Tag Archives: love relationships

8 Tips to Avoid Ruining Your Love Life in 2014

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It’s that time of year again. Countless Valentine’s Day ads remind you of your happy love life, or if you’re like most people, your less than perfect romantic life.

Contrary to the implications of this commercial holiday, there’s nothing wrong with being single, or having a non-traditional relationship.

No matter what your love life status, here are some love life tips you can use year-round to make the most of it.

1) Accept how your love life is right now. This isn’t easy, so you’ll have to repeatedly remind yourself, especially when it seems like your circumstances couldn’t get worse. Once you accept being single or your relationship as it is, it will be easier to cherish the good things about your situation, and sometimes that will encourage change for the better.

2) Accept that you don’t need someone else to make you happy. You are all you need, believe it or not. Once you understand this, a relationship becomes an added bonus rather than a narcotic drug you can’t live without. Love addicts experience the crash and yearning for more far more often than the high.

3) Learn to not care about what other people think about your love life. It’s really none of their business. Do what makes you happy, even if it’s not the norm. If you don’t, you’ll have regrets at the end of your life.

4) Don’t fall for the “one and only soul mate” lie. Some love life experts claim to have the key to finding “the one,” “your twin soul,” and other fanciful love life goals. We’ve found through our years of empirical research that everyone has many soul mates, and most of them are not meant to result in a life-long, blissful relationship.

5) Don’t fall for the “together forever” fantasy. Sure, it’s possible, and in rare cases couples do grow old together without great suffering and sacrifices that make them die inside. Unfortunately, most couples who commit at a very young age find that they’re not compatible enough for a traditional relationship after five, ten, or twenty years. Couples in prior generations had to remain together due to sociological and economical reasons. Today, singles and couples have more options, and that’s a good thing. The length of a relationship isn’t important; what you learn and the love you give is.

6) Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have an ideal relationship, the type of love life that some celebrities seem to have as described in the media. Like an airbrushed photo, what they present to the world and the reality might be two different things. In fact, in some cases, you might be shocked to know the truth about the relationship.

7) Consider karma and fate. Even if you use your free will to do all you can to improve your love life, and you should, things won’t always go as you hope due to the ever-present laws of karma and fate. This doesn’t mean you’re being punished, but it might mean that you’re going through a learning phase now for a more wonderful love experience later.

8) Lighten up and relax! It’s so easy to get caught up in your routine and be stressed out from the responsibilities of life. But if you don’t take “me time” to relax, rejuvenate, and become centered, whether it’s through meditation or other ways, it’s more difficult to present your best, beautiful self to your partner or a new potential love interest.

Copyright © 2014 Stephen Petullo, Scott Petullo

3 Common But Terrible Reasons for Seeking or Remaining in a Relationship

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Almost everyone hopes and strives for a long-term relationship, but few are ever able to find and cement a mutually satisfying, compatible bond that lasts the rest of their lives. Those who place great importance on the fantasy of permanent, romantic bliss may see this as a tragedy, but we believe that’s an erroneous, dysfunctional perspective.Short-term relationships end for various reasons, including people changing and evolving or regressing at different rates over time, the shattering of illusions resulting in broken alliances, and “good” and “bad” love karma and personal timing: most connections, we have discovered in our work, have destined beginning and ending times.

There are many reasons couples stay together for longer periods of time, but we’ve found, generally, that there are four main categories of people who seek or remain in a longer-term relationship, which include three terrible reasons for doing so:

1) Singles seeking financial security or couples who can’t afford to break up yet. It’s common for couples to remain together because creating a second household would be too expensive. The divorce rate during the recent economic downturn has decreased, and reduced incomes is the number one reason.

All facades aside, financial security as the primary motivation for entering a relationship makes the connection a business relationship, not a love relationship. Adherents to the traditional American marriage model and those with a sense of entitlement deny it and express outrage when we point it out, but this sort of arrangement is essentially matrimonial prostitution. Please note, we believe how anyone chooses to live their love life is their business (not the government’s, and not society’s), unless they are being dishonest and, or using or abusing someone. We’re just calling it like we see it.

2) Those who are afraid of change, being single or alone, or are seeking happiness outside of themselves. These types will wait it out until they are forced to change, or they will end up feeling alone and isolated, even while in a relationship, because of their fear.

