Love and Relationships

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Being in a relationship is a wonderful feeling when things are going well and can be the disastrous when it hits troubled waters.

Now relations can be romantic or platonic. In case you are wondering it’s the opposite of romantic. My knowledge on this particular matter has improved leaps and bounds over the years. My astute power of observation and a few personal experiences have propelled me to be a relationship Guru. 

Don’t let my single status sway your faith at my ability to provide good sound advice. At the moment I will just talk about the 7 stages of Love.

1.   Admiration/Attraction

2. Infatuation

3.  Hope

4.  Love

5.  Passion/Obsession

6. Fear/Doubt

7.  Ecstasy

It all starts with admiration and when you start to feel comfortable around that person you get attracted to him/her. You see yourself spending more time around your object of affection and find the slightest excuse to meet or interact.

Over time, your attraction gets a lot stronger and then you start to get infatuated with that person and enamored by his/her presence. You feel a nervous energy consume you when that person is around.

You hope your feelings are reciprocated and accepted. You will tend to scrutinize every word action and inaction to get validation of the person’s level of interest in you.
If the feeling of infatuation last for more than four months, you can presume that you are in love. 

In time you will become obsessed with your new found love and will find no fault and accept all imperfections. At this stage you can say that ‘Love is Blind’

Over time you get used to the attention and your attraction and excitement of being in love will diminish as you will start to take this for granted. At this stage you will tend to question and doubt if your lover still feels as passionately as they did before. 

Most couples part when they fail to keep the roaring fire of passion alive. They tend to slip in to a routine and boredom creeps in.

Very few get to the stage of unconditional love and ecstasy. This stage consists of a higher form of love spiritual love.  

During each stage you will come across certain choices

1.   Continue and moving forward

2. Stall

3.  Slow down or go backwards

4.  Exit

At each stage, your intuition will tell you what to do and when to do it. 

By taking notice of the signals from your head and heart, you will be better able to interpret what your intuition is telling you. At each stage, consider, “What am I thinking and feeling?” Are you receiving conflicting messages? Is your head saying one thing and your heart another? This is often the case, particularly in romantic relationships. What happens is there is an agreement error, a contrast between your thoughts and your feelings. This is perfectly normal. 

They make a conscious effort to progress slowly and purposefully through each stage, enjoying the process, while allowing their love to develop naturally.

Communicating is the key ingredient in making any relationship work

You should be open and honest about your feelings, so that you can trust that everything has been said and understood by both parties. 

Don't be afraid to speak your mind. If love is true then you will be able to share exactly how you feel without the fear of what your partner will think about you.

Its important to feel a 100% comfortable to say and do whatever you want to do. Don't try and be someone you are not, as in time you will just become a clearer picture of who you really are.

Even if you find that things aren’t what you would have hoped for, at least you know what is going on and then you can work on making it better.

Most of us have experienced love blindness. We either think we love someone or do not realize until it is too late that we actually did love someone. You do not have to be blinded by love. You have the power to recognize it, but you must use smart decision-making skills to avoid making fatal relationship mistakes. 
 
As you progress through each level, you will no doubt experience excitement and anxiety, hope and fear, arousal and dis-arousal, certainty and uncertainty, along with a myriad of other feelings. You will need to work hard at balancing the messages that you are receiving from both your head and your heart to most accurately interpret the incoming, overwhelming information—it is very easy to be misled.

So my only advice to you is to look out for signs, listen to your head.