Friday, June 25, 2010

Generating Passionate Relationships

Relationships....how we feel about other people and how they feel about us....are so important, yet so difficult to express. It is an area of communication that seems to defy language. Somehow putting our feelings, especially positive feelings, into words feels inadequate, inappropriate, off-limits, scary and taboo.

Somehow we sense that letting someone else know how we feel about them may scare them away. They might think we are stupid, needy, clingy, a stalker. Somehow, if we let down our defences, the loved or admired object of our affection will take advantage of us, not respect us, or even run away, never to be seen again.

After confessing or professing our love, how can we ever face them again?

One intuitive sense of mine is that people may engage in inappropriate intimacy because the desire to express what seems and feels inexpressible with words alone is so compelling. Our hearts and bodies seem to tell us that physical contact will convey the strength of our emotions, that the way we touch another will be an expression of the true feelings in our hearts. Maybe we could reduce jealosy, divorce and extra-maritial affairs if we could only find the words to talk about our feelings.

What if we could find words that do express the many faces of love AND we could actually say them....and everything would be OK? We could stay married, keep our jobs, not hurt any ones feelings, or feel we had simply crossed the boundries of appropriate behavior.

I am not claiming that I have figured out how to do this, but I would like to try. One way to start would be to have a variety of expressions of love be part of our everyday vocabulary.

And maybe there are other ways to express our feelings. I remember that in elementary school in the 1950s, we all had our own mailboxes to hold valentines from our friends and secret admirers. I used to be sooo excited to recieve, savor and count my valentines. Knowing I had so many friends and admirers gave me a real rush of energy. This is the type of energy that can move mountains.