posted February 03, 2004 04:38 PM         

Your heart races every time he calls and your palms sweat whenever he's near. You think he may be "the one." But how do you know if this is the real thing?

Dennis Neder, author of Being a Man in a Woman's World (Remington Publications, 2000), says love has three stages: the infatuation stage, the bonding stage and the familiar stage. Dr. Neder, an ordained minister and doctor of metaphysics, says it helps to consider all three stages when determining if you have the real thing.

The infatuation stage is when you can't wait to be with the other person. This is the romantic stage of love, says Dr. Neder, who warns that this is the stage when people thinks it's "the real thing." But this stage lasts only a short time.

The second stage, says Dr. Neder, is the bonding stage. During this stage you get to know the other person and you start planning aspects of your life around them. If you continue through this stage you eventually enter the third stage, or what Dr. Neder calls "the familiar phase."

In the familiar stage you've established a pattern that involves the other person. "Your lives become intertwined and merged," Dr. Neder says. "You know foundationally how the other person feels about almost everything. And interestingly," says Dr. Neder, "you also become refocused on your own life, direction and goals." Dr. Neder says this is where most professionals believe "real love" starts.

The Definition of "True Love"
"Love means never having to say you're sorry," or so the famous line from the movie Love Story goes. But when asked to define what true love is, even the experts have to pause and think. Perhaps it's because true love has different meanings for different people.

Dr. Neder defines true love as caring about the health, well-being and happiness of another person to a greater degree than your own health, well-being and happiness. "When you carefully consider your words, thoughts and actions, and specifically how they will benefit that other person," says Dr. Neder, "you're in love."

Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (Bantam, 1998) and The Wisdom of Menopause (Bantam, 2003), says "true love is when you care enough for another person to allow them the space and time they need to become all they can be."

Conversely, if someone says to you: "If you love me, you would ...", that is not love, says Dr. Northrup. According to Dr. Northrup, this is the "second chakra" talking. And when "love" comes from this place, it's about control. True love comes from the "fourth chakra" and is easily recognized as unconditional support.

Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D,. and Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., authors of the upcoming book Everlasting Love, say that true love occurs when you shift from unconscious commitment to conscious commitment. "When you hear people say: 'Relationships are really hard work,' this is an expression of unconscious commitment," says Kathlyn Hendricks. Conscious commitment, say the Drs. Hendricks, means that you reveal your true self to your partner and support your partner through thick and thin.

Laurie Moore, Ph.D., says all love comes from an open heart. "When you're together, it's open and safe at the same time," she says. Moore believes, however, that this doesn't mean the person you love is necessarily your life partner.

So how do you know if you're in a lasting relationship? Here's what the experts say:

Nine Ways to Tell if Your Love Is Real

1. You feel good. A good relationship makes you feel good about yourself.

2. You look forward to spending time with your partner. You don't need to be with other people or go to events to avoid being alone together. You enjoy spending quality time together even when it's quiet.

3. You respect your partner. You hear yourself bragging about your partner. You say things like: "My husband is a really talented singer-songwriter." If you find that you're always talking about yourself, you're not focused on your partner or the relationship.

4. You're interested in what your partner thinks. You ask your partner's opinion about issues that are important to you. It's OK if he or she disagrees with you.

5. You accept your partner's quirks. Everyone has them. Even you! If your partner's quirks are endearing or tolerable, you're in good shape. If they really bother you, you should look more closely at the relationship.

6. You're able to work through your problems. It's natural to have some bumps in the relationship road to true bliss. People in healthy relationships see disagreements as a chance to learn more about their partner. However, if you're creating problems, or if you think every fight is the "big one" leading to a breakup, you should probably rethink your relationship.

7. You feel safe. You're not afraid of losing your partner.

8. You can't explain why you're together. Many people coordinate their lives so that they have to be together. But ask yourself if you're together because you truly want to be. If the answer is "yes," then you'll probably stay together. If it's "no," you're bound to have problems — if you haven't already.

9. You don't compare your partner to others. There will always be someone more beautiful, smarter or more athletic than your partner, but you don't care because you only want to be with him or her.

posted February 03, 2004 11:30 PM         

I think it's really accurate and it reinforces what I've been thinking about true love lately. So I guess I'm on the right path...

.gloria

posted April 23, 2004 03:41 AM         

Beautiful post!

