What is Love?

Many clients experience relationship issues that cause them emotional pain. My last relationship breakdown caused me to ask myself about what I mean by ‘love’? And what it means to be ‘in love’? And of course, what can often go wrong and what we can learn from a relationship breakdown. Relationships are how we learn about ourselves and romantic relationships bring up our insecurities, patterns and negative belief systems because they are so intimate. If you are attracting a certain type of relationship, or are wanting to give yourself the best chance of relationship-survival then read on!

When we fall in love, everything goes well and we feel healthy, happy, beautiful, creative and motivated. You can express yourself to this person like no-one else. You are full of excitement and you feel really special. We spend an awful lot of time daydreaming about love, looking for that special person, trying to hold on to that person and focusing on our romantic relationships.

Of course our personal experiences shape our attitudes to romance and we all have our very personal stories to tell but if we look to the chakra system we may find some explanations about how we express ourselves within relationships. The chakras might be seen as the seats of consciousness through which we express ourselves. They are centres that transform energy in to nerve, cellular and hormonal energy within the bodymind and become active at various times within the lifecycle.

Healthy expression through the base chakra allows us to feel grounded, nurtured and secure within the material world. Insecurity, the feeling of nothing being enough, being unloved and uncared for despite our relationship are signs that this chakra is unbalanced.

The sexual chakra concerns self-love, healthy body-awareness and sensuality and many people find expression through this chakra difficult. Sexual inadequacy, jealousy and possessiveness are signs of imbalances here.

The solar plexus chakra has to do with personal power, the assimilation of emotions and abundance. If we express ourselves well through this chakra we have high self-esteem, and we manifest our sense of personal power within our romantic relationships. Distorted and overbearing personalities which mask insecurities, anger- either turned on partners or bottled up and the giving away of personal power in return for ‘love’ are signs that we have problems within this chakra.

The heart chakra expands and becomes more dynamic when we fall in love, but who are we really falling in love with? We may be drawn to a person because they are beautiful, talented, funny, kind, passionate or exciting. However, as our relationship is always a mirror, what we are drawn to is inevitably an aspect of ourselves that we see reflected in that person. Because many of us already have problems with our self-expression, self-esteem and self-awareness we are unable to see that the specialness we attribute to our lover is actually our own power and specialness. We refuse to ‘own it’ and so make our partner responsible for ‘making us’ feel special. We give away our power and then need it back!

We make our happiness contingent upon that person doing something for us. We put pressure on our partner to give us emotional stability.  No wonder we get angry and disappointed when they don’t or can’t reciprocate it. If we are insecure and think we need someone to complete us, then we are always going to have problems within relationships. If you are constantly attracting relationships that show up these imbalances and want to move beyond these insecurities I’ll be doing the next post with specific advice and tapping tips.

At EFT Nottingham, my clients learn to resolve relationship issues by looking inwards and by learning that having a positive relationship with self is THE key to manifesting healthy relationships within their romantic lives.