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

Love, Lust and Puppy Love~ what's the difference~

I recently posted on Facebook how it doesn't matter whether you are in love for two days or twenty years, whether you call is lust or love. What matters is that it feels so amazing that you are open to falling again! I had several people ask me the difference between Love and Lust and then I always insert "Puppy Love" into this conversation because so many people tell the young people that it's not a serious love that it's only puppy love. And yet, there are more teen suicides and violence because of unrequited love than for adults. So is it real love? Obviously it must be. Is it TRUE love, I would say no because true love should never be anything but giving and loving and happiness driven. And 'puppy love' is seldom understanding or giving but typically mostly selfish. When I recommend to people that they go have a great time I am reminded of all of the songs of the past that talk about "love the one you're with" or "just love somebody". Indicating anyone will do! and while on some level I might agree overall those kinds of things are not about love but mostly about sex. So what is the difference between love and lust? My explanation is typically, Love lasts longer while lust is much more superficial. Here's the catch. It isn't when you are going through it. Love and lust feel the same when you are experiencing them. As I interviewed people I had so many people say, "Looking back I now understand what I felt was lust." But many will still deny lust and swear it was love even though they are not feeling that same way towards that partner that they loved then. Lust can be so short and then we understand it is lust because our feelings are gone almost immediately. But for many, lust hangs on to them. So how can we tell the difference between love and lust? Well, lets start of by my reminding you that in my book, The Twenty, I describe how a good relationship might take two or three months to have sex. I know, most of you are screaming WHAT? No way! But all I intend in that is that before we jump into bed that we learn about one another, learn if we are attracted to the person and not the sex. If we laugh and find joy in the relationship and not just in the push and pull of diving into bed. I know for some of you, sex is a very serious endeavor but for others it's pretty routine. A couple dates and our hormones are craving satisfaction. And this IS where love and lust can be separated. If what we are feeling is genuine and loving then when we have sex, make love, fool around, whatever you might call it, we still have a desire moving forward to see that person. And maybe even the next time we see them we won't have sex but completely enjoy the relationship. But way too often, lustful sex leads to that wonderful encounter and the next day you are not even interested in that person. What? Why? How? When what we were feeling seemed so darn genuine. Yes, it is difficult to tell them apart in the beginning. There is another way. Love is about your partner. It always has been and always will be. Lust is all about self. A huge difference for some people but many people can't tell the difference because their idea of LOVE is all about self. Sexually it's all about how I feel and while I care about how my partner feels it is less important than how I feel. Love should always be about your partners happiness. What you can do for them, how you can make them happier by giving them their love language. How you have a need to see them smile, hear them laugh or, sexually, here their pleasure. Now does that help? Lust and Puppy Love are just as intense as falling in Love and maybe even more powerful and almost always short lived. While love can be just as emotionally charged, just as exciting and passionate and will be more fulfilling. Love lingers and keeps a smile on our face for a long long time while lust typically brings a completely different attitude and few smiles after the event. Now that you know the difference I hope you seek to understand love better and that you find that love you have been searching for. Blessings and love Steve Sapato steve@stevesapato.com facebook.com/stevesapato

What can you do to have a great relationship?

What seems to have been such an easy thing to do when we were young turns into a painstaking process for so many as we get older. The question I seem to get in my counseling and speaking engagements is, Steve, why is it so difficult to find the right person. And I hear a lot, I just gave up. So let's talk about why that is. Because when we were young we had very few real expectations: we thought we would just fall in love and live happily ever after. Is that how it worked out for you? For most of us that isn't even close. We have gone through at least one and often times two and three marriages or significant relationships. So? What went wrong? Nothing. We experienced what we needed to experience in order to grow to a place where we truly start a learning process. I know, sounds so trite doesn't it? But when we were young we just expected our marriages to work out and when we realized a marriage/relationship requires so much more than just emotion well, it was usually too late. I wrote The Twenty because everyone seems to be in that same boat of wanting but not getting a great long lasting relationship. So what can we do to find and have a great relationship? Obviously I could write another book about this but... what we can do is understand that we are looking for one special person who can be all that we are looking for (with a couple of exceptions of course). Be patient, be vigilant, be observant and MOST importantly, be willing to go outside of our comfort zone, be willing to change, adapt and grow to become a person who is able to have a great long lasting relationship. And by that I mean... you will have to become the person you are looking for and allow them to be the person they already are. Love them for who they are and change for who they need you to be. If BOTH people are doing this same thing imagine how wonderful your relationship would be? And of course the right person you are looking for will do what you need just like you will do what they need to make your relationship an extraordinary experience for a lifetime. So, what can you do to have a great relationship? Keep looking for the right person and stop trying to make the wrong person fit into your life. Steve~ steve@stevesapato.com is a relationshuip coach and can help you through the difficult times of your life. Write and find out how he can make a difference in your life.

