Love Changes Everything

Love changes everything sounds like the title of a pop song which might be the theme for the kind of chick flick that whiles away a few hours on a weekend evening.

“Not true. Can’t be true. It’s not real life. No one really has that kind of relationship. Blah. Blah. Blah.”

If this is what your thoughts were saying as you read this title, join the ranks of the hurt and disenchanted. So your questions might be:

• Does love really change everything?
• Does romantic love even exist?
• Is it love or is it just attraction – that physical thing and when that goes away, is there anything left?
• And for those of you married or in a long-term relationship which you’d describe as comfortable, can you really ever expect to feel love again?

I was that young woman many years ago that believed that love really did change everything but also that I could never have it because all I did was find someone to not love me and make me feel worse about myself then I already felt.

So what is the truth? Does love really change everything? Well, the answer is both yes and no. No, because even though romantic love exists, to have any positive and staying power it must be between two whole individuals. Yes, because if it’s really love, it will change everything but that love is not what begins outside of yourself. That love begins with what is inside yourself.

That means that I first had to love myself before I stopped being the young woman who believed that I could never have love.

Certainly there is just attraction and if that’s what you want in your life, to live only on the surface, so be it. But if you want to be the person who knows that love changes everything, you will have to also be the person who loves themselves.

So what if you had a crummy childhood and lousy parents and were left feeling not so hot about yourself? Can that be changed? Can you learn to love yourself? YES.

To change your life and change yourself here is what you have to do:

• Do not accept behavior in your life that diminishes you in any way. That behavior includes not allowing anyone to mistreat you at any level including crossing boundaries that you set for yourself.
• Have amongst your inner circle only people who love you and see the very best in you and for you.
• Do not be a slave to obligation. If you have children, until they can care for themselves, certainly you have an obligation. If you have elderly parents you are responsible for, certainly you have an obligation. But you have no such obligation to anyone who takes you for granted or misuses you in any way.

Taking these suggestions will certainly put you on the road to discover that love(ing) yourself changes everything.