Do you love your partner but don’t feel like you are “in love” anymore?”

At the beginning of a relationship there’s usually the lusting romantic stage. Two people are so totally into each other there’s a magnetism and craving to be together. You feel like you know each others’ thoughts and even at times may experience ESP and mental telepathy. After a year or two most couples begin the power struggle. Judgments, criticisms, and feelings of being unloved emerge. And then, they grow into either connection or separation.

Where are you with this, connected or separated?

Being part of a couple is a challenge. It’s the challenge of maintaining love, independence and interdependence. It’s the balance of compromise without compromising yourself. Being part of a couple offers the greatest spiritual lessons. It involves learning how to love, help accommodate the needs of your partner while getting your own needs met. It means communicating in ways that are non-judgmental, non-critical, forgiving and being loving and kind, in spite of all challenges and obstacles. To do this you need to have presence of heart, clarity of thought, adhere to emotional transparency, listen attentively and speak truth with confidence, integrity and honesty.

Each party in the relationship has to work continuously to maintain his or her own sense of balance, inner security, and unconditional love. If not, he or she will look to the other to help get these needs met. When the other person can’t meet them, he or she will begin to judge, criticize, disrespect, and resent the other person. One becomes the angry acting out partner, and the other passive and withdrawn. Morton Hunt, a researcher on marriage once said, “The best marriage is mutual psychotherapy.” At that time psychotherapists analyzed clients. That’s the worst thing you can do in a relationship. I say the best marriage is being loving life coaches for each other. If you think about what a life coach does, you’ll have an idea of what makes a good marriage.

What does a loving life coach do?

A loving life coach listens and mirrors back thoughts, validates experiences, and empathizes with feelings. A coach accepts who you are, gives constructive feedback, nurtures, supports, and helps you to be more confident, loving, productive and happy. A coach helps you feel good about yourself and become even more than who you are and live from your innately loving, creatively wise Self. How do you think it would feel to be partnered with someone who does that for you?

Passion, Love And Sex

Passion comes when each partner is open to his or her own love. As partners help each other be more open to themselves, each feels good about him or her Self, and in touch with the sensual part of the Self. Then comes the sexual relationship. Here it takes two consenting adults. When each is clear of distractions, judgments, criticisms, doubts, fears, anxieties, and focused on being open to loving and receiving their partners love, the sexual act is more passionate and much more fulfilling. It’s a total union of body, heart, and soul. It’s blissful love. So the work is to help each other be free of stress, doubts, fears, anxieties, judgments, criticisms and develop internal resources that helps you stay open to unconditional love. When two people are in this state of unconditional love together and open to “receive” each others love there is true intimacy and bliss. We don’t just love each other. We are “in love” with each other.

I invite you to commit to love, listen, live and let live and do it well together.

Author's Bio: 

Penny Cohen, LCSW, is a way out transformational psychotherapist who helps people dig deep within to come out ahead in love-n-life. In essence, she is a leading edge spiritual psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, energy psychology and Imago relationship practitioner, and Love-N-Life Coach. She is the author of Personal Kabbalah: 32 Paths To Inner Peace And Life Purpose and offers self-help tools while coaching people to return to their roots, overcome the burdens of self-defeating thoughts, feelings, and actions and success sabotaging behaviors, ancestral influences, and past life vows. People open to receive love, passion and purpose, and achieve their dreams. The end result is Love-N-Life. To learn more about Penny and Love-N-Life visit: PennyCohen.com, or contact Penny@PennyCohen.com