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

Love - It's all about them....

Today is THURSDAY! A day to finalize some things and make sure you are ready to finish things up on Friday so you can enjoy that weekend. One of those things is your partner... make sure you make them feel loved and appreciated. Make sure you are ready to make them smile on Saturday morning... a sweet surprise? A small gift? I wonderful adventure? Show them you love them by planning... yes, planning, something special.

When you plan something special you are telling them how much you care, how much you love them, how much you mean to them.

And when your partner understands that you care enough to plan then they will reciprocate with offering you things that will make you feel more loved also.

I know, but Steve, what if my partner doesn't do that? Why should I do that for them if they won't do that for me? What if they don't reciprocate? Why am I always the one doing all of this? When will they do it for me too?

And my answer has always been the same... do it because you understand love. Do it because you have read the Five Love Languages and really 'get it'. Do it because you love them. And I hope that you will feel better because you did that for them.

And if they don't reciprocate. If they don't do it for you. If they never will, never have, and don't... then know that you are sharing your love in a way that makes you feel good about being you. And, after all, loving yourself and being true to yourself is much of what life is all about.

Then, maybe one day, you will see a change in them or maybe one day they will meet someone like me who says, wow, you should be doing this for your partner. And maybe, one day, they will surprise you with a glimmer of what you have been giving to them.

But until they do? Remember to be you and love them the best way you know how. And smile because you are so amazing.   
P.S.  And remember guys, some ladies love coffee in bed or at least that you thought of them that much.

www.stevesapato.com   athor of The Twenty -relationship book and several other ebooks available on Amazon.com

You allow bad people or good people into your life

For almost 8 years I have been teaching people how to empower themselves. One of my greatest joys in life is teaching women how to empower themselves. I have women ask me, how can you, a man, teach a woman how to be empowered.

I love that question. Because it's so silly. Anyone can teach anyone else if they want to and are open to learning.
Last year at one of my events I had a woman who said she was feeling completely trapped. That she was constantly being pulled this way and that way and that she had no time to be herself. We shared and talked and at the end of day one she was certain she was learning and then she did it... she said she could not come back for the second day because her family needed her to drive and pick up and... and just like that she went right back to empower her family instead of herself.
And if that's what she loves, I say do it! But she just spent several hours sharing with us at different times how she didn't feel valued and felt taken advantage of because of how her family treated her.

You see, if you are not ready to hear a message even if you think you want to hear a message you will hear it but your old habits will pay it no attention.

I recently had a woman tell me that her boyfriend was jealous, controlling and at times, mean to her. I asked her if she liked the way he treated her and she said no. She said she didn't like it at all. And when I asked her what she planned on doing about it she replied, what can I do? I love him.

What do you think?  As a life coach, as a Professional Speaker in empowering yourself should I have set her down and told her what to do? How she should act? Why she shouldn't allow someone to treat her that way?

The answer is, NO! Notice that she did not invite my advice nor did she hire me for my advice. She did not ask what should I do, she merely said she did not like how he treated her but she loved him and therefore allowed him to treat her that way.

So it was truly none of my business.

You see we all allow things into our lives. I teach restaurants how to increase tips for their servers by giving amazing service in ways they have never thought of. And yet I watch customers ALLOW servers to treat them in a manner that is not exceptional. How many times have you or a friend said, my food isn't great and when the server came over and gave your their patented, 'so how is everything tonight folks?' speech you looked at each other and said, "Fine."  You ALLOWED that restaurant to give you less than great food and great service. Yet don't you go to a restaurant to get great food and great service? So why do you allow that to happen to you?
You see, we are all guilty at times of allowing others to treat us in a certain way.

