Is Romance the Enemy of True Love?

We all want true love. 

But what it is exactly?  According to every romance novel I have ever read it’s this:

A partner who has all the goodies.  They are funny, strong, communicative, creative, soft when we need someone to lean on and yet strong enough to support us through difficult times.

We want them to either enjoy or forgive our families.  They invite us to see their family because they are still great friends with their siblings and have blissful respect for their parents.

We want our partners to think we are strong when we lose our temper and find our emotional instability endearing.  They hold us close until we find calm.  Somehow no matter what we say, we are forgiven without discussion and all hurts have dissipated magically.

They celebrate all significant birthdays, and holidays, remembering that perfect thing we saw when we were shopping two months ago on our vacation, called the shop and had it sent just in time.  They know what kind of flowers or chocolates or other favorite things we like and surprise us from time to time sending them to us at our workplace for all our co-workers to admire with us.

We are looking for true partnership.  Our true love remembers to ask us when making plans, is neat in the common spaces of our homes, helps with the cleaning without asking, even organizes the projects from time to time.  They anticipate when you might be upset at something that happened and checks in accordingly.  They have lifelong childhood friendships and are social butterflies when invited out.  They can get messy and build stuff and fix anything, (which they always find time to do for you, yet look fabulous in a suit —which of course, they have.

It all sounds so romantic.  And wonderful.  And this description of true love I actually think is possible.

Then what’s the problem? 

The problem is that while true love is possible and lovely to experience, how most people anticipate that this kind of relationship will actually become a reality is unrealistic and rare.  Partially because they don’t have the skills to navigate what’s required and want/demand the other person to bear all the responsibility to make it happen.  The imagery of the archetype Knight in Shining Armor comes to mind.  ‘They’ will save the day. 

Most people who are caught up in the romantic version of what they think is a healthy, happy relationship, hope that the people who show up in a relationship are just magically able to do these things.  Resulting in partner people being held to a standard of relating that they likely don’t have, and likely neither does the partner wanting this from them.

It is the magical thinking of romance that often gets in the way of developing true love with another person.  This takes a great deal of time, attention, work, self-awareness, compassion and amazing communication skills.  Basically love is a negotiation —and that doesn’t sound romantic. 

This is only ½ the problem.

The other half, is that while we long for this, I’m guessing most of us no longer think its possible, given our own life experiences and have become resigned to enduring mediocre (at best) relationships.  While still yearning for something different.  Building more and more resentment inside the relationships that we have.

Here’s the good news.

True love really is possible. 

Simple really. 

Here are the steps:
1. You just have to unlearn your long history out-sourcing your happiness
2. You must develop your communication skills.
3. You must increase your self-awareness enough —connect to the values (needs) that you want to meet inside your partnership relationship (all relationships really) to be able to effectively implement #1 and #2.

Perhaps it will help you to hear that my own story.  Like many others, I was a hopeful romantic.  And helpless in my communication skills.  I met the person of my dreams and within two years, we called it quits because of all the trauma and drama that we experienced when together —despite the attraction and absolute shared reality we enjoyed so much.

My story is not unique.  It was (and still is) so surprising to me that, despite giving up, we found our way back, committed to the steps above and now, if you met us, you would likely not believe the history as we share it with others.  Only those ‘who knew me when’ know of the struggle I experienced with Steve when we met.  If we could make it happen, so can anyone else. 

Allow me to elaborate on the process – those simple steps. 

Modeling our deepest relationships after what we see in movies often relieves us from the fact that we are responsible to meet our own needs.  We outsource our happiness.  We think others complete us, or that when you find that perfect —or close to perfect someone, then you can be happy.  This, of course, is romantic —just not true.  It leads us to a lifetime of trying to control others’ behavior, which as you likely already know, is not an effective strategy for a life of ease, harmony or delight.  It’s the kind of thinking that sets us up for exhaustion, disappointment and resentment.

Another unfortunate reality, is the very often we are attracted to ‘what love felt like’ when we were growing up.  This means that the person (people) you are attracted to will likely bring the same energetic experience you had when you were young, whether you actually liked it or not.  It feels like love.  Very often you will find someone who offers you something different than that (even if it includes what you actually want), will not be attractive to you at first glance. 

The good news is that a bit of self-awareness, mindfulness and good communication skills offer you and your partner what you need to re-wire what you learned when you were young.  You can create amazing relationships if you put in just a bit of intention and time.  In this day and age of swiping left (or right?), or deciding on the first date, and pretending for way too long (meaning we don’t show up and tell the truth), we often don’t give ourselves the chance for this kind of connection.  We just keep trying another person and finding the same or similar issues —leaving us thinking we will never find true love.

Romance is not the enemy of true love.  Re-define what romance means.  Become super-aware of why you want to be in relationship (what needs are you hoping to meet).  Add some patience and commitment to those touchstones (rather than any particular person) and you might just find the person who can both fill your true love hopes. If romance is part of that picture, then surely you can ask for what you think is romantic and your person will likely be happy to contribute that to your life!