Almost 90% of the points enlisted here have turned out true for me in my previous relashionship. Im sure it was true love but i gs it wasnt meant to be. I have saturn in my 7th house and i gs the effects of it make things go away far too soon.

posted April 23, 2004 01:20 PM         

I have found that I am very demanding
I CANNOT accept a man's quirks and all

and I do compare him to other people, I don't think there is anyone who doesn't do this. Also I can be a pain and not want to be alone with him without something to do!

At no time do I expect too much of myself, but I do expect much from my partner and that's my best quality. I have Venus in Aries where there is NO Essential Dignity. So I cannot hide my feelings in anyway. I expose everything in love.

I have found that you have to accept yourself, and forgive yourself for all those things above, before you can apply them to another. In other words you have to live a full, very full life and love hundreds before you become an artist at love.

My experience and recommendation is

Shop Around,

posted April 23, 2004 01:43 PM         

Is there a slow Transit thing happening with either one of you?

posted April 23, 2004 02:17 PM         

Remember when you posted your family's birthdata a while back? I looked at both yours and your husband's charts and felt some things, but did not want to comment at the time because we don't know each other very well.

What would you like for me to do?

Love,

posted April 23, 2004 02:31 PM         

Your husband is very different from you. I would venture to say, a young soul. He has a lot to learn about creating and respecting depths, especially the ones that speak only in silence.

I think you are looking for not only emotional erotica, but spiritual presence. You use your third eye a lot and am pretty sure you want to have exchanges with a partner who uses theirs too.

Somehow, I got the feeling that the world around you has gotten you to question whether you are growing deaf to something. YOu're not . . . it's the other way around.

Love,

Aphrodite

posted April 23, 2004 09:14 PM         

if it were me, personally, lol, I would be upfront and honest with him about everything.

I say this because

1 ) I just believe that honesty is essential in all of our human interactions anyway.

I feel that it is the essential ingredient for all of our growth within all of our human relationships, no matter what type of relationship we happen to be talking about, whether that be mother / child, sibling / sibling, mate / mate, etc....

My personal motto is 'If we don't have honesty, then what do we have?' because if we aren't dealing in truth, I just don't see how we are going to get from Point A to Point B.

'The truth shall set you free.' I love that phrase.

2 ) I have seen something like this happen recently this last year within my own family.

Do you recall how I started the thread about "How do you make a relationship last?" or something like that in the Free For All Forum I think it was, back around Thanksgiving Day, I think?

Well, my brother and his wife are officially getting divorced now, and it just sucks, and personally, sorry again, lol, where they are concerned, I think it might have all been avoided if they had just TALKED THINGS THROUGH and REALLY TRIED to reconnect in a sincere, honest way a whole lot earlier before things reached the breaking point of their separation anyway.

My brother says that what led to him leaving and trying out their trial separation were things like....

'We got stuck in a rut.'

'We started taking each other for granted.'

'We didn't talk to each other when I walked in the door after work anymore.'

'We fell into a brother and sister type of relationship with each other.'

( Although, it probably still had sexual privileges. Even I haven't asked them about that question yet, lol. )

Anyways, it's a long story, but he moved out last fall, got his own room, she decided to start dating to 'see what was out there,' as a single woman again, she has slept with a couple of other guys by now and she has a steady boyfriend as of the last thing that I know, he has begun sleeping with the older woman who acted as his 'confidante' / flirt for the final 9 months before he even moved out of their house, ( he didn't sleep with her before he left the house, it was only after he left their place that he took that step with this other woman ), and after all of this, what do they each say....

HE, the one who left their house in the first place, says that....

'I still love her.'

'I don't want a divorce. SHE wants the divorce.'

'When you get married, you should stay married.'

'I would go back home if I could, but she doesn't want me.'

She says that....

'I would take him back, but I can't trust him anymore.'

She says she can't trust him because he was confiding in / flirting with someone else for so long before he even left, and she feels that him doing those things breaks something between them, even though he never slept with her until after he left, but still....that's a big deal to her anyway, and....

she can't trust him because he did just up and leave her that way, and how can she trust if he is really committed to her on account of that?

His final take on it is that....

'It was just never the right time for us.'

'When she wanted to work it out right after I left, I didn't want to do it.'

'When I wanted to work it out after I had been out of the house for awhile, she didn't want to do it.'

'We couldn't get in sync about things at the same time.'

So, I don't know, it just sucks. Maybe they aren't even supposed to be together anymore, and this is all a good thing.

