about it. If we avoid competing (i.e. staying home from a social event, not presenting ourselves with confidence, or holding back from talking to someone new) because of our discomfort with these feelings, we may miss out on something that would make us happy.
Staying in Our Comfort Zone
Many of us form ideas about who we are and what we’re capable of, and we find ways to keep ourselves in those boxes throughout our lives. We build walls designed to keep us feeling safe. We may not like that we don’t go out enough or feel awkward when we meet someone, but we don’t challenge those things, because we want to stay in our comfort zone.
For some people, this may mean seeking isolation. For others, it may involve driving themselves to work hard and “be responsible.” Many people feel comfortable being self-critical and listening to their critical inner voices, even though they may be mean and unfriendly; they’re familiar. Whatever this bubble may be for each of us, understanding what it is and how it operates can help us start to break out a little and challenge the defended posture that shuts other out.
Seeking a Soulmate
Another thing that can act as a barrier to finding love is the tendency to favor fantasy over reality. When it comes to dating and relationships, many of us still believe in the notion of a soulmate, one individual who can complement and complete us in every way. While searching for someone with whom we feel a real connection and attraction (and who ultimately feels like our soulmate) is a worthy pursuit, sometimes we create unrealistic expectations and take a more passive role in our romantic destiny, because we hold a fantasy of what finding love will look like.
Perhaps, we’re waiting to be hit by a lightning bolt of sparkly attraction, or we write someone off the minute they don’t fit a certain, specific expectation. Basically, we narrow our search in ways that can shut out opportunities. “I reject the belief that there is only one person in the world for us, and unless we find that person, we are doomed to a lonely life of romantic misery,” said Dr. Firestone. “There are actually a lot of people with whom we could experience a highly satisfying, deeply fulfilling relationship.”
Explore Your Attachment History
As Dr. Firestone has said, “Our style of attachment affects everything from our partner selection to how well our relationships progress to, sadly, how they end.” The early attachment styles with our caretakers go on to shape our internal working models for how we expect relationships to work as adults. If we formed an insecure attachment as children, we may be more likely to feel insecure, anxious, or avoidant in our interpersonal relationships throughout our lives.
Understanding our early attachment patterns can offer us incredible insight into the types of relationships and relationship partners we’re drawn to choose and create. It can help explain why we’re so stuck on that one person who just won’t open up and give us what we want or why we lose interest the minute someone starts to really want something from us. This awareness orients us to make better choices, stick out challenges, and form more secure attachments.
Learn more about how your attachment style affects your relationships
Know What You’re Looking For
“Initial chemistry is the spark that fuels a relationship, but that spark doesn’t always ignite for all the right reasons,” says Dr. Firestone. As we said before, we aren’t always attracted to people for the right reasons, and we sometimes find people most attractive, because they help us recreate old dynamics. We may also unconsciously look for partners who reinforce existing negative views we have about ourselves.
If we think of ourselves as stupid, we may feel attracted to someone who acts superior. If we feel insecure, we may look for someone who builds us up unrealistically. Think about the qualities you typically look for in a partner. What do you really hope to find? Then, consider the characteristics of partners you’ve wound up dating. Are there certain qualities that you would avoid in the future? Get to know the patterns behind the people you choose, so you can find ways to break out the cycle and find someone new to whom you can really connect.
Identify Your Pattern
In addition to really reflecting on the qualities we’re looking for, we should think about the general patterns we fall into that limit us in finding love. For example, we may not only seek out people who feel familiar based on our past, but once we start dating someone, are there ways that we distort them? Do we suddenly start to feel hypercritical? Are we sure they’re going to reject us, which makes us feel desperate or clingy? Do we start to feel suffocated, like we just need space? Even when our partner hasn’t changed, we can change the way we see him or her based on our own fears and defenses.
We can even start to provoke our partner to act in certain ways. If we see ourselves as irresponsible, for example, we may act in ways that are more flaky or absentminded. We then feel furious when our partner starts to sound parental or instructive. We may hate when our partner calls too many times or wants our attention too often, but we may act distant and unavailable, which causes him or her to be the one who reaches out most of the time. If we can get to know our side of the dynamic, the patterns and behaviors that undermine our goal of achieving intimacy, then we can start to challenge these inclinations before they start to rule our relationships.
