The right one? Or just another flash in the bed...

One of the greatest challenges we face in our quest for love is selecting someone who will be there when the poo hits the fan.

I think you all know what I mean. When times are great, it's easy for us to find a partner we are happy with and settle in to enjoy life. But it's when the times get tough that peoples real personalities come grinding through.

Yes, I found the right one, they are fun, happy, caring, easy to get a long with... and then, the step kids start acting up, or the ex starts showing up or calling or ... or suddenly something happens that requires money and you don't have enough, or you simply say something really stupid and an argument blows up in your face and there is screaming or hollering or they simply walk out.

How will you know if you have a person who will be there even in the tough times?

In my book, The Twenty, I talk about how we need to look for the warning signs. And I don't just mean look, I mean, investigate. Yes, dig deep into YOURSELF to find out the answers.

Wait, Steve, you said dig into myself? Yes... because if you look at your failed relationships objectively you will almost always be able to see red flags/warning signs that this was not the perfect relationship you kept hoping it would be.

I can't tell you how many people I have helped over the years who were distraught and lost and hurt and so much more because their relationship ended. But as we talked, as I injected my system into their lives we fond that almost to a person, they had seen warning signs and chose to ignore them.

You do know they call it dating for a reason, right? That reason is you are supposed to be LOOKING for the warning signs not ignoring them.

And as you find these red flags you need to act upon them. Ok, yes, you want to be loved. Yes you want to be in a relationship. Yes, it's one of the most important things you want in life. But now, let's put aside all of the Man of my dreams, Woman of my fantasy and get hit in the face with reality.

And that is, when you start a relationship it's called dating (when you are supposed to weed out the ones that won't work in the long run). When you are in a relationship is when you start to get deeper feelings than just comfort and sex. This is when you really need to dig in and look at this person like your life depends upon it. It does! Or at least your future does. And that's when you really dig into the 'oh, it's no big deal' flags. It's when you delve into the 'things that irritate you' feelings. It's when you need to solve all of these in order to get to the 'I will love you forever' reality that comes with more than the emotional 'I love you' stage of your relationship.

I teach relationships. It's what I do and if you really want to find the love of your life then follow my proven method of finding someone who will be worthy of your love. You can find love by learning about love and not just stumbling into another relationship and hope it lasts.

Come and learn about love with my proven system, The Learn to Love School of Relationships.

I am Steve Sapato and I can teach you how to find the love you have dreamt about.
Start your journey now

Love is not our natural state of being

When it comes time to find love one of our greatest challenges is US!

I know, no one wants to hear that. I know I didn't.

I was single for almost eleven years. I was on every dating site and went to dozens of meetups and even managed and owned a large singles group in Tampa, FL. I had a great time most of the time but I wasn't meeting the love of my life. I met dozens of wonderful potential partners, started a relationship with a few only to find they were not the ONE that I was looking for. Then a few things happened in my life.

I actually was helping others find love. I was helping them to look inside to themselves. I was told once upon a time that if enough people thought you were being a jerk, then you probably being a jerk and the same thing applies here. If you are going through a lot of potential partners or marriages and none of them are working out, what is the one common denominator? You.

Shame on you Steve, to tell me that I am the root cause of my relationships failures. That my failed marriages are my fault! You didn't know my ex's. You didn't know what kind of person they were.

Wait~ wait....
I did not accuse you or say that you were the CAUSE.

When I wrote THE TWENTY and recently turned it into an audio book it was done with the sole purpose of helping people to find love in their lives. It still is. And part of that journey is discovering that the greatest challenge to finding that ONE person, that amazing love of your life was so simple that it escapes most of us.

Love is not our natural state. YES if love is showered upon as, like most people have when they are babies (oh you are so cute. hug hug hug kiss kiss. Come give momma, daddy, grandma, auntie a kiss) then our reaction is to love back. Notice I said love BACK.

It's very easy to love when we are showered in love but most of our lives we do not receive love like that. Not in the real world. Not at work. Not with our friends. Not even in our safe and supposedly loving relationships. But our natural state is not to show love. We are cautious, stand-offish and leery of people. If you watch babies take toys and things from other babies you will notice that we are bullies and aggressive. Yes, we can show love and affection but that is not our natural place to find ourselves.