But, I, and everyone else in my family as well, just has a hard time believing that things wouldn't have had a much better shot at working out between them if they had just been honest with each other during all those months before things reached the breaking point that led to their trial separation.

This separation is a step for them where there seems to be no coming back from now.

So, I don't believe in letting things fester in a relationship at all.

I do feel that communication is the key to success in any relationship, you know, I am of the Dr. Phil mindset that says, "Take the Get Real challenge."

I am of the belief of 'Get Real with yourself and Get Real with your mate.'

I am not sure what any two people can do to help a situation if they are not working on it together.

That's my personal two cents on this topic anyway.

I wish you luck, and I am really sorry if any of this came across as me speaking to you on a 'podium' in the least.

I guess I just don't know how to post in this Forum very well, it seems.

I love writing essays, so that really does explain what might come across as being my analytical and persuasive way of posting about certain questions sometimes.

I am so sorry that it annoys or offends you though.

Love And Light!

posted April 24, 2004 07:32 AM         

A good man is a terrible thing to waste. Make sure to hook me up with him if things don't work out. I'll even be there before the transition starts to help you both through it. But only if I'm not going to make things any worse...

Who knows!

In the mean time, I think I'm beginning to understand where you are coming from. I too would talk to him. Maybe allow him the opportunity to contribute in his own special way once he understands. Is he going to be "the last to know?"

posted April 24, 2004 02:55 PM         

Surface stuff is easy after a while and for some of us, really easy. It's just that we all need a challenge after a while, to rejuvenate the bond.

Change isn't easy, it's like you have to kill of the old you to survive and it's scary. You have to get the new you at the same time. Where do you go? The reality is we all need something or someone to rely on while we go through these changes.

It can't always be our mate,
If I get married again, I'm getting a weekly psychologist.

Natasha
Taurus
Cancer Moon

posted April 24, 2004 02:58 PM         

But he is surrounded by all these feelings, negative and positive and it’s scary to open the door. In the meantime you have to ask yourself, what do I do with the old me?"

posted April 24, 2004 11:24 PM         

Look to your faith to pull you through this...every married couple goes through times of feeling uncertain about things...I think it's a natural thing. And keep talking..even if it's just to makes posts here about it...talk it out...never hold it in, for holding back is like an oyster with a grain of sand..except your grain does not turn into a pearl...it turns into heartache, ulcers, headaches, worries and depression.

I also talked to my doctor about something for my depression, and she prescribed Zoloft for me that has been a God send. I am not surpressing bad feelings, but this medicine gives me the ability to think clearly, and be more rational. Whereas before the wheels were turning so fast in my mind that I could not keep up...

posted April 25, 2004 03:27 PM         

you are very welcome Pixel...and I completely understand what you are saying about reality and fantasy...wow...fantasy is healthy to a point you know, but when it begins to take over your life realistically, then there could be a problem...and that is exactly what happened to me. I let alot of fantasies come between my marriage and it almost ended several times because of it. So, yes, you are right, we all need a happy yet level way of thinking when it comes to balancing both of those aspects in life and marriage. But it sure is easy to sit back and just dream about how things should be, instead of making it a reality. Because in dreams, there is nothing hard about it. Reality forces you to admit that you actually have to work at getting along.

It's sortof like eating a pie. Two scenarios...a store bought pie, versus a homemade pie. Now, you can go to the store, stand in the bakery and look at those delicious pies. Pecan pie being a fav of mine. You pick it up, pay for it, go home and eat it. Nothing to it. This kind of pie equals a dream. You want pie, you go get pie, you eat pie. Nothing hard about that.

Or, you can get a recipe, you can go buy the ingredients, and work and work and knead the dough and mix and mix all the stuff. Place each pecan with love on the top. Heat the oven, put it in there and wait for it to bake. The oven heats up the kitchen. And you have to wait on that dough to be done. Then, you have to wait on it to cool a bit, or else it will fall apart when you cut it. This kind of pie equals what love really is like. Because you can have 2 people aka the ingredients...but you have to work and you have to mix and you have to heat up a bit, through disagreements and such...but then you have to allow yourself to cool off...and then you can "slice" your pie aka make up...and have a wonderful piece..aka realizing that love is still around and hope is still abounding...

I prefer to make my own pies these days, as opposed to always just buying one...it makes me a better "baker" aka wife...for the more times you bake the pie, the better you become at it...