Hmmm. Curious.

Perhaps I’m naive because I’m a little dubious about this whole thing. To be quite honest, I don’t automatically think a guy is “interested” in me when they spark up a conversation because if I turn the tables around and I initiate the act, it wouldn’t automatically mean I’m interested in that man I’ll talk to, know what I mean?

What about you? Would you agree to the statement that “when someone initiates a conversation with a stranger, it automatically means an expression of interest”? I sure know somebody who does and is adamant that it’s factual “no matter how indirect an act it was.”

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Initiating Conversations

At the same time, you do the person no favor by putting off the breakup. That is cruel. As soon as you are sure of your decision, tell him or her right away. It may not come as much of a surprise. You have probably dropped some strong hints along the way that you had your doubts about the relationship.

In any case, be perfectly honest – and gently firm. If you see no future at all in the situation, make that quite clear. If there is no hope, offer the person none. And explain in full your reasons for the break. Remain friends if you care to. But be firm in you decision before you act, then stick by it if you feel you are right. Remember, if it’s infatuation for both of you, you will both tend to get over it fairly fast.

If the person threatens you in anger, stall until you can get protective support from parents or friends. If he or she tries to hold on to you by threatening self-harm or even suicide, that is a bluff – unless the person is mentally sick. Even so, you cannot be held responsible for the immature reactions of others if you’ve done your best to be kind and considerate, yet truthful. A relationship that is continued under the pressure of threat is no relationship at all.

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Infatuation May Grow into Love

Such a response is selfish. Your attitude is one of taking from your relationship. You are not willing to release the other person to do freely what he or she finds enjoyable. In effect, you are saying: “I want you to be happy, but only if you do what makes me happy. My happiness comes first, not yours.” That is a sign of infatuation, not love. Jealousy is strongly associated with divorce. More than three times as many divorced than happily married persons report mate jealousy.

Real Love: If it is love, jealousy is less frequent and less severe. Not that you will never feel jealous. None of us ever gets to be 100% selfless. But the more you love the other person, the more you are able to release her or him. Release is an expression of trust, respect, and acceptance. To the extent that your love is not selfish, you can be free of jealousy.

If she likes to talk to another boy once in a while, he will not restrain her freedom. He wants her to be happy, even though he might prefer that she talk only with him all the time. She will not mind if he on occasion likes to dance with some other girl. Love does not restrict, it release. It does not imprison, it liberates.

That’s why it’s so important that love be mutual. If you love, you trust. That means you need someone worthy of that trust. That way you can free each other to be your true selves, in full confidence that your trust will not be betrayed.

As your love grows, so does your trust and confidence. More and more you learn to avoid the things that displease each other. As a result, jealousy comes to be less frequent and less severe. At length it may all but disappear.

If you set out to save your life, that’s a selfish intent. The result is that you lose out on life. You miss the joy of giving, of being useful, of feeling needed.

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CLUE 14. Are You Jealous?

Infatuation: your overall attitude is one of taking from the relationship. You will find that your main concern is what you are getting out of it, plus what you hope to get in the future. The other person is seen as a means to gratify your own personal needs and wants, to attain your own goals and satisfactions.

You like the person not for what he or she is as a person, but for what that person does for you. You use the person as a stepping-stone to get things you want. Your partner helps you get attention, go places you like, satisfy your sex urge, climb the social ladder, get out of a bad home life, or a host of other private ends. In short, you exploit the other.

Such an attitude will not help you build a long, happy relationship. If you are willing to use the person for your own advantage before you marry, you will no doubt do so afterward as well. You will marry not for love, but for self- centered reasons such as greed or lust, position or prestige, a life of ease or security. These are scarcely the elements of real love.

Real Love: If you have found real love, you more and more want to give to, not take from, the other person and the relationship. You want to share, give of yourself to your beloved. You are intent on doing all you can to bring happiness to the other just as long as it does not spoil chances for his or her future fulfillment, or threaten your future together. When you are in love, you want your beloved to be as happy as you are. If you haven’t yet reached that stage, then you probably do not love.

