by Dawn Billings, founder of RelationshipHelp.com
What are the rules that insure love wins? To successful play any game we must know and understand the rules. I would dare to say that many more people know the rules to play basketball, or football, than they do, the rules that insure love will win.
There are three benefactors of love in every relationship. The first is ourselves. Love makes us happy, excited, and gives us that deliciously warm feeling inside. Love benefits us and that makes us happy. The second benefactor is another person. We love another to hopefully share with them the feeling of love they want and need. This is very easy to do in the beginning of a relationship. The hormones of infatuation, and the excitement of newness makes it easy to focus our attention on another person. But there is a third benefactor that we must also keep in mind is the 'relationship'. This third entity is every bit as important as the two people in it.
Most of us find that if we are honest, we are most comfortable with loving for OUR personal benefit. There is nothing innately bad about loving someone for the way it makes us feel, or because we are getting what we feel we want and need. Who doesn't like feeling loved and special, and getting their way? But love isn't just about how we are feeling at any given moment. Feelings are fickle and change often. They can get hurt or disappointed and work against the health of a relationship instead of for the benefit of the relationship.
Authentic love expresses itself as a verb, an action, not simply a feeling. Love tells us that if we commit to loving someone, we need to love them in a way that THEY experience as being loved, but even more importantly, loving them in a way that is best for the health of our relationship. This can be frustrating because often what is best for our relationship, can sometimes be at odds with each individual's selfish desires.
In order to love someone in a way that strengthens and benefits the relationship we must be willing to erase all that stands in the way of love. This is never easy for it requires that we empty from our relationship cup everything that does not support, nurture and strengthen love. Only when we are willing to live for love, be love, give love and receive love can love be at its best in our lives.
You see, feelings complicate everything. It is impossible to truly love someone, and show love in ways they can see it and feel it, while we are feeling hurt by them, or we are convinced there are rational and justifiable reasons that prove they are behaving in ways that are impossible to love. In those times it is more important than ever to look over to the corner where our relationship is sitting quietly and consider, what is the best thing I can do to for the relationship to continue to thrive?
Enjoy the video below as it shares the rules necessary for love to win. These rules are written by the author of love. When we approach love, respecting these rules, we can be assured that love always wins.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always truss, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
You must choose what you are going to be committed to—loving someone, loving ourselves, and/or loving our relationship. It is a challenge to say the least. That is why I recommend you consider what I call the four wins. In win-win, you can win and I can win and the relationship can lose. That is exactly what happens when people are guided by hurt feelings and decide it is best for both of them to not be together. But consider this. Be creative and loving enough to find a way for you to love, for your partner to feel they are also loved, the relationship can be nurtured and loved and the four win is when God looks down on your efforts to love and smiles.
Personality expert Dawn Billings is the author of over 15 books and hundreds of articles. Dawn is the founder of RelationshipHelp.com and the author of the comprehensive ONLINE relationship program RelationshipHelpAtHome.com Dawn is the executive director of the luxury Relationship Help Resort in Arizona where she hosts private couples therapy retreats and intensives.
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