I'm Not In Love

I’m Not in Love

A very large majority of what looks to be like love relationships is simply codependency. One person fulfills another’s needs, sexually, intimately, mentally, financially, or simply is a surrogate for all the love that he/she didn’t get from a parent or someone important in the past.

Over the last few years, I have taken a long, hard look at intimate love and realized that what appeared to be love in my past was really someone fulfilling a deep-seated need in me. When the need could no longer be met, the relationship dissipated. This happens so often in relationship that it became a pattern I had to admit to contributing to.

Let’s define secure relationship. Two people (not one person) wants the same things in a relationship. Each of these people are secure enough in himself that he can love freely, unbridled and securely. This doesn’t happen because one person is in need of something in the other individual. This secure relationship actually is a rational decision to love someone who is right for you. How many times in your life have you looked at love like with rational? Most times it is completely chemistry. Trust me, chemistry definitely means you are operating on autopilot and the triggers in your brain are defining your relationships.

Will you find true love like that?

We mostly don’t, which is why we end up in caustic relationships that need mending constantly. Solid relationships are based on mutual respect and complete honesty. If you can’t be totally transparent with the person you are with, you are with the wrong person. Love doesn’t disguise itself as hard to get. Love is gentle and cohesive. True love finds itself growing like a healthy plant, with lots of water and plenty of light. You don’t want moon flowers that only bloom when the lights go out. You want the kind of relationship that lasts through the night and well into the day.

I’m sorry if you have found yourself head over heels in love with someone who isn’t reciprocating. But you can release yourself from the bondage of that relationship by separating yourself completely until the feelings are gone and you can see clearly again.

Being an observer of your own behavior takes time and persistence. Not many people can do it. It is somewhat a spiritual practice, because it takes separating yourself from the humanity in you that causes your deficiencies.

I’ll give you an example. A married man becomes infatuated with an unmarried male. Every thing about this unmarried gay male exemplifies what the married man had wished he would have pursued as a young man.

Instead, uncourageously he decided to dismiss his homosexual feelings and get married to his high school sweetheart. Now, all he can see in this single male is what he could have been had he be strong enough to face his feelings as a younger man. Now he is trapped in a marriage with three children and loves them deeply and even loves his wife, but can’t get the gay male out of his head.

The lovemaking between them if powerful—like a drug. He goes back for more and more. He traps the single man into believing the married man is in love with him. But the truth is, the married man is in love with who the single man is. In the human mind, we can’t separate the two truths. But in the frontal cortex of the brain, where we can become observers of the two separate paradigms (spiritual and human), we can see that this is not true love. It is hurting both parties. True, secure love hurts no one in the process.

To break the tie, they must break up and never speak again. I don’t care how hard it is, they will always be a crutch to each other and suspend true, secure love from ever being attained by either.

If the married man discovers his problem, he can recommit to his wife and children. If he’s smart, he will be honest and share his deepest secrets with his spouse, so they can bond in a more intimate way.

If the single male is smart, he will never use this married man to be a surrogate for the father he never had or the father who was abusive and mean.

Both can end up in healthy relationships if they use the lessons they learned from an unhealthy relationship to help them see what they need in a solid relationship.

If you can put yourself in either of these scenarios, you are in the wrong relationship. You are not in love. You are in a surrogate relationship that provides enough glue to keep you together by a strong bond of interdependency. Remember: Our search is for secure love attachment, not avoidance and not anxious behavior.

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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