And if you understand this then we are on the right track to find love because first we have to understand that love is not our first nature. Many times as we search for love we are anxious and easily swayed by someone who appears to offer us the love we want and desire. And they offer it because they desire it also.

What happens is that after our initial involvement we both tend to revert back to our natural tendencies which are selfish in nature. I want, I need, I expect... you should have, you need to, you are not doing what I want and need you to do!

Now let's go back to why our relationships are not going in the direction we want. It's not that we are to blame for their failure as much as we are responsible for selecting the wrong person to try to have a relationship with.

Step number one in finding a wonderful, amazing, delightful partner is knowing EXACTLY who and what we are looking for. And as I started this article I want to remind you that I was single for almost eleven years before I discovered my perfect partner and STILL after a few months we broke up because WE BOTH still had things to learn, give and grow into, in order to become that perfect partner.

If you read my book or listened to the audio book then you might, maybe, possibly, might have. partially, started, thought about putting together your list of what you want, need and desire in a partner. And I will still tell you this ... if you are serious about finding that person I can help you refine that list into the actual information you need in order to discover that person to share your life with.
Once Kristen Jensen, now Kristen Sapato, refined her own list, she found that I was as much the man of her dreams as she is the Lady of mine.

Taking training on how to love, how to become a more loving person, will help you discover the love for your life. But it is, ongoing, learning and growing because LOVE is not our natural state of being.

I am Steve Sapato founder and creator of Learn To Love School for Relationships. steve@stevesapato.com

Love is never enough to make a relationship. And one other huge mistake you are making..

Love is never enough to make a relationship.  And one other huge mistake you are making..

Love is never enough and yet that is what most of us base our primary relationship on! LOVE alone.

Oh I know what you are saying, not me Steve. I want much more and I look for much more. Really? Ok, here is your test, pull out your note, message, list, goals for at least ten things other than love that you are looking for. Yes, take it out of your wallet, your purse, your desk drawer. Pull it off of your fridge or wherever you are keeping it.

Oh, you don’t have it? Ok, then right now, right here, while you are reading this, write down those things. Yes, right now write them down. You do know them correct?

And I don’t mean those crummy generic guesses. I don’t mean, I want love, and someone who will treat me right, and someone who respects me, and someone who will take care of me, and someone who won’t cheat on me, and someone who wants to do things with me…

Nope. Not going to let you get by with that. NO!

When we say love is never enough and that most people make their choices based on their emotions, based upon that wonderful euphoric feeling called love. That thing that distracts you and blinds you and allows you to look right past some of the most horrible obvious things that tell your friends, danger Will Robinson! Danger!

You see if you allow your ego and your stubbornness to keep you from writing down the things you really want in your next partner you are making your second huge mistake. Write down specific things. I don’t just want someone who will treat me right, by right I mean …   and then describe in detail what you mean. Describe each generic goal in specifics. I want someone who will love me.. what does love mean to you? Is it hugging? Kissing? Is it being supportive or being strong with you? Is it sharing quality time and being close? What does ‘love me’ mean?

If you have those things written down they will be more concrete in your mind. They will rise to the surface and remind you when that someone you love might be great to love but horrible to be friends with. Terrible to spend hours, days and years with.

So now that you have a clue. Get started. Start writing and don’t stop until you have a whole bunch of specific things you want and don’t want in your next partner. And that is the one step of many to your finding the love of your life.

Want more tips? Subscribe to my podcasts. Go to www.stevesapato.com and click on the newsletter sign up to receive news each time I post a new podcast and one newsletter ever two weeks to help you discover some secrets to LOVE.

Steve

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

Is Dating a lost art?

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With all of the online dating sites, all of the Meetup Groups, all of the options that are available to each and every person out there then why aren’t more of us finding the loves of our lives?

When dating sites first appeared it looked like they would take over the world for helping us find that special someone. Then we found that peoples human nature was not as honest as we believed; old photographs, misleading ages, completely untruthful profiles. Now we are so leery of those things that the “old” dating protocols have gone by the wayside also! We can no longer pick up our dates at the door because now they are afraid we will stalk them! When did that happen? and why didn’t someone beat the crap out of those perverts?

And now what about the actual DATE?