Take Chances
When it comes to dating, we rely pretty heavily on instinct. First impressions carry a lot of weight, and we tend to evaluate and judge people pretty quickly to determine if they’re “right for us.” We also tend to rule people out based on our defenses and critical inner voices, which are driving us to choose the same kind of person and fall into the same cycle.
“You can consciously decide to be open to the possibility of being with someone who is different from the people you typically choose, for example, someone who expresses a strong attraction to you,” wrote Dr. Firestone. Many happy relationships started with one person who was originally hesitant, because they were being pursued by someone who they didn’t think was their type, or someone who liked them too much, or who they even described as “too nice.” Broadening our search and taking chances doesn’t mean we have to lower our standards or force ourselves to be in relationships we don’t fully desire. It simply means having a more adventurous attitude and seeing where things go. So many people are surprised by the feelings (and futures) they build with people who weren’t even on their radar originally.
Listen to Your Friends
Because our fears and defenses can lead us astray, it is incredibly helpful to have friends whose perspective we can turn to when we can’t distinguish our real point of view from our negative inner coach.
“A helpful way of determining whether a strong attraction or a lack of interest is based on your true state of mind or elements of your past is to trust your friends,” said Dr. Firestone. “They tend to be much more objective about you.” For instance, if things are going well with someone new but you suddenly feel the urge to pull away, or if you’re really compelled by someone who keeps you at a distance, this is a good time to talk to a friend. It can help you step back from the situation and start to sort out, not just whether the situation is worth pursuing, but to make sense of your own reactions and understand your own patterns even better.
Don’t Listen to Your Inner Coach
Think of your inner coach as an old dialogue that was scripted in your past and plays out in your current life. The goal of this voice is to make us maintain a comfortable and familiar, yet highly negative view of ourselves and your partner (or potential partners). The more we can catch on to when it creeps in, insulting us or someone we’re dating, making us feel less sure of ourselves, poking, prodding, or outright attacking.
Get to know this inner critic, so you can challenge it, ignore its comments and reject its advice.
Learn steps to conquer your critical inner voice
Hang in There
Finding love is an adventure filled with highs and lows. The road to get there can be filled with awkward encounters, epic disappointments, hysterical mishaps, and entangled paths that led nowhere. It can be hard not to grow cynical or want to harden ourselves against the world, but the only way to find love is to stay vulnerable.
The more we shed ourselves of our defenses and defy our inner critic, the more anxious and exposed we’re bound to feel. Breaking free of the chains of our past can force us to face the pain of our past. The closer we come to finding love, the more we can expect our fear and sadness to arise. As Dr. Firestone mentioned, we may even feel irrationally angry at a loved one for seeing and treating us better than we’re used to being seen and treated by ourselves or others.
Staying vulnerable and open will likely prove our biggest challenge, not just in finding love, but in helping it last over time. But it is worth it. The barriers may not come down easily or without injury, but they open us up to a new world of possibility.
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Tags: being single, fear of intimacy, intimacy problems, learning to love, living single, love, relationship advice, relationship problems
Oh God, when I lose hope, help me remember that your love is greater than my disappointment... ▷ Socratify.Net
I think about death more than other people, probably because I love life more than they do.
Angelina Jolie (50+)When I'm having a hard time, I always remind myself that if I give up, it won't get better. nine0008 Mike Tyson (50+)
When a person is first given hope, albeit for a short time, and then taken away, the pain of loss increases a hundredfold.
Neil Shusterman (1)Better not to hope for anything at all than to soar into the sky, and then fall down like a stone.
The more attachments a person has, the more burdensome life is for him and the more he suffers when he has to part with it. nine0008 Schopenhauer as medicine (Irvin Yalom) (10+)
A person becomes mature at the moment when he begins to love more than to seek love.
Osho (100+)
My heart, my home, my beacon, my comfort, my inspiration, my tears, my laughter, my love. My everything is in two cherished syllables. Mum.
