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The truth about love is that it is kind, respectful, trustworthy, committed and joyful. With keen insight in The Truth About Love, Pat Love analyzes the components that make love a satisfying experience. And it all makes sense. She starts with what we need as individuals and then expands to what is best for a love relationship. By following her logic, you’d surely establish and hold onto a long-lasting, healthy relationship.

The VoR “Spirituality and Relationships” Series

You First, Then Everybody Else!
By Devya

It is so easy to be out of touch with yourself. Childhood experiences such as over-discipline (ever heard the expression “children are seen but not heard”?), being in dysfunctional, non-loving households with a missing parent, or physically present caretakers who were emotionally unavailable, are all possible scenarios that set the stage for a non–loving relationship with yourself, which in turn leads to unhappy, unfulfilling adult relationships.

In order to love yourself, learn to put yourself first, depend on yourself, and live from your own true feelings. One cannot heal and be in touch with oneself by constantly giving away your own power and trying to rescue and save everyone else.

Suddenly Single: Opportunity for New Path
By Devya

A partner is no longer in your life and you find yourself suddenly single. This may have come about through a failed relationship, a divorce, or death. Each ending brings forth a different set of circumstances to be handled, yet all three have loss of emotional equilibrium in common. You’re buffeted by feelings that run the gamut from grief, anger, and fear to abandonment, bewilderment, and at times even relief.

Since this can be one of the most trying times in our lives, there is a requisite mourning period for each type of loss. However, each difficult moment of this period of mourning contains the potential to open your eyes and heart because you can control your thoughts while making your way back to emotional strength. For example, if you choose to think about all your past hurts, you’ll feel bad. While it’s true that you can’t change the past, you can change the effect it has on you now.

The Essence of Meditation is Relationship
By Devya

Your spiritual growth is the greatest contribution you can make to yourself–and to humanity. As you grow spiritually, you’ll gain many, many tools from your mind to create real results in the material world. Meditation puts you in touch with mental powers that will help you for your whole life, powers particularly effective to make lasting, loving relationships. These powers, especially intuition, help you to remove friction from your relationships.

The rewards of spiritual growth are many. Meditation is a catalyst of this growth. You’ll begin by drawing positive and supportive people into your life, and releasing those who are not. As you continue to meditate, a growing sense of calm comes over you as you begin to understand your life and the people in it. You feel a clear sense of direction in the world, a greater sense of personal power, and a deeper understanding of why things happen.

Are You Spiritual, But Your Mate Is Not?
By Devya

The spiritual part of human nature calls for us to live out the meaning of our lives in peace and harmony with everyone. Although we can love someone who is not spiritual, the question is can we live with them?

Since our spiritual beliefs and values are deeply rooted within us there is no easy answer: each relationship has to be sorted out individually. Although there are no hard and fast rules, I suggest an initial focus on how accepting and committed the partners are to the growth of the relationship. Overall compatibility is crucial also.

Couples Who Pray and Meditate Together, Grow Together
By Devya

Incorporating prayer and meditation into a love relationship is one of the best ways to insure consistent growth and development.

Why? Because meditation and prayer help couples relate to one another in mature, non-defensive ways. As they pray together aloud, with all concerns expressed with the expectation of help, their bond becomes stronger and their mutual purpose more aligned. Prayer and meditation offer healthy ways to resolve issues that will inevitably arise between two persons in an intimate relationship.

Our relationship to God tends to be private, personal and perhaps even unique. So while it is fairly easy to meditate with another person with eyes closed (because one focuses on the inner world), praying requires a different discipline. For couples who are accustomed to only praying over a meal, an adjustment period may be required before the couple becomes totally comfortable praying together.

End of "Spirituality and Relationships" series

ENCHANTED LOVE
The Mystical Power of Intimate Relationships
By Marianne Williamson

After reading Enchanted Love I felt inspired and challenged. More than just food for thought, this wonderful book is an intricate, artfully detailed, gracefully woven tapestry of life as “we”. Every couple should have a copy of this book at their bedside table for constant reference.

Hooking Up
July 15, 2005

That’s the name of the newest television dating show. For one year, ABC’s news division followed a dozen professional women around New York , recording their attempts to pursue men using Internet dating services.

Serenading beaus do what comes naturally
Andi Cook

Cook's Brew

Have you ever watched a movie where a lovesick beau outside a window serenades his sweetheart?

The woman usually melts, succumbing to what she perceives as a romantic gesture.

The women in the audience sigh dreamily, wishing their men had a similar romantic bent.

Many of the men in the audience guffaw and call the infatuated Romeo a wimp, a pansy, or some other word implying that he has sacrificed his manhood on the altar of romance.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT
Love Stories from the Underground
by Betty DeRamus
Review by Jewel Kinch

Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, the men and women portrayed in this book had little hope of maintaining any type of relationship, let alone marriage, but again and again their love triumphed the chattels of slavery. Reading these stories gives new significance to words like commitment, dedication and love.