An Open Letter to Anyone Looking for True Love

Dear True Love Seeker,

We must begin with your personal definition of TRUE LOVE. Without that, your search is pointless as the roundabout with no feasible exit for your journey. Don’t race to the dictionary, as the definition lies within your own life philosophy and experience. 

Our adult happiness lies rooted in the soil of our childhood. Instinctively, we bonded to our mothers for survival and eventually understood the protective potential of our fathers. All can agree that our basis of love stems from these early interactions. Rather than bandy about the countless theories concerning “mommy” and “daddy” issues, let’s begin with the idea that you have come to terms with your past and are eager to move forward into your own loving relationship.

The best predictor of one’s future behavior is to look at past behavior. By looking at your actions, can you say that you’ve fallen in love with the most important person…yourself? Without arrogance and hubris, do you LOVE the person you have become?

1. Love yourself
It is impossible to give deep love to another if you don’t hold it within yourself. Bitterness can’t be hidden for long; its flavor will spoil the love you’ve found and set you back onto the repeat cycle of dead end relationships. 

By loving the person you are, you accept your humanity which is made up of inadequacies and accomplishments. The pressure is off then! The person you seek will not have the burden of “fixing” you because you’ve accepted yourself wholly. Having that comfort allows you to be open and accepting of others, and the exchange of emotions can begin.

2. Set aside your ego
Mutation of oneself to better fit into a relationship is a necessary sacrifice. It certainly does not mean that you have to give up your personal identity, but if the love you seek will be bound in truth, it is a fact that “to receive much, one must give much.” 

Setting aside your ego to explore what is best for the couple versus what is best for the individual will be a daily choice. There is a sweet spot that each couple must find which will give them independence but also a level of healthy co-dependence.

3. Be clear with expectations
You love yourself, you feel you love another, and the couple you have become has great potential. Did both of you come into the relationship with clear expectations? 

If the love is TRUE in the sense that you’re seeking, then the discussions of what you hope your duo will evolve into will not be an issue. Love is vulnerability and if two people cannot be open and supportive of each other’s concerns or expectations, then are you in the kind of love which you seek?

4. Don’t make promises
Although that sounds harsh and against what you may believe encompasses true love, the pressure of a promise can cause an ultimate break. Instead, try expressing yourself with INTENTION. Intention adds the truth to love; humans are weakest when we’ve made ourselves vulnerable. 

We feed our inner fear when we add the pressure of “I promise to love you forever.” Intellectually, we see that love can’t be perfect because we are imperfect people. Thus, the rantings of heartbroken lovers are as old as mankind. Instead of the fear that “promises are meant to be broken,” embrace the concept that you will “pay attention to the intention.”

5. Check the chemistry
TRUE LOVE is based on chemical reactions. Rather than feel deflated by this fact, celebrate it. The hormonal functions that set off “chemistry” between two people are miraculous. Preparing yourself mentally and emotionally by taking care of yourself will help you sort through the “love fog” after it lifts and you can then enjoy the benefits of a mutually fulfilling relationship. Those who have celebrated countless happy anniversaries give common advice–true love begins after the initial chemistry has ended. Take the time to learn how your particular chemistry is best kept alive.

“Everyone Can’t be in your front row”

Life is a theater so invite your audiences carefully. Not everyone should have a FRONT ROW seat in our lives.
There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a distance.
It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you let go, or at least minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going-anywhere relationships, friendships and family!
Everyone can’t be in Your FRONT ROW.
Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention. Which ones lift and which ones lean? Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill? When you leave certain people do you feel better or feel worse? Which ones always have drama or don’t really understand, know or appreciate you?

The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you… the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of YOUR LIFE.
” If you cannot change the people around you, Change the people you are around.”
Remember that the people we hang with have an impact both our lives and our income. And so we must be careful to choose the people we hang out with, as well as the information with which we feed our minds. We should not share our dreams with negative people, nor feed our dreams with negative thoughts.
It is your choice and your life. It is up to you, who and what you let in..

LIFE IS A THEATRE.
INVITE YOUR AUDIENCE CAREFULLY

from--> Lessons In Life

A happy marriage depends on a happy wife: study

A husband's happiness is significantly related to how his wife feels about the union, according to researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Michigan, who say the happier the wife is with the marriage, the more content her husband will be with life in general.

"I think it comes down to the fact that when a wife is satisfied with the marriage she tends to do a lot more for her husband, which has a positive effect on his life," noted Deborah Carr, a professor in the Department of Sociology, School of Arts and Science at RU. "Men tend to be less vocal about their relationships and their level of marital unhappiness might not be translated to their wives."

