Ah Love~ is yours just like in the movies?

Don't you just love how the movies and stories portray love. Wheeeeee so wonderful. No problems ever. No one upset because someone looked at the wrong person the wrong way. No one upset because someone didn't take out the garbage or forgot to buy them flowers. No one perturbed (is that how you spell it?) because they disagreed about politics or which TV show to watch or which restaurant to go to for dinner, or why you didn’t bring me a glass of water when you got one for yourself. Ah yes, love~ Now explain to me what you think love is. Yes, what you think love is and why it is or isn’t working for you. What I have found from speaking with hundreds of people is that most of us have this ‘rose colored glasses’ view of love. Most people I speak with are angry at having failed at love and if you look at the cover of my book, The Twenty available on Amazon, the word love is crossed out and written again above it to signify how we have all been wrong in love before. And most of us are so stubborn that when we talk about how to love we say things like, ‘why do I have to change’, ‘why can’t someone love me just as I am’, or ‘I won’t change who I am for someone else’. What I do find oddly funny about those statements is that we are all in a constant state of change no matter how small or insignificant those changes might appear to be. The greatest change people need to make in their quest to find love is in the way in which we communicate. I always recommend two books, of course my book, The Twenty for single people but I talk about the most significant book I have ever read on relationships, one that I teach on in my seminars and that is, The Five love Languages by Gary Chapman. That book should be read by everyone because once you learn what your partners Love Language is and they learn yours it should be an easier task to offer and give them what makes them feel loved and that alone is a HUGE overcoming in any relationship. You make your partner feel loved and they can and probably will forgive most of your shortcomings as you will theirs. That feeling of being loved is such a rare feeling that most of us will give ourselves willing to that partner who once we love them and they make us feel that loved, well, the rest should be history. And therein lays the truth of communication. How we communicate, not just with our words, or our vocal tones, or our body language but with our hearts, souls and minds in offering them the truth, the proving our love by how we give them their love language, how we make them feel loved is the entire key to making your love, the love of your life and living ‘happily ever after’. I hope you do. I have.

Staying in love is hard

I understand your skepticism. I used to be a skeptic also. Then after years of training, seminars and personal learning I have come to the conclusion that OSMOSIS is alive and well in your head! I know, what does that mean, you are asking. Others might call it, subliminal messaging while others call it influence. Whatever you call it I will challenge you to prove me wrong, and that is that things you hear, read and people you hang with will completely influence your thoughts, attitudes, behaviors and FUTURES! Yes, I said your futures! So if what you are doing currently in your life and where you are headed in your life is where you are completely happy then keep doing what you have been doing. If you are not happy with where you are or where you are headed then ... guess what? You might need to change some things you are doing. I have been saying for decades that it's the things you read, the things you listen to and the friends you are hanging out with that will determine your future. That means that if you are hanging out with people who are not happy in their love lives you probably won't be either. If you are hanging out with people who are unhappy in their relationship you probably won't be either. Skeptical? Then don't just believe me, research by sociologist James H. Fowler found that if a sibling divorces, we are 22 percent more likely to get divorced ourselves. And when our friends get divorced, it’s even more influential: people who had a divorced friend were 147 percent more likely to get divorced than people whose friends’ marriages were intact. Divorce, it appears, is contagious. That was the very headline recently regarding a study from Brown University conducted in Framingham, MA—also by James H. Fowler, as well as Rose McDermott. The authors found that 75 percent of participants were more likely to get divorced if a friend was divorced, and 33 percent were more likely to end their marriage even if a friend of a friend got divorced. Here’s a link to Pew’s coverage of this study back in October 2013 Holy cow! Now you should be really rethinking who you are running around with? Ask yourself this, before you had the friends you currently have, were you happier in your relationship or unhappier? Maybe that will be a real eye opener for what is happening in your life. Maybe it will be a really good reason why you are feeling how you are feeling. When I am doing my seminars I am often asked, Steve, how can we stay in love and keep the feelings that we started with. Well, here is one key, hang out with people who are in love like you are in love. Hang out with people who are happy in their relationships. And if you have friends who are downers, guess what you should do? And of course I am asked, but these people are FAMILY! What now? And I still say, maintain the relationships with people who will help you enhance and grow your love and relationships. You may already have found that staying in love, holding onto the great relationship is hard. It can slip away so easily and if your friends or family members are not encouraging that love, affection and relationship by not being encouraging for their own, then guess what? Reduce the time you spend with them. Love is easy, staying in love is hard! I hope if you need support or guidance that you get it early and I will be happy to become one of your mentors and your relationship coach. Because~ I believe in you and I believe in LOVE! Blessings Steve Sapato steve@stevesapato.com