Universal love and private-reality love in your relationship

Before I start, I want to make clear that I never start work with any couple by talking about things like this. Relationship counselling can be very successful, indeed sometimes more successful, without ever mentioning such things. Couples benefit most from starting with (maybe staying with), a practical and direct approach that each partner is brilliant and together they can draw on what’s brilliant in the relationship to heal things.  For practical everyday relationship exercises, see for example Watch movies and grow closer and If doesn’t work, do something different. So this post is kind of what’s going on under the bonnet. It’s pretty advanced. You can most often drive the car without knowing. ( Index page to all relationship posts)

In your relationship, in every sexual relationship, there are three versions of love. THREE. There is universal love, in itself complex and multidimensional; love in relationship, love in presence of being, and infinitely so much else. Plus on top there are two versions of  what I’ll term “private reality” love: your private version of love, and your partner’s version. If you want to feel a deep and nourishing flow of intimacy and close connection with your beloved, you need to begin to step out of private realities about love. Real love has a universal quality. It is not interested in, does not care about, your private ideas around what love should or must or ought to be. These only get in the way. The challenge in answering the call of love is to step out of our private realities and into something larger.

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