When Love Seems Lost, Be the One to Bring it Back

Finding love through conscious conflict resolution

“Teach only love, for that is what you are.” — A Course in Miracles

So often when we’ve been in a relationship with someone for a long time, we lose sight of what drew us together in the first place.

Somehow we forget that it was the longing for love that brought us together. We lose the exhilarating adrenaline rush that new beginnings so often bring. Over time, we become disillusioned and feel betrayed in the process.

But maybe it’s at this stage in a relationship when we can finally get down to really learning how to love.

I heard a story from a motivational speaker years ago while listening to a talk-on-tape (back when cassettes were a thing — if you can imagine that). He spoke of an almost failed marriage turned around by one very simple, yet profound shift in attitude. It made a big impact on me and the way I viewed relationships.

I’ve made a few changes since then that have helped me to truly love the one I’m with. For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the guy who told the story (sorry guy — if you’re out there, please let me know)! None-the-less, here’s what he said in a nutshell:

There once was a disgruntled husband who complained to his friend about his unhappy, uncompromising wife. The husband, fed up, was considering divorce. His friend, however, didn’t support his idea of divorce, and instead suggested that the husband choose to love his wife.

“Love her?” replied the husband, rather taken aback. “What on earth do you mean? We hardly speak…..”

“I mean love Her.” countered his friend. “Really, really love her.

Make her needs more important than your own. When is the last time you concerned yourself with how she was feeling — her sore feet or desire for a simple “thank you?” What’s her favorite movie, favorite flower or favorite food?

Put a smile on her face! Try it and see what happens.”

The husband did as his friend suggested. And to his surprise— a little shyly at first, their relationship began to blossom in new ways. Over time the husband discovered that he was married to a very beautiful and caring woman.

Now I realize that not all unhappy relationships are resolved this easily. However, in a society where so many marriages end in divorce and many relationships barely “get past go” before they fall apart, this little fable yields a powerful message regarding the deeper ways of love and relationship.

The challenge is to bring to the table of our relationships whatever it is we feel is missing. If we want less conflict, then we must look inside ourselves to see, “Where am I conflicted?” If we want peace, we must be the one who brings it.

We get so used to projecting our discontent onto the people we love that over time, we lose sight of everything we really loved about them to begin with. We forget how it felt to instantly be uplifted by making them smile with a kind gesture, secret surprise, or humorous outburst that made you both wince with side pains from laughing too hard.

If I am discontented, what better way to take responsibility for my state of mind than to reach out and actively care for the one I love. There’s something about the act of loving that opens up closed and depressed places within a person. We don’t get the love we want by constantly seeking new ways to get it. Love comes to us quite naturally when we learn to truly give it.

A Course in Miracles, published by the Foundation for Inner Peace, suggests that love is the deepest and highest experience of reality — that love is the only thing worth keeping from the past that can anchor ourselves clearly in the present.

We are encouraged to consider that only love is real, meaning that everything else constricts our experience of life, closing us off to the joy inside. So we are encouraged to forgive the past in order to be fully alive in the present where we can birth the future from a clean slate.

All encounters are opportunities to love and be loved — to recognize what is most real when things feel difficult or painful. Those are “golden” moments — chances to forgive and thus transform and heal what was once a grievance in the heart. With every resolved grievance, the heart opens further and loves deeper.

Love itself, is then increased, amplified, and born anew.

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