“Understanding is love’s other name”
― Thick Nhat Hanh
Life’s greatest joy is the experience of love and connection in our most intimate relationships. Most people yearn to deepen their intimate romantic relationships and find it hard to do. With books like ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ it’s clear to see that we feel like men and women come from different planets!
I DON’T NEED TO LEARN TO LOVE, DO I?
Where do your ideas and beliefs on how to love come from? Beyond society, friends and TV – many of your ideals on love and marriage were established by your parents and upbringing – whether that involved a complete functional family or not.
I come from a traditional family background, raised in the UK with my Indian-origin parents and grandparents – I do consider myself blessed and lucky. Whilst my family gave me a lot and enabled me to grow into a healthy and educated young man, I have recently realised that there was still some development required on the relationships front. Working long hours, managing a family, household and elderly parents meant that my mum and dad didn’t always get the chance to express as much affection and appreciation to each other let alone us kids.
Having participated extensively in personal development programmes, I have had plenty of authentic conversations with my parents and completed many of the unsaid things I needed to. The journey to reach the ripe age of 35 has involved some happy-but-painful-ending relationships. I often found the triggers in my relationships traced back to my parents relationships and notions around the expectations of a man and women in a romantic relationships. However, those approaches may have served a purpose back in the day – but we now live in a modern society in which fairness and equality have become the ideals.
My work on masculinity has also uncovered that whilst being ‘fair’ is the right thing – equality isn’t always the best approach for your intimate relationships. According to David Deida, sexual chemistry is created only when there is a polarity between two individuals; between a masculine and feminine energy. This doesn’t necessarily mean between the man and the woman but where those two poles reside. Masculine is stillness, purpose, awareness. Feminine is energy, creativity and movement. There can only be one ravisher. I have been in relationships where we both have strong masculine presence and it’s not fun at all. Many times, I have been the more romantic partner and always left feeling unloved as I never got much affection or attention back – a good example of me being more in the feminine (as well as doing a lot due to feelings of not being good enough, just being me).
EXERCISE #1 – BECOMING AWARE
The first thing you and your lover need to do is bring awareness to how you even got to where you are in your relationship. Talk about the journey you had to take, talk about the beliefs you have and where you think they started.
Take some time out and head to a local coffee shop. Start by exploring each other’s family relationships – good questions to ask include:
- What was your parents’ marriage like?
- What was it like for you growing up? Did you receive much love and affection?
- What kind of decisions did you make growing up and are any of them still being lived around how marriage should be?
- What beliefs do you have around the role of a man and woman in relationships? Why?
Then move onto your relationship. Here are some simple questions to start you off. You could potentially capture the answers in creative ways (vision boards, collage, journal, etc):
- What is Love?
- What does it mean to give and receive love?
- When do you feel most loved?
- What are the biggest blocks to love?
EXERCISE #2 – LOVE LANGUAGES: THE MAGIC OF COMMUNICATING IN THE SAME LINGO!
Ever felt like you’ve been doing so much to show your partner how much you love them – taking the bins out, cleaning the bathroom and paying for the holiday – and yet, still she complains of not feeling loved by you?
Well – turns out that there are different ‘languages’ spoken between us when it comes to love.
NY Times bestseller, Gary Chapman, has spent over 25 years studying how people engage with each other – in all kinds of relationships – and discovered there are ‘5 love languages’ with which people like to express and receive love.
We all have a preference for one of the following as our primary (and usually a strong secondary) love language: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, Physical Touch.
This has been a game-changer for me and I have got my whole family to take the test! I discovered that my sister sometimes just wanted to sit and watch a movie (Quality Time) whereas I just wanted to help her make stuff happen (Acts of Service).
With my partner, we have both done the test – leaving us feeling very nourished when we spend time together and express our respective love languages!
Do the free test here: 5 Love Language Test (10-15 min)
EXERCISE #3 – 36 QUESTIONS JUMP-START YOUR CONNECTION
In 2015, there was an article on the New York Times: To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do this. It proposed that a series of 36 questions followed by 4 minutes of eye gazing with a complete stranger could result in feelings of deep connection, empathy and even love.
I have tried this many times, from family/friends (yes, they think I’m weird… but I stopped caring!) to romantic partners and found this to be a really great game to play. I would simply print the questions out and mix them up in a bag, so that each person would pick on randomly. There are three distinct phases of intensity, so it is advisable to start with the more light-hearted ones!
Have a read of the article and give the questions a go…
NY Times articles: 36 Questions that lead to love (60 min to whole day!)
Online Website: 36 to fall in Love
EXERCISE #4 – A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MY FUTURE SELF
An exercise I have used many times – in the context of relationships and just generally in life. If you’re feeling particularly deep, you could write your own obituary looking back at your entire life. Otherwise, at least have a go at picking a significant birthday in the future, say 5 or 10 years ahead, which gives you a chance for your relationship to mature, have children, move home to the suburbs, etc.
What to do:
Get a pen and paper. Sit somewhere without distractions. Put some music on. Light some incense.
Write a date in the future at the top, e.g. 14 February 2025. Then, describe in vivid detail, using all of your senses, what your life would be like for a day in the future.
Talk about how you feel when you wake up, describe your home and what you do.
- Talk in detail about your morning ritual with your partner.
- Talk about how you could spend your day.
Many inspirational books and even science has proven that our mind has an ability create a future possibility and allow our body to viscerally feel it. When emotions are involved, our heart gets charged up – and this creates an energetic field which is aligned to that feeling. Dr. Wayne Dyer often talks about the power of experiencing our future state in the present as a way to powerfully attract this into our present reality versus the feelings (and energy state) of lack that many people get stuck in.
I have a piece of paper with this exercise I did 3 years ago and currently find myself in a relationship with someone who matches pretty much word for word what I wrote! So trust me, it’s worth giving it a go! And if you’re in a relationship already, do it independently then share with each other, so that you can serve each other in realising what’s important for you respectively.
IT’S A MARATHON, NOT A RACE
This is just a taster of what you could do to get your relationship to become more conscious. Why is it important? As I said at the start – nothing is more nourishing to your soul than healthy and meaningful connections. It doesn’t have to just be romantically – but if you do have or desire a romantic relationship, they become fantastic platforms to experience the deepest meanings of life itself.
“Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love – now you are love.”
― Osho