I have the most perfectly respectable West Highland Terrier dog. I can take her anywhere and not leash her and she will stay right by me or if I am playing sand volleyball she will lay under a picnic table waiting for me to finish my game. Other players have brought their dogs but leashed them and when they bark and yelp during the game incessantly and the players will say to me, how do you get your dog to be like that?

And all I say is, I trained her. You see, she now treats me as I taught her to treat me and everyone around me. Respectably.

Do you know you train the people around you how you want to be treated by how you allow them to treat you? Your siblings, parents, children, friends and coworkers. They treat you exactly as you have taught them to treat you.
So if your significant other, your boyfriend, girlfriend, partner treats you badly it is because you have allowed them to treat you that way in the past.

How do you fix it? By empowering yourself to say, please don't treat me like that any more, That is unacceptable to me. I won't allow you to say, do that to me any more.And then take action on what you just said.

I look forward to you teaching people around you how amazing you are and that they should treat you, as you treat them, as i they are all, AMAZING.

www.stevesapato.com  and pick up my free ebook, This One Is For Me! on my site.

I have always been the person that people come to when they have a question about their relationship. I am not sure why. Something in me. Something I offer. But I also know that when I give I receive.

I have women ask me very personal questions. Intimate. Detailed.

But recently an acquaintance, someone that I would have entertained a relationship with at one time in my life and who has been in touch with me for a while stepped up to the plate and invited me to hear what she had to say to me.

You see, it was my turn to listen once again. But this time it was for me to listen with the intent to hear and not to respond or help.
This person proceeded to share with me that I had hurt her feelings once upon a time. And I, in my infinite wisdom could not even remember the conversation.

You see, what often times hurts another we do not see or even understand. She shared with me the entire conversation. She had either saved it in her journal or memorized it in her pain. I, in my wonderful lack of insight, had no recollection of the conversation. You see, to me, it was just a casual conversation, a place that I used as an example of how others say things they do not even know they say... and the strange part of that was, that was exactly what I had done to her.

She explained to me that in our conversations instead of being the loving, considerate and generous person she read on my facebook wall, that I was a hardnosed individual who had a need to be right, sometimes aggressive and often times rude.

Of course this hurt my feelings but sometimes it takes such an awakening to make us aware of our own shortcomings. This was one of those times.

Just learning that I had at one time hurt her feelings and upset her made me feel bad. I desire to help and hold up people and would not wish it known that I deliberately or with neglect had offended or hurt someone and seemed unkind or unloving. So just learning this from her already brought me pain.

To further learn that she thought I was the person who needed to be right, was flippant and uncaring, and even rude was a slap to my face.

One thing I have learned it that if someone genuinely comes to you with respect and with a good heart that they are saying what they felt. Even if I believe it was untrue they believed it was true. Now knowing this. who would you believe. Yourself? or the other person.

Most of us would say... we would believe ourselves. In this situation, because I know her heart, I believed her. And therefore realized I need to do some internal change upon myself.

I share this, not because I want to tell you all about me but because so many of us don't want to believe what others say about us. We have our own protective barriers up and we keep ourselves insulated against words that would hurt us or ridicule us or make us feel badly about ourselves.

That is normally a good thing because so many people do say careless and flippant things, even mean things that could hurt us.

But if you know someones heart. If you know their desire to be honest with you. And if you understand that we all make mistakes, then you will listen, even more, you will hear what the other person has to say. Take it to heart. And make changes.

If you have a partner and that partner comes to you, shares with you and offers themselves to you to try to help you understand something you did or it might have been something you didn't do but should have then you might find yourself in this situation.

A situation that requires you to be open and honest with yourself. And in this fashion it is your opportunity to become someone better than you were before they came to you.

I hope, that one day soon, someone you truly care about comes to you and helps you to become a better person.

After all, that is what love is. Sharing, caring and growing together.

Much love~
Steve
www.stevesapato.com