20 Love Poems and Several Songs of Despair
Hello …. How are you today?
I’ve been told that I haven't talked about romantic love for a long time and it’s so true that I’m bringing you a podcast on the subject.
The title alludes to writer Pablo Neruda’s book because I believe that for every twenty love poems that we embody, we go through endless desperate songs. I wish my younger self, the one who went to therapy feeling distraught, the one who cried with so many fears, would have been told, “calm down, you'll see how everything falls into place”. I’m not talking about things falling into place magically, but about doing the right job on oneself, recovering our power, and falling in love with ourselves and with our life to be able to welcome another person later.
You can listen to the podcast with this player, or if you prefer reading you have a written version below. Enjoy it!
My desperate songs
I vividly remember being single -but in relationships- and feeling terrible because my “love” for my partners lasted very little. I was very young and I thought that if the butterflies in my belly faded away or there were days when I was bored, I had to run away from the relationship because it was a sign of having lost the feeling that had made me start dating the boyfriend I had at the time. That was one of my most desperate songs to be honest. I came to think that my destiny was to settle for insipid or bland love. Another of my most desperate songs was the one about “having to look up to” my partner. I don't know what I was thinking. What did I want? Did I want to be in a relationship with a rock star on a stage who I could admire? Did I long to be with a pseudo genius who thought he was more intelligent than the rest, thus, me too? And I ask myself, why did I want to lose myself in that other person that I needed to worship? Why didn't I seek that fascination in my own life? That's why I usually say that when it comes to love, there is plenty of idealization and little self-appreciation.
The perfect match
The pervasive notion of the other half that has to “excite, satisfy and complete me” is perverse because it places all the responsibility on the other person. Unfortunately, it is the message that a good part of Western cinema, literature, and culture in general sell us. It's so sad to hear someone say "I want to divorce, I don't know why, but I'm not excited anymore", "I can't stand him, he’s so boring ", "we're going to separate, I don't need her anymore". Mind you! I’m not saying that we should settle for whatever relationship as couples did in the past. In older generations people seemed to have a marital contract for life and they didn’t question it. What I’m saying here is different. I’m rooting for self-realization, our personal evolution and unleashing our best version in our own lives. If we seek our personal fulfillment in our couple, we will end up feeling frustrated. If we do not love ourselves radically, we will try to fill out our inner void with our couple but eventually, that won’t be enough. That is why the work begins with ourselves.
“...we demand from the other person what we lack ourselves.”
I was there and I can totally hear my clients and friends when they share with me that they feel overwhelmed or that their partners are no longer funny or don’t make them feel complete. It like a syndrome of our times where there are two people who love each other but one of them goes through a period when they feel deflated and so, they decide to throw in the towel because the relationship is not making them feel what they need. As I’ve pointed out many times, I’m taking out of this conversation all those relationships where people continue despite substance abuse, general violence and mistreatment. In those scenarios, I'm the one who’s screaming “get out of that place now”. In this post, I’m talking about people who, like my younger self, despair because the other person no longer "gives" them what they need, be it fun, calm, passion, stability, significance and/or a transcendental life. I love the fact that when there are two fingers pointing to the other person, there are three others pointing to oneself. So what do those three fingers want to reveal to me? Most of the time, we demand from the other person what we lack ourselves, "he doesn't make me laugh anymore" but... what is your sense of humor like these days?, "She doesn’t excite me anymore" but... What is the relationship with your own body and your sensuality like? "She behaves like a roommate" but... what is your mood like around her?
Loving Love
We are going to feed love with our verbal and non-verbal communication, with our words and with our gestures. This will bring us closer, it will help us relax, it will make us feel that we are there for each other, to cherish and support each other. This requires a lot of courage since we have to dare to be vulnerable, we have to trust the other person to start over, we have to heal our self-esteem to be able to show our soul. What’s more, in a relationship I have to feel confident that I can express my desires in a loving space where they will be welcome and vice versa. We will set healthy boundaries and we’ll respect and honor each other’s needs. On the other hand, we are going to nurture passion with a halo of mystery. If we want to strike a healthy balance between certainty and rich intimacy with our partners, we will have to feed our imagination and sensuality. We will have to reconnect with what excited us at the beginning of our relationship. When we start going out with someone, we dance to a melody between knowing and not knowing, between novelty and predictability, between adventure and structure. It is entirely possible to relive moments like that to spice up our long lasting bond.
When the foundations of a relationship are solid, love and passion can regenerate. Moreover, you’re most likely to fall in love with your partner several times because there will be different stages, agreements and disagreements, love and heartbreak within the same relationship. Remember, when we disconnect from our essence, we dissociate from ourselves and it’s difficult to connect with others. When we integrate of our parts and reconnect with our essence, our wellbeing overflows and it impacts our relationship with the person we love.
A big hug ❤