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CLUE 13. What Is Your Overall Attitude?

That’s a lesson that the so-called “me” generation needs to learn. Such a commitment helps us to rise above mere concern with our own selfish needs and wants. It opens whole new horizons of value and meaning for our lives. The person least concerned about self is the person who becomes most fulfilled.

Loving a spouse or a family not for themselves but because they are your spouse and your children then that is selfish – another kind of self-love. This, like any other type of self-love, serves to keep you from finding your peak of fulfillment. So if you are to be fully mature, your circle of concern needs to reach out beyond the self, even beyond your own family and local community as well. Indeed, now our loving concern must include all people everywhere – the whole of planet earth.

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Commitment – a Law of Life

Real Love: your ego response tends to be unselfish and outgoing. You care as much about what’s good for the other as for yourself. You want her or him to get as much out of the relationship as you get. Love is a state in which each one of two people realizes that his or her happiness can be attained only when the other also is happy. As a consequence, each one lives not only for one’s self, but for the other, sometimes even more for the other than for one’s self.

If you’re in love, you will share thoughts, feelings, attitudes, plans, hopes, interests, even intimate things you would share with few if any others. And the more you share, the more committed to each other you will become. If you are in love, you will also want to keep these shared secrets pretty private – even sacred. You will want to keep your physical expressions of affection quite private. You will shy away from obvious necking and petting in public. It is no accident that those who display a lot of affection in public also tend to get low scores on emotional maturity tests.

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Selfish Sex

Infatuation: Why does Mike like to date Kate? She’s the school’s Homecoming Queen! Not that he likes her all that much. She is pretty and popular, but she’s also spoiled and selfish. Still, he likes to date her because, since she’s the “queen” of the school, dating her makes him the “king.” He’s the envy of all the fellows when they see him out with her. So he dates her, not for herself, but for the boost it gives to his ego.

If you are infatuated, your ego response to the other person is mainly selfish and restrictive. Your prime interest in the relationship is what it does for you.

Maybe you know someone who keeps a guy “on the string.” She doesn’t care much for him, treats him like dirt. But his devotion to her builds up her self-image.

Then there’s the guy who wants to overhaul his partner over to suit himself. He is not content that she be herself. He wants to change her into the person he wants or needs her to be. These are both examples of selfish infatuation.

It’s not wrong for you to have your personal needs filled. Every person needs that. But when you’re overriding interest is your own selfish wants and needs, when you have little or no concern for the wants and needs of your partner – then that’s not love. It’s infatuation.

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CLUE 12. Are You Selfish or Selfless?

That tells us that she has not yet come to think of herself as part of a couple. She has not yet invested her self in the relationship. She’s still clinging to her own selfish identity. That points to infatuation.

Real Love: Two persons who have real love, on the other hand, come to feel that they are no longer separate, but have in great measure become one. Since they see themselves as a unit, as a couple, they tend to use we and us and our when they refer to what happens to them. It seems only natural and right to do so. They don’t even have to think about it. They are simply so much alike in motivation, attitudes, values, interests, and viewpoints that the differences between them are reduced to a minimum. There results a strong feeling of oneness; each person feels fully accepted, protected, and secure. They are still unique, separate people, but they merge themselves into a pattern of common bonds. In this sense they have become “unselfed.”

In love, the couple gives up much of their separate selves, yet by doing so each becomes even more fulfilled as a self. A person’s identity is not stifled by love; it is enriched. As they become a “we,” each is at once a more fulfilled “I.” They get double enjoyment out of everything they do. In the first place, each of them enjoys things as individuals just as they did before they were in love. But in addition, they have the added joy of sharing those things with the loved one.

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CLUE 11. How Do You Feel about and Refer to Your Relationship?

