How to develop love for someone

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“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” -~Sam Keen

Before I married my wonderful husband, I dated a lot of men. For most of my 20s (and even my early 30s) I had a perfect fairy-ideal of what romantic love was, probably because I was an actress and loved drama back then.

It took years for me to realize a relationship is not a romance movie.

At some point in our lives, we may believe that love should be like the kind of romance we see portrayed in films, television, and novels.

For some reason, I always thought my romantic relationships were less if I did not experience this kind of fairy-tale relationship. Maybe this is why I kept meeting frogs.

At times, I bought into the belief that if I had a relationship with the perfect prince, then all would be well in my life. I thought, Now, I will be safe forever.

In truth, I did marry a prince—but a prince who is also human, who has faults and issues just like every person, no matter how wonderful he is.

At some point I grew up and learned to let go of the crazy metaphor of romantic love in order to find true happiness. Yes, I was disappointed to realize that the knight riding through the night to save the damsel in distress is a fallacy. It’s a bummer.

But, let’s look at it in this light: We all saw Romeo and Juliet and Titanic. Why stories like these make our hearts sing is that the love is unrequited. Unavailability fuels the romantic expression.

This kind of romantic story can only work when there is an absence of the lover. Sometimes, they have to die in the end in order for their love to fit into this romantic view. Or, we eat handfuls of popcorn, waiting to see if they live happily ever after, and we rarely find out if they really do.

The romantic love fantasy is really a substitute for intimacy—real, connected, vulnerable intimacy.

So then, how do we make relationships work and stay happy?

We begin with the understanding of what pure love is, and then redefine and update the romantic fairytale into a healthier type of love.

Here are 10 ways to create true intimacy, find pure love, and be truly happy in your relationship:

1. Use relationships to teach you how to be whole within.

Relationships aren’t about having another person complete you, but coming to the relationship whole and sharing your life interdependently. By letting go of the romantic ideal of merging and becoming “one,” you learn as Rainer Maria Rilke says, to love the distances in relationship as much as the togetherness.

2. See your partner for who he or she really is.

The romantic tragedy occurs when you view the person you are in love with as a symbol of what they have come to represent, the idea of them. When you realize that more often than not you don’t really know your partner, you begin to discover who they are and how they change and evolve.

3. Be willing to learn from each other.

The key is to see the other as a mirror and learn from the reflection how you can be a better person. When you feel upset, rather than blame your partner and point fingers, remain awake to what has yet to be healed in yourself.

4. Get comfortable being alone.

In order to accept that love can’t rescue you from being alone, learn to spend time being with yourself. By feeling safe and secure to be on your own within the framework of relationship, you will feel more complete, happy, and whole.

5. Look closely at why a fight may begin.

Some couples create separateness by fighting and then making up over and over again. This allows you to continue the romantic trance, creating drama and avoiding real intimacy. If you become aware of what you fear about intimacy, you’ll have a better sense of why you’re fighting—and likely will fight far less.

6. Own who you are.

We generally grasp at romantic love because we’re yearning for something that is out of reach, something in another person that we don’t think we possess in ourselves. Unfortunately, when we finally get love, we discover that we didn’t get what we were looking for.

True love only exists by loving yourself first. You can only get from another person what you’re willing to give yourself.

7. Embrace ordinariness.

After the fairy-dust start of a relationship ends, we discover ordinariness, and we often do everything we can to avoid it. The trick is to see that ordinariness can become the real “juice” of intimacy. The day-to-day loveliness of sharing life with a partner can, and does, become extraordinary.

8. Expand your heart.

One thing that unites us is that we all long to be happy. This happiness usually includes the desire to be close to someone in a loving way. To create real intimacy, get in touch with the spaciousness of your heart and bring awareness to what is good within you.

It’s easier to recognize the good in your partner when you’re connected to the good in yourself.

9. Focus on giving love.

Genuine happiness is not about feeling good about ourselves because other people love us; it’s more about how well we have loved ourselves and others. The unintentional outcome of loving others more deeply is that we are loved more deeply.

10. Let go of expectations.

You may look to things such as romance and constant togetherness to fill a void in yourself. This will immediately cause suffering. If you unconsciously expect to receive love in certain ways to avoid giving that love to yourself, you will put your sense of security in someone else.

Draw upon your own inner-resources to offer love, attention, and nurturance to yourself when you need it. Then you can let love come to you instead of putting expectations on what it needs to look like.

These are only a few ways to explore real intimacy. How do you create a loving connection in your relationship?

Photo by SashaW

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Here’s How To Make Someone Fall In Love With You

When researchers asked people to tell the stories of how they fell in love, what were the eleven most common factors?

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

Variables That Influence Falling in Love

1. Similarity in attitudes, background, personality traits

2. Geographic proximity

3. Desirable characteristics of personality and appearance

4. Reciprocal affection, the fact that the other likes us

5. Satisfying needs

6. Physical and emotional arousal

7. Social influences, norms, and the approval of people in our circle

8. Specific cues in the beloved’s voice, eyes, posture, way of moving

9. Readiness for a romantic relationship

10. Opportunities to be alone together

11. Mystery, in the situation or the person

Some of these factors are worth a deeper look.

