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
