There are many factors involved in building a love relationship. It helps if two people have a few things in common about how they want to spend their time. It also helps if they have similar values about religion or spirituality, politics, environment, abortion and personal development. It helps if both of them eat junk food or both of them eat organic food. If both are neat or both are messy, it will make things easier if both people are on time or both are late. Physical attractiveness is also very important. It would be great if they had common values around money and cost.
Yet a couple can have it all and not have a love affair even if one element is missing. Without this important substance, all other wonderful qualities would not be enough to make a relationship work.
This important part is about purpose.
At any given time, each of us is dedicated to only one of two different purposes: controlling or learning. While our purpose is to control, our deepest motivation is to find love, avoid pain, and feel safe. When we want to learn, our deepest motivation is to learn to love ourselves and others.
The motivation to find love rather than love is to wreak havoc on the relationship.
Let’s look at a specific relationship problem and see what happens when it comes to two different motives. Jason and Samantha are emotionally estranged from each other and they have not loved each other in a month. The trouble started when Samantha said she wanted to take an expensive vacation and Jason protested. Samantha gets angry, Jason gives up and they have been apart ever since.
Samantha felt she had to have her control over achieving what she wanted. She equates expensive vacations with love - if Jason does it for her, he will prove his love. She used her anger to control herself in getting what she wanted. She wants to have a special feeling for Jason.
Jason's intention is to escape the pain. He gave himself up to control his anger against Samantha. By giving Samantha what she wants, he hopes she will see him as a good and loving husband.
However, as Jason and Samantha both try to control themselves and each other instead of loving each other, their conversation creates an emotional distance.
What would it be like if they wanted to learn?
Samantha's intention was to learn but she was not going to get angry. Instead, she wanted to understand Jason's objections. If Jason wanted to learn, he would not give up on himself. Instead he wanted to understand why this special holiday was so important to Samantha. Samantha and Jason may be more concerned about themselves and each other than finding love or escaping suffering. In their mutual exploration, depending on how each of them felt, they may have learned what they needed to know about themselves and each other in order to reach a win-win conclusion. Instead of Samantha apparently winning and Jason losing, they could have come up with something the two of them could live with together. With some of his financial fears discovered, Jason may have decided that the holiday Samantha wanted was the best. Understanding Jason's financial worries, Samantha decided on a low - cost vacation. Either way, both should feel good about the outcome.
No matter how much Jason and Samantha have in common or are attracted to each other, their love diminishes when their purpose is to control without learning. One wonders how quickly love disappears when one or both partners want to control it. It's just as amazing how fast it comes back when both partners are intent on learning.
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