|
Mutually satisfying love relationships do not magically spring out of thin air fully formed. These relationships are the products of successful love negotiations. Like it or not, partners who wish to increase the satisfaction of their love relationships must also increase their skills at negotiation.
Knowing your own love style is a necessary prerequisite to a happy, fulfilling relationship. Why? Knowing your love style allows you to identify your fundamental often unconscious core values about love which motivate and guide your behaviors within romantic relationships - many of which are self-defeating.
Compatibility is NOT a birthright... it is a mutually negotiated agreement which forms the foundation of a solid love relationship. The key to successful negotiation is to never compromise anything unless it has a much greater value than what you are losing. Having a solid foundation allows both partners to identify which factors can be compromised and negotiated so that neither party “loses” while the other emerges as the victor.
Each person loves according to his or her own needs. That means most of us love our partner in exactly the way that we ourselves want or expect to be loved, and not necessarily the way our partner wants or expects to be loved. When love expectations differs, each partner is likely to feel unappreciated and unloved. When partners interpret love from different emotional and behavioral perspectives, the quality and the longevity of their love suffers.
Different love definitions can separate partners like oceans divide continents! Their individual expectations prevent them from fully loving and respecting each other. When one says “I love you,” the other assumes that “love” means the same thing to both. But unfortunately, the word “love” appears to have just as many different meanings and expectations as there are people on this planet.
For a fuller more complete explanation of love styles and to learn how our conflicting love styles often hinder our ability to fully love each other order Dr. Lige Dailey Jr’s book Do We Really Know What Love Is? today!
|
