We Only Fall in Love with 3 People in Our Lifetime—Each One for a Specific Reason.

“Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.” ~ Unknown

It’s Been Said That We Really Only Fall In Love With Three People In Our Lifetime.

Yet, it’s also believed that we need each of these loves for a different reason.

Often our first is when we are young, in high school even. It’s the idealistic love—the one that seems like the fairytales we read as children.

This is the love that appeals to what we should be doing for society’s sake—and probably our families. We enter into it with the belief that this will be our only love and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t feel quite right, or if we find ourselves having to swallow down our personal truths to make it work because deep down we believe that this is what love is supposed to be.

Because in this type of love, how others view us is more important than how we actually feel.

It’s a love that looks right.

The second is supposed to be our hard love—the one that teaches us lessons about who we are and how we often want or need to be loved. This is the kind of love that hurts, whether through lies, pain or manipulation.

We think we are making different choices than our first, but in reality we are still making choices out of the need to learn lessons—but we hang on. Our second love can become a cycle, oftentimes one we keep repeating because we think that somehow the ending will be different than before. Yet, each time we try, it somehow ends worse than before.

Sometimes it’s unhealthy, unbalanced or narcissistic even. There may be emotional, mental or even physical abuse or manipulation—most likely there will be high levels of drama. This is exactly what keeps us addicted to this storyline, because it’s the emotional rollercoaster of extreme highs and lows and like a junkie trying to get a fix, we stick through the lows with the expectation of the high.

With this kind of love, trying to make it work becomes more important than whether it actually should.

It’s the love that we wished was right.

And the third is the love we never see coming. The one that usually looks all wrong for us and that destroys any lingering ideals we clung to about what love is supposed to be. This is the love that comes so easy it doesn’t seem possible. It’s the kind where the connection can’t be explained and knocks us off our feet because we never planned for it.

This is the love where we come together with someone and it just fits—there aren’t any ideal expectations about how each person should be acting, nor is there pressure to become someone other than we are.

We are just simply accepted for who we are already—and it shakes to our core.

It isn’t what we envisioned our love would look like, nor does it abide by the rules that we had hoped to play it safe by. But still it shatters our preconceived notions and shows us that love doesn’t have to be how we thought in order to be true.

This is the love that keeps knocking on our door regardless of how long it takes us to answer.

It’s the love that just feels right.

Maybe we don’t all experience these loves in this lifetime, but perhaps that’s just because we aren’t ready to. Maybe the reality is we need to truly learn what love isn’t before we can grasp what it is.

Possibly we need a whole lifetime to learn each lesson, or maybe, if we’re lucky, it only takes a few years.

Perhaps it’s not about if we are ever ready for love, but if love is ready for us.

And then there may be those people who fall in love once and find it passionately lasts until their last breath. Those faded and worn pictures of our grandparents who seemed just as in love as they walked hand-in-hand at age 80 as they did in their wedding picture—the kind that leaves us wondering if we really know how to love at all.

Someone once told me they are the lucky ones, and perhaps they are.

But I kinda think that those who make it to their third love are really the lucky ones.

They are the ones who are tired of having to try and whose broken hearts lay beating in front of them wondering if there is just something inherently wrong with how they love.

But there’s not; it’s just a matter of if their partner loves in the same way they do or not.

Just because it has never worked out before doesn’t mean that it won’t work out now.

What it really comes down to is if we are limited by how we love, or instead love without limits. We can all choose to stay with our first love, the one that looks good and will make everyone else happy. We can choose to stay with our second under the belief that if we don’t have to fight for it, then it’s not worth having—or we can make the choice to believe in the third love.

The one that feels like home without any rationale; the love that isn’t like a storm—but rather the quiet peace of the night after.

And maybe there’s something special about our first love, and something heartbreakingly unique about our second…but there’s also just something pretty amazing about our third.

The one we never see coming.
The one that actually lasts.
The one that shows us why it never worked out before.

And it’s that possibility that makes trying again always worthwhile, because the truth is you never know when you’ll stumble into love.

“You found parts of me I didn’t know existed and in you I found a love I no longer believed was real.” ~ Unknown

Withdrawls

Often times, men withdraw because they need to deal with their emotions privately before expressing them. Drawing back into their own space is just allowing them to establish a sense of self in a relationship that probably has them excited.
It isn’t fair to expect men to experience the same emotional energy that we might feel about having sex. If you push it onto your guy he might feel like he is losing his freedom thus making it harder to work and focus.
The emotional closeness we naturally feel after having sex may feel unnatural to him. But that does not mean he does not care.
Freedom and Individuality Matter to Him

Men want to experience freedom and individuality in a relationship. Often times, if a man tells you that he is not ready to commit what he really means is that he is afraid of being drawn to you- that he is, in fact, attracted to you.
Now that doesn’t mean you bust out your night vision goggles.
But you also do not have to live in fear. Being a man is different than being a woman- that is why you were attracted to him in the first place! As counter-intuitive as it seems, freedom is only a threat to you if you don’t let him have his space.
If your man is a decent human being who has shown interest and delight in you previously, he is probably just giving himself space after such an intense and conjoining act.

