檳榔嶼

Sweet Love say
Where, how and when
What do you want of me?...

Yours I am, for You I was born:
What do you want of me?...
  - Saint Teresa of Avila

- To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are no prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships.
  - We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us.
- True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.
- Nobody could love women as they really are.
- Few of us enter romantic relationships able to receive love. We fall into romantic attachments doomed to replay familiar family dramas.
  - Usually we do not know this will happen precisely because we have grown up in a culture that has told us that :
    - no matter what we experienced in our childhoods
    - no matter the pain, sorrow, alienation, emptiness
    - no matter the extent of our dehumanization
    ... romantic love will be ours.
- We believe we will meet the girl of our dreams. We believe "someday our prince will come". They show up just as we imagined they would.
  - We wanted the lover to appear but most of us were not really clear about what we wanted to do with them - what the love was that we wanted to make and how we would make it.
  - We were not ready to open our hearts fully.
- Toni Morrison, <<The Bluest Eye>> : "of the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought."
  - We come to love with no will and no capacity to choose. This illusion, perpetuated by so much romantic lore, stands in the way of our learning how to love. To sustain our fantasy we substitute romance for love.
- When romance is depicted as a project, or so the mass media, especially movies, would have us believe, women are the architects and the planners. 
  - Everyone likes to imagine that women are romantics, sentimental about love, that men follow where women lead.
  - Even in non-heterosexual relationships, the paradigms of leader and follower often prevail, with one person assuming the role deemed feminine and another the designated masculine role.
  - We lack choice and decision when choosing a partner because when the chemistry is present, when the click is there, it just happens - it overwhelms - it takes control.
- Thomas Merton, <Love and Need> : "The expression to 'fall in love' reflects a peculiar attitude toward love and life itself - a mixture of fear, awe, fascination, and confusion. It implies suspicion, doubt, hesitation in the presence of something unavoidable, yet not fully reliable".
- Critique the idea that we fall in love, we continue to invest in the fantasy of effortless union. We continue to believe we are swept away, caught up in the rapture, that we lack choice and will.
  - Fromm, <<The Art of Loving>> : "To love somebody is not just a strong feeling - it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go."
  - Peck : "The desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will - namely, both an intention and action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love."
  - Most people remain reluctant to embrace the idea that it is more genuine, more real, to think of choosing to love rather than falling in love.
- Harriet Lerner, <<Life Preservers>> : most people want a partner "who is mature and intelligent, loyal and trustworthy, loving and attentive, sensitive and open, kind and nurturant, competent and responsible".
  - No matter the intensity of this desire, she concludes: "Few of us evaluate a prospective partner with the same objectivity and clarity that we might use to select a household appliance or a car."
- It was difficult for me to really take out a piece of paper and evaluate myself to see if I was able to give the love I wanted to receive. And even more difficult to make a list of the qualities I wanted to find in a mate.
  - I listed ten items. And then when I applied the list to men I had chosen as potential partners, it was painful to face the discrepancy between what I wanted and what I had chosen to accept.
  - We fear that evaluating our needs and then carefully choosing partners will reveal that there is no one for us to love.
- Most of us prefer to have a partner who is lacking than no partner at all. What becomes apparent is that we may be more interested in finding a partner than in knowing love.
- Approaching romantic love from a foundation of care, knowledge, and respect actually intensifies romance.
  - By taking the time to communicate with a potential mate we are no longer trapped by the fear and anxiety underlying romantic interactions that take place without discussion or the sharing of intent and desire.
  - To a woman friend extremely fearful of sexual encounters, I suggested she might try meeting with the new man in her life over lunch with the set agenda of talking to him about sexual pleasure, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and fears.
    - She reported back that the lunch was incredibly erotic; it laid the groundwork for them to be at ease with each other sexually when they finally reached that stage in their relationship.
- Erotic attraction often serves as the catalyst for an intimate connection between two people, but it is not a sign of love.
  - Exciting, pleasurable sex can take place between two people who do not even know each other.
  - Yet the vast majority of males in our society are convinced that their erotic longing indicates who they should, and can, love.
  - The pressure on men in a patriarchal society to "perform" sexually is so great that men are often so gratified to be with someone with whom they find sexual pleasure that they ignore everything else.
- Women rarely choose men solely on the basis of erotic connection.
- Too often women, and some men, have their most intense erotic pleasure with partners who wound them in other ways.
  - The intensity of sexual intimacy does not serve as a catalyst for respect, care, trust, understanding, and commitment.
  - Couples who rarely or never have sex can know lifelong love.
- The best sex and the most satisfying sex are not the same.
  - women ultimately prefer erotic satisfaction within a context where there is loving, intimate connection.
  - most men tend to be more concerned about sexual performance and sexual satisfaction than whether they are capable of giving and receiving love.
- Our patterns around romantic love are unlikely to change if we do not change our language :