The team analyzed data from 394 couples involved in a larger-scale study on health and income who had been married 39 years on average, in which at least one of the spouses was over 60 years of age.
They were asked questions about their interaction as a couple: How much they argued, how much they understood each other and whether they felt appreciated by their spouse. Next, each couple was assigned to perform typical couple activities like watching TV or going shopping together and record their emotions in diaries for 24 hours.

Average ratings for life satisfaction in general were high, with husbands showing slightly more enthusiasm for their marriages than the wives.

"For both spouses being in a better-rated marriage was linked to greater life satisfaction and happiness," says Carr.
Should the husband fall ill, the wife's happiness is likely to diminish, according to Carr, who says this is not true the other way around.
"We know that when a partner is sick it is the wife that often does the caregiving which can be a stressful experience," said Carr. "But often when a women gets sick it is not her husband she relies on but her daughter."

The key to marital bliss is a hot topic for researchers studying links between marital happiness, conflict and health, and various studies have highlighted different factors as most influential.

A study from the University of Chicago, published in March of this year, also indicated that the husband's health is a key factor in marriage quality, but suggested that the key for a happy union in fact resided with the husband. "Wives whose husbands show higher levels of positivity reported less conflict. However, the wives' positivity had no association with their husbands' reports of conflict," lead author James Iveniuk said.
Meanwhile a study out of the University of California at Berkeley last year concluded that a stable union depends on the wife's happiness and positivity, as researchers observed that she holds the power to resolve spats. "Emotions such as anger and contempt can seem very threatening for couples. But our study suggests that if spouses, especially wives, are able to calm themselves, their marriages can continue to thrive," said psychologist Lian Bloch, lead author of the study.

All three studies worked with older couples, and members of the Rutgers team emphasize the major impact a relationship can have on the health of the elderly.
"The quality of a marriage is important because it provides a buffer against the health-depleting effects of later life stressors and helps couples manage difficult decisions regarding health and medical decision making," Carr said.

The Rutgers study was published in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

The 4 Stages of Love

Love is a beautiful and insinuating feeling. It isn’t said for nothing that love is blind. Love indeed is blind and if you please to replace the d with a g, love is sometimes bling. Whatever it may be, love is by no means easy. Here are the 4 stages of love usually experienced by the couple that will give you a fair idea –

Friendship 
This is the first and cutest stage of a relationship. When they meet and try to understand each other. There is no pressure of the relationship. You enjoy the friendship and like spending time together. Its more common among school kids. You try to find excuses to sit with that person, walk with that person, talk to that person, etc. It usually happens that the 2 spend more time with each other getting closer as each day passes by. And this stage forms the base because it here that byou understand whether you are compatible with each other or not.

Madly in Love stage
This is the second stage and marks the beginning of a formal relationship. It’s when you understand that you are with the person who likes spending time with. It’s when you know that you you are comfortable with the person you are with. It’s common with college goers. This stage is marked by going out together. Starting to claim your partner as yours! It is common to have that feeling of jealousy at this stage. But it has a joy of its own. A joy that is something similar to that feeling you get after a dose of drugs. Something to remember for life!

Intimacy : After Marriage
The third stage of life is intimacy. Usually, up to a year or 2 after marriage, or in a live in relationship, it occurs. This involves physical intimacy as well. The reason is that it marks absolute comfort with your partner. There is a feeling that you will be together for life and one is not going the leave the other for any reason. Passion is on its height.

Adjustments and Forward look

This is the fourth and the most important stage in a relationship. When you have been together for so long, have understood each other so well that there is no need of telling or signalling your partner what you feel since your partner can read your mind. Rather to be precise, you share the same mind and the state of mind.
Reasons why sex is important in a healthy

It's Not Goodbye - Sweet November MV

It's Not goodbye


And what if I never kiss your lips again
Or feel the touch of your sweet embrace
How would I ever go on
Without you there's no place to belong

Well someday love is gonna lead you back to me
But 'til it does I'll have an empty heart
So I'll just have to believe
Somewhere out there you thinking of me

Until the day I'll let you go
Until we say our next hello
It's not goodbye
'Til I see you again
I'll be right here rememberin' when
And if time is on our side
There will be no tears to cry
On down the road
There is one thing I can't deny
It's not goodbye


You'd think I'd be strong enough to make it through
And rise above when the rain falls down
But it's so hard to be strong
When you've been missin' somebody so long

It's just a matter of time I'm sure
But time takes time and I can't hold on
So won't you try as hard as you can
To put my broken heart together again

Until the day I'll let you go
Until we say our next hello
It's not goodbye
'Til I see you again
I'll be right here rememberin' when
And if time is on our side
There will be no tears to cry
On down the road
There is one thing I can't deny
It's not goodbye

If Tomorrow Never Comes - Ronan Keating

If ever tomorrow never comes, Remember.. I love you my friend.

