When Love Is Not Enough

Few Individuals can resist the warm glow of a loving relationship. Love is not confined to romance it touches nearly everyone in some respect during their lives. We love different people in varying ways and to differing degrees. Everything from mild affection to red-hot passion is categorised as love and therein lays the first of many problems that can arise when trying to grow, maintain or simply rescue faltering relationships.

Relationships can exert an enormously positive influence over your well-being but the reverse is true when they take a turn for the worse. Love is indeed a wonderful product, and love allied with pragmatic procedures represents a pretty unbeatable combination.

There are no two ways about it - Relationships can be a little complicated, so why do people even need them?

Principally it’s because (most) normal individuals enjoy the company of others. It is not by accident that solitary confinement was designed as a form of punishment. However, good relationships are not the net result of random elements haphazardly thrown together. They require investment, care, attention and above all patience.

Needy people (almost by default) do all of those previously outlined things less consistently than individuals who are well resourced in that regard. If someone wants to develop a relationship with you - that’s cool. If you need to develop one with them - that’s not so cool. Need places unnatural pressure on everything you touch. For example, wanting more money is a reasonable and manageable desire, needing more cash just to make ends meet generates an altogether higher level of stress for those who are unable to have their urgent requirements met.

The key to all of this is recognising that relationships are a partnership, and that what you bring to the relationship will have a huge bearing on what can eventually be drawn from it by either participant.

Be comfortable in you own skin. If it is indeed true that ‘birds of a feather flock together’ then your only realistic hope of establishing strong bonds with like-minded people is to have some strength of your own to bring to the table. Interdependence is the most preferable balance in any relationship. Individuals, who work together because they choose to; almost always develop more fulfilling associations than those who have no choice but to cooperate due to their prevailing conditions.

So where does love fit into all of this?

Love is an awesome product, and is quite the most delightful emotion that two people can share, but it was not designed to exist outside of intelligent reason. Here are seven words that nobody ever wants to hear: ‘tell me that you love me too!’ Those words are nearly always uttered by someone seeking to balance their emotional accounts. My simple advice is to check the ground carefully before planting, watering and expecting returns on your ‘love seeds’. Use your mind to determine where and when your love quota could be best served.

Love to the limit of your heart’s desire, but always remember to think clearly about what you are doing and why you are doing it. Love is truly incredible, enriching and much sought-after, but sometimes, it is simply not enough.

Errol Michael Henry