Unknown author (1000+) nine0009Love is the only wealth that grows when you squander it.
Romain Gary (10+)The more you give, the more you have left.
Think more of conscience than reputation.
Publius Sir (50+)I love it when you talk to me, I also like the fact that you do not always approve of my actions, and your harsh assessment of everything that I do, and your neat tenderness. I don't know how, but I will do everything for you. nine0008 I was promised you (Elchin Safarli) (100+)
Sometimes you just need a break from disappointment. Leave in the past people who bring more and more sadness and resentment to life, remember what you really dream of, and start moving towards your happiness.
Alice Romanova (30+)
- Show the best nine0048
- home
- ❤❤❤ Omar Khayyam — 518 quotes
the story of Dmitry Vrubel's most famous work — Snob
A photo of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev and leader of the GDR Erich Honecker kissing, made by French photographer Régis Bossu, was shown to Dmitry Vrubel by a friend from Paris. “It was a disgusting, disgusting thing, at first I almost vomited,” the artist recalled, “but still, as is usually the case, I wanted to fix in art what cannot be fixed there, and this work is somehow in itself started living in my head. The first sketches of the future graffiti were seen by the poet and artist Dmitry Prigov, it was he who said: “It would be nice to have this work on the Berlin Wall.” Vrubel then laughed and forgot about this bold, but, as it seemed to him then, not entirely realistic project.
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In early 1990, gallery owner Alexander Brodovsky, who had come from Berlin, came to Vrubel's apartment gallery (in 1986-1996 the artist organized the Kvart-Art gallery in his apartment) to find artists for the first exhibition of the Soviet avant-garde in the GDR. He invited * Vrubel to Berlin and offered to draw a work on the Berlin Wall. Then the artist’s acquaintances called * Brodovsky’s proposal “idiocy” (why write on the fence, which, as many then thought, would be demolished in a couple of months), advised him to go to West Berlin and start collaborating with galleries. Despite persuasion and doubts, the artist went to the GDR. nine0008
“When I first saw the wall, not far from Warschauer Straße, I was struck by how low it was,” Vrubel said, “for me, the wall was The Wall, a fortification behind which you can’t see anything — this, by the way, is huge mistake of the GDR people, it was necessary to build 50 meters high so that West Berlin could not be seen from the East at all.
Near the wall, the artist recalled, there was a van with paints, several works had already been painted on it, and the place had already begun to be called the East Side Gallery (Eng. “East Side Gallery”). nine0008
A girl was standing by the wall who “issued permits for painting”, she told the artist that Brezhnev and Honecker were “politics”, and left to consult with someone. “I was told: the Senate of West Berlin and the government of the FRG are afraid that if Gorbachev sees this work on the wall, he will forbid the GDR to unite with the FRG. I even believed it,” Vrubel said. Then they nevertheless gave permission and asked to sign a contract, which the overjoyed artist did without looking. He read the paper only five years later: the document said that by signing, the artists transfer all rights to the images. nine0008
Vrubel explained his desire to portray Brezhnev and Honecker in the following way: “In this work, one German, another Russian, and the Berlin Wall is about the same thing, but vice versa: here is full love, and the Berlin Wall separates two worlds – a precise hit.
” In the 2000s, souvenirs with The Kiss began to be sold in Berlin: magnets, mugs, postcards. But since, according to the artist, for many years the picture lived its own life, and he lived his own, he had no idea to capitalize on popularity.
March 2009Vrubel walked past the wall and saw that his painting was no more - before the 20th anniversary of the unification of Germany, they decided to restore the work on the wall, and paint over some of the images. The artist took a picture of the place where the graffiti used to be, and decided to use the media to draw attention to the fact that it was erased. The plan worked - the Germans were indignant, and Vrubel himself began to draw "The Kiss" again.
It soon became clear that painting the same image a second time was much more difficult than the first. The artist understood that in people’s memory the work was preserved in its original form, and he was afraid of reactions like “well, yes, of course, that one was cooler, we all understand, it’s difficult to repeat, and you are not so young.
