Is Love Really All You Need For A Successful Relationship?
The Beatles sang that love is all you need, but that’s not the reality is it?
getty No one wishes this quote from the Beatles were true more than me: "All you need is love... love is all you need." My desire is for everyone to walk through their day completely and totally adored for their most authentic self, full and energized by the passion they have with their partner.
But that's not the reality. is it? Why not? Because it takes more than falling in love or being in love to create long-lasting love that grows stronger and more passionate with every day.
Unfortunately, most of us were raised to believe the relationship advice that things either work, or they don't. And when things cross a threshold in our relationships, we ask ourselves the hard question: "Maybe this just wasn't meant to be?" This is when people give up.
What is love, then? Love is the greatest opening of our spirit. It's what connects us to other human beings. We all crave to be loved, treasured and cherished by an intimate partner who puts us before all else.
In an intimate relationship, you cannot have a magnificent love affair without passion. Passion is the life-force of your relationship. It's the energy within you. We all need passion or we feel numb inside.
Love is incredibly powerful. But it is not enough to sustain a magnificent relationship that lasts a lifetime.
Why not? Many people think that love should be enough, and that if the relationship is "meant to be" then love is all you need. These false beliefs are one of the greatest tragedies facing relationships today.
They are responsible for more broken hearts and homes than anything else. It's time to put an end to these two false beliefs that destroy so many lives. The false belief that love is enough. The false belief that if it's meant to be, that it will just work out.
Why do relationships end? While there are thousands of different symptoms, it comes down to just one fundamental cause. People start to "question" the relationship when their needs are not being met by their partner. And they give up when their needs are not being met by their partner consistently and they give up the hope that things can be any different.
What are these needs? According to human needs psychology, all people have the same fundamental human needs. The need security, love, significance, variety, growth and contribution. However, "the masculine" and "the feminine" have extremely different requirements for having their needs met within intimate relationships.
One of the key challenges people face today is that men and women lack an understanding and appreciation for the drastic differences between the masculine and the feminine. As a result, we give what we want to get, but that's not what our partner needs in order to have his needs met.
As women, we interpret masculine actions, feelings and thoughts through our "feminine" filter and often react to our men as if they were "misbehaving" who should know better and are having "bad behavior." While we're attracted to their masculine "differences" (at times), this also frustrates us.
By the same token, men are interpreting our actions, feelings and thoughts through their “masculine” filter and get completely confused because nothing in their masculine world can explain the feminine. While every masculine man is attracted to the feminine, it also makes them crazy because they can't understand it in their world. It’s a miracle we ever get together at all, isn't it?
Just what is the miracle that draws us together and keeps us together? The miracle is love and passion. It's the love and the passion that gives us the strength of spirit and the energy we require to give our relationships a go.
If we didn't feel the pull of love, we wouldn't care enough to go deep and be vulnerable with our lover. Without the life-force of the passionate desire we feel inside for our partner, we would not have the energy to keep growing into the best version of ourselves, have heartfelt understanding for our partner and create the love and life we want!
What does our partner need and how can we provide it? There are hundreds of strategies I could share with you to help you meet your partner's needs and take your relationship to the next level. But there's one fundamental strategy for the masculine and one for the feminine that will make the biggest impact in creating your magnificent love affair.
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The feminine has a deep, fundamental need to be provided for and not abandoned. It's not a want, it's a need. And in today's society, it's getting unnecessarily complicated and ignored. Regardless of how "unpopular" this is, it’s the truth and it's time we come back to honor this truth.
Can a feminine woman provide for herself, her family and her partner? Of course! This isn't about what we can do. We can do anything a man can do. However, there is a huge difference between how the feminine experiences providing and how the masculine experiences it.
The masculine is wired to provide and his worthiness is tied to his ability to provide. It's what he's made to do, and when he's not doing it, he can feel completely worthless, and the ramifications can be catastrophic.
A woman in her feminine does not have this same experience with providing. We can provide, but we don't need to provide in order to feel worthy of living. A woman in her feminine will provide when she needs to, but eventually, she will feel depleted and resentful that she is not being provided for. Or she will flip into her masculine energy and stay there so she can keep providing and feeling worthy and significant from her ability to provide.
A man who is in his masculine would never imagine a woman has a fundamental need to be provided for. In fact, if you ask them, many men will respond to this with the shocked and confused response of "then why doesn't she let me do stuff for her!?"
It's an ironic energetic snag for us ladies. We want to be provided for, but the energetic snag happens when we feel the truth that allowing ourselves to be provided for by another human being (who can't do everything exactly the way we do it), takes a level of vulnerability that we feel resistant to.
Which brings us to one of the most fundamental needs that a masculine man has. This need is so completely off most women's radars that you may not even believe me. A (masculine) man needs to make a (feminine) woman happy.
He must be able to make her happy to have a thriving intimate relationship with her. A man will give up on an intimate relationship if he feels that he can't make his woman happy. He will end that relationship when he gives up the hope that he can ever make her happy.
This is terribly unfortunate, because so many women today struggle with allowing themselves to be happy. We often make it so hard to win and really easy to fail. We make it very difficult for our men to experience the success of making us happy, especially if that man has disappointed us many times in the past!
As women, we also have a pattern of withholding our love as a means to correct "bad" behavior. So even when our partner does something good, we don't "reward" it because the voice in our heads says something like, "What do you want, a medal?" or, "Please, the score is like a million to one mister, try and catch up!"
This unconscious pattern is killing our relationships and pushing our men away because we are blocking them from meeting one of their fundamental needs. The need to make us happy.
What's the solution? Be a woman who can be made happy. Find your joy. Allow yourself to be delighted. Even if he brings you a salad with everything you would never eat, delight over the salad he brought you. Instead of berating him for all the mistakes he made, love him up and adore him for his effort. Find something to be grateful for, even if it's just that he's still attempting to connect with you and serve you.
Stacey Martino helps people with the challenges that intimate relationship brings. Through targeted, strategic private coaching, programs and events, individuals learn to use her proven strategies and tools to create an unshakable love.