So be prepared for some friction even if you’re in love. You will disagree on a few things. Some aspects of your lives won’t fit together well, at least not right away. There will be many adjustments to make, and sparks may fly at times until you get things worked out between you.

If a couple said they never quarrel, one of three things is true. First, they may be lying through their teeth. They’ve quarreled and they know it. They just won’t admit it.

Second, they quite honestly may have forgotten. Over the years a couple may well discover more creative and constructive ways to settle disputes. They don’t argue, they discuss. They learn the art of give and take. Third, at least one of them does not stand up for his or her personal rights. That’s not a marriage. One dominates, the other just submits.

So the important thing is not whether you quarrel, but the way you quarrel.

Ask yourself three questions:
(1) How severe are our quarrels?
(2) How often do they occur?
(3) What is the final effect of quarrels on our relationship?

The answers are good indicators of the nature of your romance.

Infatuation: quarrels will kill the relationship, and they tend to become more frequent and more severe. Since your main attraction is physical and the interests you hold in common are few, the few things you do have in common soon prove too weak to give lasting support. The fabric of your romance starts to wear thin. You begin to lose interest. You find yourselves disagreeing on more and more things, so more and more often you quarrel. The words get more harsh and full of mean barbs. You hurt each other more and more deeply – and you may even do it on purpose.

After each quarrel, you kiss and make up. (That part is oh, so wonderful, be it love or infatuation.) But your renewed closeness does not last. The bonds between you continue to go to pieces. Finally, the sour times overshadow the sweet. One or both of you decide that it’s not worth the struggle. Hard as it is to do so, you break it off. You may go back together a time or two, but there are no bonds of love. In time, you break for good and go your separate ways. Be glad, not sad! You’re lucky you had it happen before you were wed, because happen it would.

Real Love: lives through quarrels, and quarrels become less frequent and less severe. A loving couple has a broader base of things in common. Their relationship can absorb a good deal of strain because it has a firmer foundation. In love you feel more an art of each other, so you have more of a stake in working things out. You see a future together and seek to claim it. You try harder to find good substitutes for conflict. You learn to communicate in more creative ways.

For instance, you can learn to discuss frankly without arguing. Nobody wins an argument; it just confirms both of you more solidly in your own views. One couple makes it a practice never to reply in anger, no matter how great the urge to do so. When one of them gets angry, the other just shuts up until the dust settles.

“I’m sorry” may well be the hardest words you’ll ever say but atonements bring at-homeness. It is only common courtesy to show others that we regret a past mistake. Such an admission will likely bring forth warm acceptance and response in kind from the other person. Does love really mean never having to say you’re sorry? On the contrary, one should never take the forgiveness of another for granted, no matter how deep the love bond between you. Maybe our loved one does not demand that we say it, but it will be much appreciated if we do.

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CLUE 10. How Do Quarrels Affect the Romance?

In infatuation Sue and Sam have been interested mainly in each other’s physical equipment. That is, what they can see, hear, smell, taste or touch about each other. Such interest is hard to sustain when a thousand miles are separating the couple. Since only a few things attract them to each other, the roots of the relationship are thin. It won’t last long unless it gets nourished by a lot of face-to-face contact.

After the infatuated couple is apart for a few days or weeks, they begin to lose interest. After a while the physical equipment of some more available person begins to look good to them. So if it is infatuation, it will die with distance.

Real Love: survives separation. It may even, as the old addage states, make the heart grow fonder. Why? Because love is rooted in attraction to the other’s total personality, not just physical appeal. When you are in love, a great many of the tendrils of your personalities tend to grow together, to unite you into loving oneness. When you have to be apart, you are not your whole self.

This being the Internet and with the new trends of meeting and dating through various online mediums, do you think it’s possible that more relationships are enduring distance and are gaining strength?

If you have a story to share of relationships enduring distance or even relationships that have failed because of distance, I’d love to share it with our readers.

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CLUE 9. What Does Distance Do?