Natasha Lunn is a journalist who set out to understand how relationships work and evolve and has wonderful conversations on love, lovers, friends, family, endings and beginnings. Conversations on falling in love slowly, on vulnerability, on change, friendship, loneliness and loss, parenthood, science of sex, being alone, on unrealistic expectations and on redefining romance.
Natasha goes from her understanding of love being a needy tool where she would put up with men who would only say 'I love you' in a state of drunkenness, mistaking instability for attraction, to really understanding what love means and entails. She says when we do not understand love we quash ourselves and forget our needs and desires to second guess our partners, saying NO to friends to keep an evening free for them if by chance they might ask to see you at the last minute. People lose a sense of self in relationships.
Responsibility means that one can insists that those whom you give your love and friendship are able to respect your mind.
We do have a choice - to stay in the fantasies in our head or to climb out and live.
Alain de Botton says - I could be alone is one of the most important guarantees of one day being with somebody else in a happy way. Being alone is not a tragedy.
Love is connection.
Having a good friend is more important than having a lover - its much closer to happiness.
Our emotions are not entirely reliable, they tend to overshoot or undershoot the target. Don't get stuck to one way - there are many ways to live this life.
If being loved is your goal, then you will fail. - M Scott Peck
Ayisha Malik says that one should be able to find love everywhere - in work, friends, family, lovers because no one person can see the whole of you. Expecting someone to fill the hole within you is your job, not your partners. Faith is about love. Give up control.
When we stop relying on one person to make us happy we live a more varied and interesting life.
Nobody is right for anyone. You love or like someone when you like yourself when you're with them. To be more kind to yourself turn your 'what ifs' into 'so whats'.
Find someone where you can be 'you' without performing.
Don't ask for your needs to be met, they won't be. Find different forms of love. Don't worry about not being good enough.
How focussed are we on receiving love than on giving it. On waiting for it instead of building it.
The four types of love according to CS Lewis - Storge (familial love), Philia (friendship), Eros (romantic) and Agape (unconditional)
Being a good friend is about demonstrating it, investing time, having an awareness of people and their history, their desires and needs.
Friendship has been relegated to a lesser form of love. Have rituals and reminders.
How to see a partner clearly, make space for them to change and grow, to encourage their dreams, to accept their flaws and mistakes, to love someone in a way that brings out their best.
Your partner is several different people and you have different relationships with each. You can only feel love when you feel worthy of love and hat includes doing things that make you feel good.
Don't approach love with a fixed position - its fluid.
The fundamental requirement of any satisfying relationship is a reciprocal ability to see the world as others see it, to be able to put ourselves in someone else's shows. - Gordon Livingstone
Pain comes from a failure to see things are they really are.
Notice those subtle opportunities for love which are woven throughout our daily love.
The search for every kind of love is a continual process of looking in and out.
Love often goes wrong because of a lack of self-reflection and understanding.
Love is ease, not like climbing Mount Everest. Working at relationships doe snot feel like working.
I used to worry about presenting myself in a certain light.There is a subconscious language of sex - what our bodies can tell us, our minds cannot.
Like emotional intimacy, good sex requires great vulnerability.
There are two types of sex and both are great - spontaneous and responsive.
Extraordinary sex requires the following in priority - Kleinplatz
1) Being fully present
2) connection, alignment and being in sync
3) deep sexual and erotic intimacy
4) extraordinary communication and deep empathy
5) being genuine, authentic and transparent
6) vulnerability and surrender
7) exploration, risk taking in the partnership and fun
8) transcendence and transformation
Pleasure is about creating a context that alters your brain to interpret a sensation as pleasaure.
Emotional distance can lead to good sex.
Couples get enmeshed - they get so close that they strat treating each other badly because it feels lik betrayal when they don't feel the same.
The healthiest couples are those who can argue without feeling threatened, come back together quickly after an argument and see the conversation in context.
If you lose your sense as an individual it can damage the relationship.
Love is responsibility.
We have lost connection with people who we share significant pieces of our life with. Create rituals and start connections - a weekend away, notes, time together.
Love is a verb. It implies action, demonstration, ritual, practice, communication, experience. Its the ability to take responsibility of one's own behavior. Responsibility is freedom.
Separated attachments are what we should be aiming for in friendships. When friends are separate but connected they can feel whole in themselves.
The format of friendship changes over a lifetime and that's normal.
Most important thing to give children is love.
Don't confuse love with anxiety or the risk of danger with the thrill of romance. The harmony and calm that comes with a true love is extremely precious.
Work at love. Don't make assumptions. Don't run away from the bad stuff.
All you can control is what you do with love and whether or not you choose to prioritise it.
Loss is coming for all of us.
I learnt about love's enemies (self-pity, neglect, ego, laziness, always wanting more) and its companions (responsibility, discipline, listening, humour, forgiveness, gratitude and hope)
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All the above quotes by different people. Lovely book. Need to read it again.
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