STRUCK : A SHORT FILM

Let's view a short film on Love at first sight.
Title; Struck

Ten (10) things you might not know about love

Here are some things you can learn:

1. It can be hard to talk about love in scientific terms

because people have strong pre-existing ideas about it.

The vision of love that emerges from the latest science requires a radical shift. I learned that I need to ask people to step back from their current views of love long enough to consider it from a different perspective: their body's perspective. Love is not romance. It's not sexual desire. It's not even that special bond you feel with family or significant others.

And perhaps most challenging of all, love is neither lasting nor unconditional. The radical shift we need to make is this: Love, as your body experiences it, is a micro-moment of connection shared with another.

2. Love is not exclusive.

We tend to think of love in the same breath as loved ones. When you take these to be only your innermost circle of family and friends, you inadvertently and severely constrain your opportunities for health, growth and well-being.

In reality, you can experience micro-moments of connection with anyone -- whether your soul mate or a stranger. So long as you feel safe and can forge the right kind of connection, the conditions for experiencing the emotion of love are in place.

3. Love doesn't belong to one person.

We tend to think of emotions as private events, confined to one person's mind and skin. Upgrading our view of love defies this logic. Evidence suggests that when you really "click" with someone else, a discernible yet momentary synchrony emerges between the two of you, as your gestures and biochemistries, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror one another in a pattern I call positivity resonance. Love is a biological wave of good feeling and mutual care that rolls through two or more brains and bodies at once.

4. Making eye contact is a key gateway for love.

Your body has the built-in ability to "catch" the emotions of those around you, making your prospects for love -- defined as micro-moments of positivity resonance -- nearly limitless. As hopeful as this sounds, I also learned that you can thwart this natural ability if you don't make eye contact with the other person. Meeting eyes is a key gatekeeper to neural synchrony.

5. Love fortifies the connection between your brain and your heart, making you healthier.

Decades of research show that people who are more socially connected live longer and healthier lives. Yet precisely how social ties affect health has remained one of the great mysteries of science.

My research team and I recently learned that when we randomly assign one group of people to learn ways to create more micro-moments of love in daily live, we lastingly improve the function of the vagus nerve, a key conduit that connects your brain to your heart. This discovery provides a new window into how micro-moments of love serve as nutrients for your health.

6. Your immune cells reflect your past experiences of love.

Too often, you get the message that your future prospects hinge on your DNA. Yet the ways that your genes get expressed at the cellular level depends mightily on many factors, including whether you consider yourself to be socially connected or chronically lonely.

My team is now investigating the cellular effects of love, testing whether people who build more micro-moments of love in daily life also build healthier immune cells.

7. Small emotional moments can have disproportionately large biological effects.

It can seem surprising that an experience that lasts just a micro-moment can have any lasting effect on your health and longevity. Yet I learned that there's an important feedback loop at work here, an upward spiral between your social and your physical well-being.

That is, your micro-moments of love not only make you healthier, but being healthier builds your capacity for love. Little by little, love begets love by improving your health. And health begets health by improving your capacity for love.

8. Don't take a loving marriage for granted.

Writing this book has profoundly changed my personal view of love. I used to uphold love as that constant, steady force that all but defines my marriage. While that constant, steady force still exists, I now see our bond as a product of the many micro-moments of positivity resonance that my husband and I have shared over the years. This shakes me out of any complacency that tempts me to take our love for granted. Love is something we should re-cultivate every single day.

9. Love and compassion can be one and the same.

If we reimagine love as micro-moments of shared positivity, it can seem like love requires that you always feel happy. I learned that this isn't true. You can experience a micro-moment of love even as you or the person with whom you connect suffers.

Love doesn't require that you ignore or suppress negativity. It simply requires that some element of kindness, empathy or appreciation be added to the mix. Compassion is the form love takes when suffering occurs.

10. Simply upgrading your view of love changes your capacity for it.

The latest science offers new lenses through which to see your every interaction. The people I interviewed for the book shared incredibly moving stories about how they used micro-moments of connection to make dramatic turnarounds in their personal and work lives.

One of the most hopeful things I learned is that when people take just a minute or so each day to think about whether they felt connected and attuned to others, they initiate a cascade of benefits. And this is something you could start doing today, having learned even just this much more about how love works.

SOURCE

Men and women have different reasons for cheating: A study shows

Why do men cheat? And for that matter, why do women?

Robin R. Milhausen, a sex researcher at the University of Guelph in Ontario, doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but she recently joined forces with two other professors to shed a little light on the subject.

