Friday, December 20, 2013

Love and Christmas? I yust go nuts at Chreestmas~

I yust go nuts at Creestmas…  A Love Story

A Svedish play on words. I know, bad pun … but then, Christmas is supposed to be fun, joyous and yet religious.

But for many of us it’s also a time for reflection and loneliness.

Love is an elusive quantity for so many people. We seek and we search and we hope and we cry.  And one of the most frequent questions I hear is, why is it so hard to find someone to love.

That is not the question tho is it. The question is, why is it so hard for us to find someone who can love us the way we need to be loved and who we can love the way they need to be loved.

AH! Now you are getting it! When we were young we didn’t even have to think about love. It just pounced on us! Literally sometimes! We could go from one boyfriend or girlfriend to another in no time at all. Songs were written like, Make a Choice Between her and her sister! That’s how easy love was back then. Not because love was easy but because we fell in love so easily. We didn’t worry about whether it was going to last. We assumed it would because, after all, love would last forever! That’s what all the songs said, the movies showed and… well that was our expectation.

Today? Different story. Reality has beaten us up. The reality of love is that it takes more than just a feeling to make it last. As I wrote my book, The Twenty in all of my interviews I learned that love is never enough. And now that we know this and now that we understand how rare TRUE love is we are almost afraid of even trying. Disappointments litter our past like clouds fill the sky on a rainy day.  What should we do? 

Should we remain in our own fear? Hide out in our own lives and never try to love again?

What are you doing? Is it working?

Here is my solution. It seems to be working for many people and I hope it will work for you.

We stop dwelling.

Yes. Stop dwelling on the evils, negatives, PAIN of the past and start dwelling on those things that were good.

In nearly every relationship there are some good things, some good times and some good that comes out of it. We need to start remembering and dwelling on the good things that happened in that or those relationships.

I had one woman come to me for counseling and in the counseling all she could say was that when her partner ended their two year relationship all she could tell me was that her partner had been using her for sex. No matter what else we talked about she was adamant on the fact that for two years he used her for sex. I asked if they had done things together and had done fun things. She said of course. I asked if it was possible for someone to reach a place where they knew that the person they were dating was probably not the right person for them to spend their life with. She said yes.

But every time she came back to ‘but he was using me for sex’. I even asked her if she enjoyed the sex, if she initiated sex at times and if she was happy with how frequently they had sex. She said yes to all of these questions. So I asked if she might not have been using him for sex? She was horrified… no, I loved him! Was her response.

I asked, wasn’t it possible that he thought he loved her and then found he didn’t?

She said no, he only was using me for sex.

After several more sessions she was finally able to see some of the good things in what he did. She actually came around to realizing that he had done the right thing when he faced her and told her he was not happy in the relationship and that he was ending it.

She stayed a client for several months and learned a lot about herself and how she needed to change her way of thinking about love and relationships. Over the years she had shared with me how she had needed to break a couple guys hearts because she had found they were not the right man for her. At last, she was understanding completely.

Last year I got a note from her and she has found a new love and was planning a marriage. How exciting for her. Three years after thinking she was being used she now realized what real love was and how it was finally going to work for her. She expressed how Christmas had become a time of rejoicing and love and no longer a time for being alone and sad.

If you just go nuts at Christmas because you are feeling alone and sad, please, remember that once upon a time most of us have known love and romance. And that Christmas should be a time to celebrate the love of a higher power and revel in the wonderful things that other people share about their lives.

Be happy for them, share your time with others that are alone and always always always be up beat and positive to help others get through this time of the year when they might be feeling a little down.

Be the light, be the beacon, be the love that motivates the season.

Love and hugs~ Steve Sapato   www.stevesapato.com

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