  - Saying "I've connected with someone in a ways that makes me think I'm on the way to knowing love.' instead of "I think I'm in love."
  - Saying "I am loving" or "I will love" instead of "I am in love".
- Our culture may make much of love as compelling fantasy or myth, but it does not make much of the art of loving.
  - Our disappointment about love is directed at romantic love.
  - We fail at romantic love when we have not learned the art of loving.
- A perfect passion happens when we meet someone who appears to have everything we have wanted to find in a partner. I say "appears" because the intensity of our connection usually blinds us. We see what we want to see.
  - Thomas Moore, <<Soul Mates>> : "the soul thrives on ephemeral fantasies"
  - It becomes perfect love when our passion gives us the courage to face reality, to embrace our true selves.
- When we love by intention and will, by showing care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility, our love satisfies.
- When talking to people that "I was looking for true love". Cynically, almost all my listeners would let me know that I was looking for a myth.
  - The few who still believe in true love offered their deep conviction that "you can't look for it", that if it's meant for you "it will just happen".
- The myth of true love - the fairy-tale vision of two souls who meet, join, and live happily thereafter - is the stuff of childhood fantasy. Yet many of us, female and male, carry these fantasies into adulthood and are unable to cope with the reality of what it means either to have an intense life-altering connection that will not lead to an ongoing relationship or to be in a relationship.
  - True love does not always lead to happily ever after, and even when it does, sustaining love still takes work.
- In actuality, true love thrives on the difficulties. The foundation of such love is the assumption that we want to grow and expand, to become more fully ourselves.
- True love is different from the love that is rooted in basic care, goodwill, and just plain old every attraction.
  - We are all continually attracted to folk whom we know that, given a chance, we could love in a heartbeat.
- John Welwood, <<Love and Awakening: Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship>> :
  - heart connection : lets us appreciate those we love just as they are. Making a heart connection with someone is usually not a difficult process.
  - soul connection : opens up a further dimension - seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence
    - A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other's individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on a deeper level. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials.
  - Two beings who have a soul connection want to engage in a full, free-ranging dialogue and commune with each other as deeply as possible.
- Our fantasy of true love is that it will be just that - simple and easy.
- Rainer Maria Rilke : "Like so much else, people have also misunderstood the place of love in life, they have made it into play and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure was more blissful than work; but there is nothing happier than work, and love, just because it is the extreme happiness, can be nothing else but work..."
  - The essence of true love is mutual recognition - two individuals seeing each other as they really are.
  - We all know that the usual approach is to meet someone we like and put our best self forward, or even at times a false self, one we believe will be more appealing to the person we want to attract.
    - People saw what they wanted to see rather than what was really there.
- Eric Butterworth : "True love is a peculiar kind of insight through which we see the wholeness which the person is - at the same time totally accepting the level on which he now expresses himself - without any delusion that the potential is a present reality. True love accepts the person who now is without qualifications, but with a sincere and unwavering commitment to help him to achieve his goals of self-unfoldment - which we may see better than he does".
- Who among us has not learned the hard way that we cannot change someone, mold them and make them into the ideal beloved we might want them to be.
  - Yet when we commit to true love, we are committed to being changed, to being acted upon by the beloved in a way that enables us to be more fully self-actualized.
  - This commitment to change is chosen.It happens by mutual agreement. Again and again in conversations the most common vision of true love I have heard shared was one that declared it to be "unconditional".
- True love is unconditional, but to truly flourish it requires an ongoing commitment to constructive struggle and change.
- Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue. 
  - We do not see this on TV or at the movies.
  - And how can any of us communicate with men who have been told all their lives that they should not express what they feel. Men must learn to let their hearts speak - and then to speak truth.
- Choosing to be fully honest, to reveal ourselves, is risky. The experience of true love gives us the courage to risk.
  - As long we are afraid to risk we cannot know love. Most of us run the other way when true love comes near.
  - Since true love sheds light on those aspects of ourselves we may wish to deny or hide, enabling us to see ourselves clearly and without shame.
- Ture love appears only when our hearts are ready.
- All the romantic lore of our culture has told us when we find true love with a partner it will continue. Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain committed to being loving. 
  - Not every can bear the weight of true love. Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustainant nurture love.
  - Many men, especially, often turn away from true love and choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like it but still receive love from someone else. Ultimately, they choose power over love.
  - Many of us are not ready to accept and embrace our true selves, particularly when living with integrity alienates us from our familiar worlds.
- John Mertion : "Love affects more than our thinking and our behavior toward those we love. It transforms our entire life. Genuine love is a personal revolution. Love takes your ideas, your desires, and your actions and welds them together in one experience and one living reality which is a new you."