3) Those who feel a marriage or long-term relationship is a requirement to be a good parent. Unfortunately, a bad relationship will take the focus off a child and all will suffer in the process. Because of this, we recommend a child contract (which protects the child along with the primary caretaker) instead of a marriage contract.

4) And finally, most couples get married assuming they have what it takes to remain together, but then realize months or years later they lack the most important element, which happens to be metaphysically oriented: The good love karma of their predestined life circumstances that allows them to experience, for the most part, a harmonious, happy, long-term relationship. We estimate this is only about 15% of the population.

Is there something wrong with you if you don’t experience a rewarding longer-term or life-long relationship? It’s easy to think so if you get caught up in what you are “supposed to do” as a “normal” member of society.

Great importance is placed on life-long relationships. This is unfortunate since everyone has many soul mates and what is learned from a relationship is more important than its duration. Just because it ended doesn’t mean it “failed.”

If you aren’t involved in an ideal, longer-term relationship, don’t fret. Perceptions and expectations about the way love lives “should” be cause more misery than almost any other issue.

Instead of comparing yourself with those who seem to have what you’d like (remember, appearances can be very deceiving) and generating regret and despair, accept where you are, be grateful for all you have such as relationships with friends and family, learn to love yourself and occasional solitude, and refuse to buy into romantic fairytales.

Copyright © 2010 Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo

Redefining How You Perceive New Love Interests

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If a woman is attracted to a man, it’s in her best interest to tell him. Many guys won’t flirt or make it clear that they are romantically interested in you until you make it obvious that you are interested too. Don’t over-analyze it, just go with the flow and realize that rejection, if it happens, is just part of the dating process.

It’s best to avoid thinking in all-or-nothing terms (the beginning of a wonderful relationship, or nothing). Just let it be what it’s meant to be. Most relationships, no matter how brief, offer valuable rewards and lessons.

Too many people expect a new love interest to be “the one” and avoid those who aren’t exactly all they demand in a partner (and too often, they personally don’t even meet those excessive demands). After a date or two they learn that the person does not fulfill every single item on their ideal romantic partner list, so they bail and start looking for the next one (or stay with that person until they find another so they don’t have to be alone).

It’s a good idea to remember to let each connection be what it’s meant to be and stop looking for perfection and expecting your date to be what he or she “should” be. Very few people you’ll meet will be even close to “the one” and you’ll only enjoy longer term, rewarding, hassle-free, compatible love relationships if you’ve earned them, in a karmic sense (as can be outlined through comprehensive numerological and astrological charting).

Being together in a fulfilling decades-long relationship is the fate, in our view, of some couples. Also, being married or partnered in a strictly monogamous relationship for 20, 40, or even 60 years is desired by many, but is it always for the highest good of all involved? No. To think that you can avoid complacency and growing apart, and to demand emotional, mental, romantic, and sexual fulfillment for decades with the same person (especially when two people marry young) is silly. A better approach is to drop all expectations upon entering a relationship. If it’s destined to be long-term, great. If not, be grateful for the experience, wish him or her well, and move on.

Rarely, if ever, do people know all the hidden, behind-closed-doors details about those dear, elderly couples who stay together for decades. Remember, you were blacklisted from society only a couple generations ago if you got divorced, so some couples stayed together, suffered, and played the game to avoid being ostracized. Plus, men and women had fixed, specific roles back then, so if they divorced, who would cook for him and who would do the yard work for her?

Today, many still hope to have a “lifetime” relationship, but an increasing number are acknowledging that divorce is reasonable for couples that grow apart. If handled maturely and fairly, divorce can be a good thing for both people (and if it’s unavoidably a more challenging situation, then, in our view, it was meant to be that way). Those who refuse to acknowledge this seem to have dependency problems, fear about being financially secure, have difficulty being alone, have a rough time with change, or perceive relationships too idealistically.

More and more people are accepting the notion that if one person is unhappy and wants out, then it’s pointless to stay together, and selfish of the other person if he demands she stay. You might say, “what about the kids?” Kids know if their parents are just going through the motions and doing so sets a bad example. Besides, a family doesn’t have to “break up” if the parents are both mature enough to remain friends, or at least civil and fair to each other.

By the way, we advocate legal agreements (however “unromantic” they may seem) between two adults before having any children, whether or not they get married, to protect the children and help minimize future disagreements and problems between their parents.

What you hope for in your romantic life might be destined, but if it’s not, as long as you react to fate with unconditional love and compassion, you’ll be on good ground.

Copyright © 2006 Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo