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True Romance? Or True Lies?
Author: Dr. Asoka Selvarajah
Love relationships! A joy or a curse! So much of your time and mental/emotional energy can be tied up in them. Often, people think of little else than the beloved other.
Inevitably, your heart will be broken, at least once or twice. However, you pick yourself up and then go searching for love elsewhere; wherever it may be hiding out this time. Often, people claim that they will never let themselves be hurt like that again. Then they go right ahead and repeat the same mistakes.
Romance is such a strange, variable, and often painful phenomenon. So it’s worth taking pause to consider why we make so much of it. True, while it lasts, it gives rise to wonderful feelings. But what does all this have to do with reality? Moreover, it often doesn't even last that long either!
In fact, romantic love has little to do with long-term Love and Commitment. Any marriage that lasts the course of fifty years or more is certainly not held together by romance. There are definitely many special moments and ways in which people in such long relationships demonstrate their mutual love. However, it is doubtful if they would use the word “Romance?to describe it.
So what is this phenomenon we call Romance; this elusive wraith that each of us seeks like a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow; this sly nymph that vanishes out of the corner of our eye when we think we have at last tracked her down, and turn to take a direct look?.....
In its most positive and useful aspect, romantic love can be regarded as necessary and essential. It provides the initial fire - the emotional impulse ?that brings people together long enough for longer term bonding and reproduction to take place. However, even here we have to be careful. After all, the number of abortive relationships created through initial romantic attachment far exceeds those that succeed from the outset.
Of course, we have all come to accept that as inevitable. We seem to concede that finding the right partner must necessarily be a statistical process of falling in and out of love, until the mix is finally just right. At any rate, that is what all available evidence leads us to believe. There is someone out there who is "right" for us and it is a matter of a trial and error learning process to finally meet that person.
Given the absurdly high failure rate, and its accompanying traumas, where did this heavy reliance upon Romance come from?
Without a doubt, Romance has featured highly and nobly in the literature and culture of civilization for as many millennia as there has been history. Often, the romantic ideal symbolized the soul's search for the Divine: a classic example of this is the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. However, in our modern culture, you may have noticed that Romance has acquired another major backer.
It is none other than the media. To put it cynically, Romance sells product! Don’t underestimate this factor of media manipulation for a moment. Subtle and unspoken, it is also utterly relentless, and totally obvious once it has been pointed out to you. Romance sells perfumes, pop songs (95% of which are romance/sex-based), movies, dating services, astrology columns, clothing, diet plans, cars, chocolates, and more. The virtues of romantic love are as deeply indoctrinated into us in the West as is the pursuit of money. It may be a sham, but it is one that makes a lot of corporations incredibly profitable.
The pressure to conform to society’s mores, and not be the odd one out, induces many people to seek fulfilment in romantic relationships, and often stay in such relationships long after the romance has died out. Ironically, the major advocates for Romance have often faired very poorly themselves.
However, by far the biggest danger of romantic love is that it puts you into an irrational trance, wherein you are prepared to do all sorts of things that would never enter your mind in a more rational and objective moment. To see the other person as “perfect? you have to (a) disengage the rational critical functions of your brain; (b) focus ONLY on the most positive attributes of the other person to the exclusion of all else; (c) project all your own unrealistic fantasies of the ideal person upon your chosen partner; (d) lose total emotional control of yourself.
People do all of this with gay abandon.
Worst of all, you will often find yourself making long-term financial and other life commitments. Later on, once you wake up and come to your senses at last, you wonder how you could have ever been so crazy as to do such a thing! Years of time, and large amounts of money go, up in smoke in life after life, thanks to unfulfilled romantic expectations. Some people actually do this several times running!
What is the best approach? A cold clinical, icy and scientific analysis of potential partners? Not at all.
There is plenty of room for genuine love and affection. Simply refuse to take leave of your senses next time round! Often, it helps to have some clear ideas in your mind, thought out before-hand, of what your ideal partner would be like. Then, approach each potential relationship with this pre-created concept in place to see if there is even a remote fit. Sit down and write out some ideas of what your partner must be like in every area. Physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, spiritually. Get a picture of that person. Write several pages on every aspect of the dream person for you. Make the whole process like a goal-setting exercise. Then, when that person walks into your life, you will easily recognize him or her.
In that way, the most idiosyncratic potential partners will be eliminated. It is best to do this exercise BEFORE emotional complications are created in a clearly wrong fit. Of course, it is no guarantee of happiness, but it can definitely reduce the number of potential disasters that might occur through having no preparation at all. At the very least, you won't simply settle for whatever comes along!
Also, it helps to always be aware that these concepts of romantic love are things you have bought into for the sake of other people’s profit; large corporations who have vested interests in society acting in this way. Emotions are not things that “happen? to you. They are things you CHOOSE and DO. Therefore, choose carefully in some of the most important ongoing decisions you will ever make in your life. See the whole person for good and ill. Refuse to project your own fantasies. Above all, NEVER make long-term life decisions whilst still in the romantic phase of the relationship!
Let Romance be a beautiful, true and passionate by-product of a well-designed mutually beneficial relationship; not the sum total of it. Then happiness, whilst never assured, is far more likely to endure.
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Dr. Asoka Selvarajah is an active writer/researcher on personal development and esoteric spirituality. Asoka's work helps people achieve their full potential, deepen their understanding of mystical truth, and find joy in their true soul's purpose.
Subscribe to his FREE ezine, Aspire To Wisdom, and receive his brand new E-Book "Inner Light Outer Wealth" for FREE at: http://www.aksworld.com/AspireToWisdom.htm?SRGO You can visit his website at http://www.aksworld.com?SRGO
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