Watch Your Step: For Those Who Desire to “Fall” in Love.
AMARI ICE
Adapted from the international best-seller, “Lasting Love at Last: The Gay Guide to Attracting the Relationship of Your Dreams,” by gay matchmaker and relationship coach, Amari Ice.
Browns, yellows, and reds envelop the earth around you. Sweaters, cardigans, and pea coats re-emerge from the confines of closets like prisoners granted commuted sentences at the end of a U.S. presidency. You discern the fragrance of pumpkin spice lattes effusing from the local coffee shop (by the way – when did pumpkin even become a spice...never mind). A crisp breeze grazes the side of your face and leaves a well-treaded knowing in your awareness:
Winter is nigh.
And you remain #uncuffed, #unbooed, and #unpartnered.
We often view fall as the season of falling in love. ‘Tis the time of finding the love you’ll celebrate next Valentine’s day, and hopefully –if you’re looking for long-term partnership – every day afterward.
But what is love, anyway? And how and why do we fall into it?
Love is simply the strongest, positive emotion. To feel positive emotions is to enjoy life, and the strongest positive emotion equates to the strongest enjoyment of life. That's the math, but the way our culture and many of our teachers show us how to get to that high state of positive emotion – to love – isn’t really an effective way. We’re basically taught to find someone whose job is to keep us happily in love. We’re taught that it’s their responsibility to control the way we feel.
That's why many relationship issues happen – we erroneously attribute our happiness to the actions or inactions of our partners. No one else can put and keep your emotions in any one state. Emotional control is a personal skill you have to learn to develop and is one of the biggest things I help my clients work on.
It is indeed easier to "stay in love" if you never put the responsibility on your partner to keep you there in the first place (and if you’re already partnered it’s essential to correct the attribution error and understand that staying in love or not is a result of your skill and not his inadequacy – and hopefully you reframe before it causes your relationship to dissolve). That's why people in successful relationships say love takes work. It’s not so much the work of relating as much as it is the work of self-mastery. If you haven't mastered the art of keeping yourself in love, relationships will consistently test your mettle.
It’s a misnomer that you’re supposed to fall in love. Falling in love implies you were on a totally different emotional frequency and then, all of a sudden, lost your balance and ended up in love because a dashing gentleman tripped you with his charisma and beauty. In actuality, it’s not that you fall in love with another person as much as it is that you allow them to be your excuse to feel the emotion.
To fall in love means you weren't already on the wavelength, and you happened upon it by dramatic accident. That's what we see in the movies: people's normal frequencies being quaked by the experience of another's amorous attention. If you're already on the frequency of love when you meet someone, there’s no drastic emotional calibration as you get to know each other, so you don't feel the whiplash of falling.
When you average your regular daily emotions, if your normal frequency is agony, disappointment, and unhappiness, you won’t be able to sustain the love that comes into your life. Since energy is attracted to energy of similar wavelengths, even though you may attract a lover, it will be one who reinforces your normal vibrational output.
Seek to raise your average emotional vibration first, for yourself, and then invite a lover. Some ways to do that include working with a therapist, coach, or seeking other resources that help you develop emotional awareness and control. That foundation allows you to sustain the love that enters. It allows you to plant and water seeds that will bloom and flourish into a loving relationship garden come spring.
Love, Peace, and Glitter,
Amari
If you have questions about gay love and relationships, feel free to email me: Amari@amarimeanslove.com