Let’s check out the specifics of how to make someone fall in love with you:

Proximity

Being nearby helps a lot. Yeah, unromantic and obvious but if you’re looking for love, definitely ask yourself where you’re spending your time.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

In another study, conducted in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1950s, 431 couples who applied for marriage licenses were interviewed. It turned out that 54% of the couples were separated by a distance of 16 blocks or fewer when they first went out together, and 37% were separated by a distance of 5 blocks or fewer. The number of marriages decreased as the distance increased between the couples’ places of residence.

Who becomes friends in the dorms at college? People who are similar? No.People who are nearby.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

Two factors appeared to exercise the greatest influence on personal relationships: the location of the apartments and the distances between them. The most important factor in determining who would be emotionally close to whom was the distance between their apartments.

What underlies this? Obviously, you have to meet, but there’s something else going on: repeated exposure.

As marketers know very well (and anyone looking for love should learn about marketing), repeated exposure makes us like almost anything.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

Repeated exposure, it turns out, increases our liking for practically everything, from the routine features of our lives to decorating materials, exotic foods, music, or people.

“What about that annoying person at work, huh? I see them all the time and I don’t fall in love with them.”

True. Repeated exposure amplifies whatever is already there.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

…repeated exposure intensifies the dominant emotion in the relationship. When the dominant emotion is anger, repeated exposure enhances the anger. When the dominant emotion is attraction, repeated exposure enhances the attraction.

Love at first sight only happens in 11% of cases and it’s more common in men than women. By the same token, this means first impressions are huge because repeated exposure has a snowball effect.

Looking for love? Then think about where you’re spending your time. What places do you go on a regular basis and do they contain the kind of people you want to date?

Sounds obvious but if you’re spending 99% of your waking hours at work and at home, you’re not allowed to be surprised you’re single.

Character

People like people who are nice and smart and funny and make them feel good and zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Yeah, of course.

Let’s talk about the other side of character. What are you like inside?

Having a strong sense of who you are and a lot of self-confidence is a good predictor of whether you’re going to fall in love with anyone.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

People who have a high frequency of love experiences tend to have high self-confidence and low defensiveness… Insecure people who do not have a coherent sense of self and who are not self-actualized tend toward a game-playng style of love and have relationships with low levels of intimacy and high levels of conflict… A study that compared the levels of people’s self-identity to the levels of intimacy in their relationships showed that Erikson was right. The stronger people’s sense of self, the higher their ability to be intimate.

Get your inside straight and the outside might take better care of itself.

Similarity

Opposites attract… um, not all that much.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

People are likely to choose as lovers and marriage partners those with similar characteristics. Furthermore, the more similar couples are in personality and background, the more comfortable they are with each other, the more compatible they feel, and the greater their satisfaction from the relationship. Consequently, couples who are similar in attitudes, temperament, and behavior are more likely to stay together over time.

Emphasizing similarity when getting to know someone is always a good idea. It’s one of the key pillars of influence documented by persuasion expert Robert Cialdini.

Arousal

Any type of situation that affects us emotionally increases the chance of falling in love.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

In one-fifth of the romantic attraction interviews, the relationships described started during stormy periods in the lives of the men and women interviewed. Sometimes, the heightened emotional sensitivity followed an experience of loss, such as the death of a parent or a painful breakup.

This is why people fall in love on the rebound. This is why we see Stockholm Syndrome. This is one of the reasons musicians are more attractive.

We can’t really tell what is causing our feelings and we have to guess. It’s calledmisattribution of emotions. So any emotionally arousing situation has the potential to fool us into thinking we’re in love.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

When we are aroused, the origin of the arousal does not matter, and it does not matter whether we are aware of the reason. Arousal automatically reinforces our natural response, including attraction to a potential partner.

Even an action movie can do it.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

Some of the couples watched an action movie; others watched a movie that was less arousing. It turns out that the couples who watched the arousing action movie expressed more affection toward each other after the movie than they did before seeing it. The nonaction movie had no effect on the amount of affection expressed by the couples who watched it.

Misattribution of emotions can even make you fall in love with someone who is trying to kill you.

But, again, you can’t think making someone fall in love with you is as easy as taking them to an action movie. Arnold Schwarzenegger is not cupid.

Like repeated exposure, arousal is merely an intensifier.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

When the woman looked attractive, the arousal caused an increase in the men’s attraction to her. But, when she looked unattractive, the arousal actually caused a decrease in their attraction to her. It is noteworthy that the woman was the same in both cases, and that the difference in the men’s response to her was caused by makeup.

Beauty

How to make someone fall in love with you? Being attractive helps, no doubt. Make yourself look good. What’s news about that?

Guys, you may not be putting in enough effort.

The stereotype that men are more focused on beauty than women proves out – but not nearly as much as you might think.

Tell women they’re connected to a lie detector and they are far more likely to say physical attractiveness is important.

Via Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose:

When the women thought they were connected to a lie detector, they admitted being more influenced by the physical attractiveness of the men and described physically attractive men as more desirable. When they were not connected to the apparatus, women tended to underreport the impact of the men’s physical attractiveness on their preferences. Apparently, a social norm tends to inhibit, especially women, from admitting the importance of physical attraction.

Got a better idea of how to make someone fall in love with you now?

This piece originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

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