From the time I was a little girl watching Disney movies up to my adult dating years, I always wanted to be in love. Love was the goal of my life. Once in love everything else would fall into place. So you can imagine how happy I was when at twenty-one I met the perfect guy who had come home from the Navy for a weekend. His sister and I were working  together, and he came by to see her. Wow!! I was smitten.

We dated for four years while he finished his stint in the Navy and got settled back into civilian life before we got married. We found a house that had gone into bankruptcy and were able to purchase it and finish it ourselves. Life was good. I was in love and would live happily ever after just like in the movies. Only that is not what happened.

After five years of marriage, tension crept into our relationship. We weren’t arguing or anything drastic. Our relationship was just off. We didn’t talk like we used to. We didn’t go out like we had before. There was this silent current of tension running through our relationship all the time. I didn’t know what to do. So I went to my pastor for counseling. He suggested a possible separation to sort things out. When I suggested this to my husband, he told me if we did that it was over. So it was over.

When Love Isn’t Enough

It took me years of sorting things out, going to graduate school, even moving to another state before I came to an understanding of what had happened. As much as I hated to admit it to myself LOVE just wasn’t enough. There had to be more to a relationship than just loving the other person because, believe me, I loved my first husband and a part of me still does. But it just wasn’t enough to make the relationship work.

So I kept asking myself what does it take to make a relationship work. I still wanted that special relationship. I still wanted that special love in my life. What did I need to learn about myself and relationships to make that possibility a reality? While in graduate school, I explored love as to whether it was conditional or not by writing a major paper for one of my professors on the subject.

I dated, but it looked pretty bleak. There did not seem to be anyone who was a match. I started to see a pattern emerge. I was dating the same guy over and over who came in different shapes, size, and ages but who was always emotionally unavailable. Hmm! Why was I always attracted to this type of man?

I started to see that there had to be more to a relationship than just attraction and then love. That was for the movies. I had tried that, and it didn’t turn out so well. There had to be a better way. There had to be a higher kind of love. As I explored this new possibility, I came to realize that I had never learned what key ingredients made up a successful relationship. When someone had told me we had to have things in common I thought it meant things like living in the same area of the country. When someone had told me we should have common values, I thought it meant that we loved each other. None of this was wrong or bad. It just wasn’t enough for me. I needed more in a relationship. I wanted and needed a higher love.

A Higher Love

What I came to understand (and it took me years) is that a solid foundation for a relationship had to have more than just wanting to buy a house, have a family, and be in love. There had to be more for me. There had to be a common purpose for our relationship that was bigger than the both of us. Something that we both worked toward to make our lives and others better.

This realization might sound simple to some of you, like ‘duh!’, of course, but for me it was revolutionary. I could have the love I always wanted. I could be in love and have a loving relationship that lasted for years and years. What it was going to take was bringing a higher love into reality. We would need to agree on common core values like honesty and trust, and be working toward something higher than just ourselves. Having a higher goal of making a difference in the world together was key. It would keep us centered and keep us staying true to what love was really about.

Are You Ready for a Higher Loving Relationship?

I coach people in relationships because I believe we all deserve love in our lives. I help people discover where they have gotten lost or off track about what is important in relationships. Relationships are not for the faint of heart, nor are the to be taken lightly. They can breath life into us or suck the life out of us. Learning what is best for you and what works for you is a vital key to having the best relationship you can have.

If you are ready to bring a higher love to your relationship then please contact me for a complimentary initial coaching session to see if we would be a fit for each other.  It could be the start to embarking on an evolutionary journey together for you to have the best relationship you can possibly have. Contact me Here.