You are in love and it feels wonderful. This love is different and you are prepared to do anything to make it last. To prevent this ship from sinking you work hard to steer this relationship into a safe harbor. In the process you lose yourself and your romantic relationship becomes all-consuming!

When in love, how do you preserve your identity and course in life when? Here is the number one reason for losing yourself in a relationship: Your belief that love is something you either deserve or not! Your misguided belief leads you to counterproductive efforts to do almost anything to get love and even more to hold onto it:

• You modify your identity to gain approval and love from your partner.
• You hold back intimacy to protect your vulnerability.
• You have a need to manipulate your partner and the course of this relationship.
• Your fear of abandonment paralyzes you

Yet, in reality, love either exists or it doesn’t. There is nothing you have to be, or do, to earn it. When it is love, there is very little if anything you can do to destroy it. If there is no love, there is nothing you can do to force it. Love is something that you deserve and if you can believe that, you will accept that:

• You can be loved even if you are not perfect
• You can be loved just as you are
• You can be loved while keeping your course in life
• You can be loved without getting lost in love
• You can be loved while pursuing your life’s dreams
• You can be loved, let go and let be

Love is the most powerful human lesson you are ever to learn. It is about overcoming the past and realizing your human potential, a purposeful interdependence through which you become so much more than on your own.

Once you can understand that love is not something to be found, rather it is in you to be shared, you can love wholeheartedly without fear. Don’t turn your back on love every time it touches you, because when you give up on love you give up on yourself.

posted by: Allie Ochs.