What does each of us expect from a date? What works, what doesn’t? I belong to several special groups and we talk about dating, how to get into a relationship, stay in a relationship or get out of a relationship. We talk about what to do when setting up the date, where people should go and it all is so subjective.

On my recent radio show we had a special guest, a woman with her own radio show and a call in where the man said I recently lost my job and have no money. Is it still ok to ask someone out on a date? The guest said she would not date a man without enough money to buy. The panel of men said he should take her to a place where money is not required. I said, don’t take a new woman out of you can’t afford to date her.

So what is right? I recently was the speaker at an event where the women were angry that men didn’t know how to be men and didn’t know how to plan a date. Didn’t know how to be ‘the man’ in the relationship and decide where they wanted to go on a date and they said men keep asking, ‘where would you like to go?’

The problem seems to be that we are just so set in our own ways. The problem is that we have such high expectations. The problem is that dating used to be simple. 

Now we have learned so much that we have complicated that entire process.

When I was young I would call up a girl, tell her my name and ask her out. When she accepted I would get her address and go pick her up. Then we would go bowling, dancing, dinner, a ball game, a friends house party, and it was always ok. We would demonstrate our personality in how we met and acted at her place, how we opened the door for her, how we respected her by how we looked, what we wore, what cologne we wore.

Now it’s meet at a public place to see if we look like out photo because so many people lie.

And yet, did we do our due diligence? Did you even know this was part of dating now? Did you Google me? Did you search the database to see if my name popped up on the rapist or child molester sites. Did you…. wait, what?

Yes, dating is much more complicated now because we don’t use our own intuition.

Intuition, that comes from allowing your senses to be at work. When you email with me, what questions do you ask? When you speak with me on the phone what are you really seeking to know?

I am asked at my seminars so many unbelievable questions. Some so simple they beg for me to slap the person who asked it. How do I ask if a person has been in jail or prison? How do I ask if they cheated on their spouse? How do I find out if they really work where they said they work?

Really? Really??  How about a simple, where did you say you work? and when they tell you, ask, some more. I.e. So for your job do you need to have business cards? Then ask for one. If they can’t produce it, red flag.

Dating has not become a lost art but rather a most complicated dance that you have to know and understand what you should learn in order to move to level two.

Dating is not any more complicated now than it used to be but we have become much less vigilant. We have allowed the electronic media to determine our thoughts. We need to go back to using our own senses. We need to ask the questions and listen for the voice inflections, the hesitations. We need to learn body language and how a question can create a certain response that we should recognize and a potential situation that we might need more information.

Dating has not become a lost art but rather it has become an art form all of it’s own.

For more information on dating come to a He Said/She Said Workshop in Tampa. The next workshop is October 24th at the DoubleTree Inn by the Airport in Tampa, FL. Register at www.westchasesinglesclub.com

http://www.stevesapato.com where you can find Steve for your coaching needs, relationship advice and dating information. Steve is an author, speaker and relationship coach. He also is a business management specialist with his own company Sapato Seminars, athttp://www.mentalprosperityblog.com

You can purchase his book, The Twenty on Amazon or on his website http://www.stevesapato.com

Finding love through fear

Once I thought everyone wanted the same romantic relationship as I did, then I started listening, learning, reading and studying. Now I understand how fragile we all are, how any pain sends most people running into the recesses of their minds and they won't share their real feelings. Fear. Hurt. So now I write from the thousands I have learned from and hope to help you find the person that will help you blossom into the person and with the love you were meant to share.   www.stevesapato.com    www.facebook.com/stevesapato

EVOLVE~

What Evolved Women Want

WAIT FOR A MAN WHO'S DONE THE WORK

While most women have a natural urge to be nurturing and supportive, relationships are not the place for a man's therapy.

Rescuing a man, even supporting a man who's struggling to find himself or move beyond feelings of insecurity and insignificance will almost certainly set you up to be seen in a motherly role, rather than the one he adores and desires to ravish.

Tiger Woods, Jesse James, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Anthony Weiner were all partnered with magnificently supportive women.

No matter how exceptional his gifts, no matter what his potential, if a man hasn't completed his personal work before the relationship it's hard to win his passion once you've allowed yourself to take on the role of his healer and confidant.

Wait for a man who chooses you rather than the man who needs you.

Graham R White