In fact, there is quite a bit of research and evidence that explain why when men get too attached they feel uneasy or uncomfortable. As men bond with women a hormone called oxytocin is secreted.
In women, it lowers their stress level and helps them bond with their lovers and their babies. However, in men it actually lowers their testosterone and raises their stress level.
The closeness of sex, in the long run, can stress out the man more than the woman in a purely chemical sense. Therefore, if he is really attracted to you, he might need some time to cope with his feelings.
If your relationship is strong, a little lull won’t hurt it. If the guy you once thought was a Prince Charming turns out to be a dud, it’s better to let him swim away and resolve in choosing better next time. Remember that you deserve someone who loves you for who you are- and your man deserves the same.

Take a trip alone

It may sound cliché, but think of your solo trip as an opportunity to get to know and find yourself. Traveling alone forces you to deal with yourself, and learn what you are capable of. Since you're going to be out of your comfort zone, you'll get the chance to learn things about yourself you wouldn't otherwise learn in your normal, everyday routine. And you will finally be alone with your thoughts and get to contemplate every aspect of your life. Being in isolation is good from time to time.

When you are stuck in a routine, you'll find it's difficult to  to push yourself beyond your limits. But when you travel, especially when alone, you have no choice but to do things completely out of your comfort zone. Challenge yourself to learn a bit of the local language, strike up a conversation with the locals, try their delicacies, watch cultural shows, stretch your budget, push yourself to wake up early so as not to waste the day. You'll end up a much better person by challenging yourself.

It will boost your confidence.

World I'm coming for you...

Soul ties

Many people are locked in relationships that they know they shouldn’t be in . . . but don’t know how to get out. Because it is a big reason why many people are not letting go of their past. Some people can never fully move on or may find themselves “stuck” because they have not severed relationships with particular people that God wants them to sever.
Perhaps you still dream about or long for someone that you were never able to release from your spirit, even though it’s been days, months or years. Perhaps you are currently in an unhealthy relationship you know you should get out of. Or you try to leave the situation but always end up returning to it. Maybe you have been in an intimate relationship with someone and although you know it’s wrong, you simply cannot resist the desire to stay involved with them. Perhaps you are tormented with thoughts about someone in your mind. You have soul ties.
Your soul is made up of your mind, your will and your emotions; it is your inner life. A soul tie is an emotional connection or a bond with another that unites you. Soul ties are not necessarily bad. After all, God created them.

Wean Yourself from that person.
You literally have to wean yourself from that person to whom you have ungodly soul ties. To wean means to deprive. You have to deprive yourself of this wrong soul tie until you no longer miss him or her. And listen to this: there will come a day when you will no longer miss that person.

I pray we all break away from the soul ties that can't make us move on. And move on to find the right person who'll make us content and love rightfully.

Can men & women be just "friends?"

Just as we have a complicated relationship with the idea of “love”, we have a similarly complicated one with “sex”. Our culture is so tied up with mixed messages about sex and sexuality that we can’t keep them all straight. Sex is dirty and wrong and only bad people have it… so save it for marriage kiddos. Sex is awesome and we should be having it all the time… but someone, especially a woman, who likes sex too much has something wrong with them. The only way for women to be valued is to be sexy, but being sexy or sexualdeliberately is a cause for scorn and shame.

The idea that sexual desire can exist independently from an emotional relationship is one that a lot of people have issues wrapping their heads around. Sexual desire is of the body while affection – romantic or otherwise – is of the mind. Sex is peanut butter and love is chocolate – they go together amazingly well, but one can have one without the other or without mixing the two together. Some people are great at compartmentalization while others are not… but this doesn’t mean that the existence of sexual interest in one friend or the other spells the doom of the friendship.

The idea that men and women can’t be “just” friends presumes that the fact that an attraction means that it is automatically unacknowledged… or that it will inevitably be enacted upon. Yet in the real world, friends can acknowledge an attraction – whether one-sided or mutual – without destroying things. It’s entirely possible for a couple to say “Yeah, we know it would never work out and we don’t want to risk ruining our friendship with an ugly break-up”. Men (or women) are quite capable of being attracted to someone and keeping that attraction to the realm of fantasy or “it would be fun if…” without actively trying to pursue it.

It’s when one or the other has an agenda that attraction ultimately ruins a friendship. When somebody enters into a friendship under false pretenses – attempting the Platonic Friend Back Door Gambit – they are using the guise of friendship in selfish hope of getting what they want. If you’re only maintaining friendships with people you’re attracted to in the hopes of someday getting together with them or wearing them down – what I call the Big Lie From A “Nice” Guy – then you’re not actually their friend, you’re just an asshole.

Friendship – real friendship – can encompass sex or love without being “ruined”, so long as everybody is honest with one another and willing to act like adults. If only one was mature about it....