What is the secret of true love? (sequel)

[Click HERE for the Dutch version / Klik HIER voor de Nederlandse versie]

This is the sequel to the first blog about true love.

My 'quest'

After my divorce, when I was 32 and left a bad marriage of 12 years behind me - although three lovely children richer! - I had years of vain attempts finding true love.

Each time when I saw an intense happy couple, I really was jealous of them. Often I wondered "How on earth do these people get this done?"

Search for real love

I myself felt insecure on the path of love. I was searching for 'happiness'. Hoping I would find 'the one'. And I wandered a lot... Fortunately I did not really get lost!

And difficult it was to find the right direction in the maze of love. I was wondering what exactly was the secret of love really...

Are you also a romantic?

Frankly, I must admit that I was quite a romantic in earlier days.

Are you also a romantic?

My behavior at that time reminds me a bit of the Osho Zen Tarot card 'The Dream', the 6 of the element Water of the Minor Arcana. 

'The Dream'

The card 'The Dream' stands - among other things - for a longing for ‘the prince on a white horse’ and the expectation that he will protect you and make you happy.

Of course these feelings and thoughts can only lead to disillusionment...

Mister X / Miss Y

Do you have a love partner? Then allow yourself to consider how you act towards your partner.

Or, if you don’t have a love partner but you are looking for one, think about how you want to face Mister X / Miss Y.

Mister X / Miss Y

Ask yourself the following questions:

Are your motives pure?

Are your expectations realistic?

Who deserves your love?

When we talk about love, we must not forget the most important thing. It is you, yourself, who deserve your love and affection as much as anyone else in the whole world!

If you cannot love who and what you are (with all positive and less positive sides), it is rather difficult to start a love relation, and perpetuating it.

Love yourself

Self-acceptance, self-esteem, self-confidence, and more of these kind of positive self-assessments are necessary. Briefly: loving yourself is a prerequisite to be able to experience true love with a partner.

What are your personal needs?

Most likely, you also found your love partner because certain personal characteristics of him/her attracted you (and vice versa). Characteristics with which he/she can meet the personal needs that you have as a unique human being (which needs are not e.g. hobbies or interests, or universal human needs, such as the need for safety, the need for security, etc.).

Of course these pure personal needs mean something else for each of us.

What are your personal needs

Maze of love

Probably, it is as it is: the road to true love (and also the maintenance of that love!) is like a maze...

Like any other maze the maze of love is a confusing way, from a beginning to a (tentative) final goal, on which way we constantly have to make choices.
Will I choose this path or yet the other?

Difficult enough, having to choose again and again!

Maze

It would be much easier if the path to true love would be a labyrinth. A labyrinth is - just like a maze - a confusing way, from a beginning to a (tentative) final goal. But the path of the labyrinth is completely ready for us to go along, and we only have to follow it, nothing more. We do not have to choose every time which path we should take, like in a maze.

Labyrinth

A labyrinth would be so much easier!
But alas...

Thrown back on myself

Going back to my own story.
The more I looked for 'it' in another person, and the more I expected that he would make me happy, the more miserable and hopeless I felt.

Finally my search brought me back to myself.
To the human being I am,
to what I have to give,
to what I do,
to what I feel,
to what I think,
to what I expect,
to what I want,
etc.

Maybe that sounds strange.
But finally I came to realize that true love is something that only I can give to somebody else (and of course to myself).

No one has the power and control over the feelings of another person. So what your partner gives you is up to him/her.

Making choices, again and again

For me, and probably this will apply for many people, the paths of the 'maze of love' finally brought me where I wanted to be. Despite all the choices I had to make, from extremely easy to mighty difficult.

Making choices

And we still need to make all kinds of choices when we have a love relationship. That certainly will not stop when you've found a love partner!

We still have to “work” for a good and healthy love relation.

But don’t worry; it really does not have to be just "work".
‘Going with the flow’, and the desire to have a nice time together, sounds more pleasant, don’t you think?

Result of my quest?

What is the most important thing I've discovered in the search for true love?
What opened my eyes?
Which secret did I finally reveale?

By opening my own heart

The revealed secret, for me the eye-opener, was that I understood that only by opening my own heart and letting loving feelings flow, I give true love a chance to develop.

Wim and I

~Love is like the wind, 

you cannot see it

but you can feel it.~

(Nicholas Sparks)

Well, this was it; with this I end this sequel to the blog article "What is the secret of true love?"
The first blog about true love can be read here.

[Click HERE for the Dutch version of this article / Klik HIER voor de Nederlandse versie van dit artikel]

Please, take a look at my Tarot website:
Hart voor Tarot (in Dutch)

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