Their study, based on surveys of 918 heterosexual men and women in monogamous relationships, found that 23 percent of male respondents and 19 percent of female respondents reported having cheated on their current partner. The researchers defined infidelity as a sexual interaction “with someone other than your primary partner that could jeopardize, or hurt, your relationship.”

Top 10 Reasons Why Men Cheat

• more sex - the desire for a more active sex life
• sexual variety - the desire for different types of sex or a particular sex act
• opportunistic sex – he’s presented with an opportunity to have sex without getting caught
• to satisfy his sexual curiosity about having sex with a particular person
• to reaffirm his sexuality
• a feeling of entitlement (the belief that it’s a man’s prerogative to cheat)
• the “thrill of the chase”
• ego embellishment - the desire to feel important or special
• peer pressure
• sexual addiction

Milhausen and her colleagues, whose finding were recently published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, were particularly interested in personality and relationship factors associated with cheating.

For women, they found low relationship satisfaction was often tied to infidelity. Women who were unhappy in their relationships were 2.6 times more likely to cheat than women who were satisfied. And women who reported being incompatible with their partner in terms of sexual values and attitudes were 2.9 times more likely to have an affair.

Top 10 Reasons Why Women Cheat

• to fulfill an unmet need for emotional intimacy or a desire close emotional bond
• dissatisfaction with her mate
• dissatisfaction with her marriage or relationship
• a desire for male attention
• reaffirmation of her desirability as a woman
• to re-capture the feelings of romance or passion
• a desire to feel “special”
• boredom or loneliness
• feelings of neglect or being taken for granted
• sexual excitement


One of the findings that surprised Milhausen most was that men who reported higher rates of sexual inhibition because of performance anxiety were more likely to cheat. “If you have sex with someone outside of your relationship, you’ll never have to see them again,” she says. “You won’t have those problems with wounded pride or ego. Or it might be that you need to boost your arousal over the top” and find that a new partner does that.

Men and women who were less concerned about the consequences of their sexual behavior were more likely to cheat, as were people who could be easily aroused.

Still, Milhausen cautions, none of these factors is a guaranteed predictor of infidelity or faithfulness.

Her take-away from the report is that people who want to avoid affairs should be as honest as possible about their needs.

“What do you need to be satisfied in this relationship for the next 50 years?” she asks. “Way more couples need to have those discussions. . . . Isn’t it worth that, rather than have your whole family unit dissolve because you take that risk with another partner outside the relationship?”- Dr.  Dahl Sagucio

Ways To Handle (And Even Love) Toxic People

Identifying the toxic people in your life is usually pretty straightforward. But depending on your coping skills, their desire to change (or not), and the type of relationship you have with that person, how you deal with the situation may differ. Here are three suggestions for handling these challenging relationships.

1. Change your usual response.

Sometimes, people just want to draw you into their ongoing drama. If you refuse to participate, they can’t get the payoff that they crave.

Your old reaction may have been to attack them back, or on the other side of the spectrum, you may have cowered. Choosing a different response may just change how they interact with you.

The dynamic cannot exist if you don’t play the same part. This works best with people who are selectively toxic and only dump on specifically chosen targets. Simply stated, don’t be the perfect target.

2. Be completely honest with them.

Some people revel in their negativity, but there are also those who are unaware of how much they're affecting everyone around them. They don't consider how their behavior is being interpreted and received and only see things from their perspective. Their toxicity has become a bad habit and shedding light on it may be just what's called for.

Lay out exactly how their energy makes you feel. This can be done without losing your head over their actions. Put them on notice that you're not going to tolerate their behavior any longer.

You don’t have to be hostile. A simple reminder such as, “you’re taking your anger out on me again," may help them recognize and subsequently modify their own behavior. This only works with people who have the desire to change their way of being.

3. Love them from a distance.

If someone’s toxic ways are taking a toll on your self-esteem and you have tried all else unsuccessfully, you have to back away for the sake of your sanity. Even blood ties are not enough to justify the voluntary deterioration of your well-being.

Granted, there are exceptions such as a sick parent for whom you are the caretaker. But if, for example, your sibling is being controlling and abusive, staying around them is not going to help anything.

If you can’t swim and the other party doesn’t want to be saved, there is nothing else to be done. It’s harsh, but it’s true. You simply can’t force someone to change. Their motivation has to come from within. Sometimes, distance is the precursor to that motivation. Either way, you shouldn’t have to pay the price with your peace of mind. That helps no one.

In conclusion, remember that most negative people are negative for a reason. Perhaps they have been deeply hurt in the past and now use their venom to keep others at a distance. Perhaps their toxicity is a power play to boost their own lack of confidence.

We all have walls we put up. Just remember that with toxic people, the walls are thicker but are painfully obvious.