Quoting lostlove: I know we both have a deep love for eachother...that shows everyday...but what about the "in love"
Wow! I just had another one of those lightbulb moments, now to get it down in words.
That elusive but so much sought after "in love"...those tingles...what are they from? They are the feelings we get when we discover we want to offer and share something that's important to our spirit with our partner. What makes us feel connected in a passion of being "in-love" is when we receive validation from partner that the offering is special. That twinkle in their eye, the glowing smile...however they reacted to our offering that gave us those warm "fuzzies". That is where the importance of reading each others love languages is so important.
Over time with the addition of obligations and responsibilities and our expectations to keep receiving those offers, we tend to start tuning out the validations. Without the validation, the offerings lose some of that "tingle". Also as we repeat what we offered before, it starts to become old, expected, and loses the excitement of new discovery. We start decreasing the frequency of the offerings, but continue to do what we feel obligated to do because we know they are worth it because we love them. Hence we love them, but don't feel in love with them and visa versa. If the special offerings decrease to nearly nothing and all we are left doing is what we feel obligated to do, then the doubt begins to set in if there is love at all.
Quoting lostlove: how can we feed that....make it grow???
By returning to offering to our spouse what is important to making us feel happy. Experiment with trying to find new ways to show our love and to exciting ways to enjoy sharing our company with our spouses. When we strike on finding what works, we will get validation from them, then cycle has been started or "sparked".
To keep those feelings going we have to continue to find new ways to keep our offerings fresh and exciting. Of coarse, by then we can't be doing it alone. Once the spark is ingnited, then our spouses should be making such offering as well. As you said LL:
Quote: ...we did have it for eachother long ago...
Still not easy to achieve and most may chuck it up as chemistry...either its there or its not, as they rely more on their natural "talent" to find the right balance between offering and validation. But by understanding a little better its more important to how we feel should be what we are willing to offer rather than what we expect to recieve from them. We're all fearful of giving unconditionally because we been hurt before, but in order to achieve those "in-love" tingles we have trust to give unconditionally again.
I not really sure I'm conveying my message with a sense of realism, but I can say there are times where I have felt a resurrection of those "tingles". I think Lisa too may know what I'm talking about (I hope at least). The point I feel I'm at now, is struggling to find that right balance in order to keep those "in-love" tingles going for the both of us.
Sorry to hi-jack your thread here with my some of my personal saga, but it was your posts that brought this collection of thoughts to the surface. I hope it helps some.
