Tag Archives: falling in love

Falling in Love with an African American Man

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Falling in love with an African American man can be beyond words rewarding. The relationship that you share with an African America man can be insightful, deeply engaging, nourishing and long lasting. So, why aren’t more African American women enjoying these relationships?

Rolling Relationship Dice

For starters, romantic love seems to just happen. You weren’t trying to join in love. In fact, you may have sworn off joining in love with another person. And yet, it has happened.  

African American woman hugging African American man she loves
African American man and woman couple smiling, Wikimedia Commons Picture

Feels like rolling relationship dice. What you do now could impact your relationship for months, years. You could do yourself a favor and not give meaning to what the man you just met does or says. If the feelings are mutual, this gorgeous African American man could be trying to woe you.

He wants you just as you (although you may hate to admit it) want him. He may tell you what he thinks that you want to hear.

Instead of giving meaning to what he says and does as soon as you two meet, consider becoming an observer. Allow this African American man the room to be himself. Avoid steering him with judgment, praise or compliments. Observe and watch where his inner compass is headed.

Romantic Relationship Curiosity Pays Off

Consider holding back on placing a goal on the relationship. After all, you two just met. Just because strong emotions have erupted doesn’t mean that the relationship has to end in marriage. If you think back over other times when you’ve been an African American woman in love, you might see how beneficial observing without judgment or goals could be right now.

As strong, smart and insightful as you are, that doesn’t mean that you and the wonderful man you just met don’t have baggage to let go of. It doesn’t mean that you and the man you just met don’t have childhood trauma to work through.

Curiosity in what could become a blooming romance may allow valuable insights from this African American man and you to surface. As a smart woman, you may find that it’s best to work on your communication skills, patience, forgiveness and self-awareness before you advance further into the relationship.

Honesty Matters

An example of this could be allowing the man to be himself and observing him being patient with a new store cashier or cutting off a waiter who make mistakes with your dinner order. If he practices self-awareness and he’s loving, he should catch himself and change his unloving behavior all on his own.

Another example could be you saying Up just because he said Down or you saying Right just because he said Left. Be honest. Have you done this in other relationships? Are you afraid that you will lose something, perhaps yourself, if you are agreeable? Think about working on this communication habit before you advance the relationship. Your decision could save you headaches down the road.

Both of these examples are instances when you accept what is. You don’t rationalize, ignore, hide from, lie about or try to explain away what is happening. You observe and accept what is.

Moving Beyond Childhood Trauma

If the relationship proves rooted in love, you could be entering a blessed union, even if it doesn’t lead to marriage. You’re an African American woman who’s investing in herself and the beautiful African American man you love.

African American romantic relationship picture of couple in park
Smiling African American man and African American woman in park – Wikimedia Commons Picture

Together you can move beyond challenges and childhood trauma. This is what Brenda decides in Love Pour Over Me. She’s young, in her early 20s, when she meets Raymond, an incredibly gifted and loving African American man.

But Brenda’s not curious enough. She’s also scared of being hurt. She scared of disappointing her family by choosing the wrong man to share her life with. You can learn from Brenda. There’s no need to repeat her mistakes.

Childhood Trauma Signs

Outbursts and anxious behavior that catches you or the African American man who you’re in love with off guard (as though you have no idea why you said or did something) are signs that you may have childhood trauma to move beyond. Being shocked by what you say or do may be a sign that there’s an unhealed part of your mind outside your conscious awareness. Shutting down emotionally or abruptly ending communication with people you love, people you know care for you, are other signs that there may be childhood trauma to work through.

Unexplained irritability, fatigue and worry are other potential signs. The relationship is new. The man or you could be triggering past memories that one or both of you have been running from for decades, just as Raymond runs from his childhood trauma in Love Pour Over Me.

This is when your budding relationship could be a gift. Consider not forcing your relationship to fit into an image or fantasy that you’ve been wanting. Stay curious and allow the relationship to unfold organically. (Warning: This might be harder than you think.)

Invest in Personal Awakening

Should you become aware of childhood trauma in yourself or the African American man you love, invest in personal awakening. The man will have to invest in his own personal awakening. You can’t make this decision for him. If he doesn’t choose to do this, consider moving on. You should always be advancing.

Taking time each day to be still and remember the Creator is the best personal investment. Drinking plenty of fresh water, exercising, getting ample sleep and treating yourself to nature stays (e.g., outdoor walks, bike rides, reading good books while sitting outside on the porch) are ways to invest in personal awakening.

African American romantic relationship couple dining picture
Older Loving African American Couple – Wikimedia Commons Picture

Keeping a journal, writing down your dreams, meditating and listening to soothing music are other ways to invest in personal awakening. Being honest with what you feel and think may be at the top of the list of ways to invest in personal awakening. Above all, do not lie to yourself even if the truth means that this marvelous African American man and you are not ready to enter a romantic relationship.

Ongoing Support for Loving Relationship

Be patient with yourself whether you’re an amazing African American woman who’s moving forward with this relationship or an amazing African American woman who’s letting this new relationship go.

Ask for help should you get stuck or feel like you can’t get through childhood trauma on your own. There may be no greater act of loving yourself. Support may come in the form of discussion support groups, counseling or therapy with a licensed psychotherapist. Should you choose this path, consider working with a licensed therapist who has completed deep therapy herself. Avoid receiving treatment from an unhealed therapist who is not consistently working on herself.

After all, we are all awakening. If you’re looking for a book that shows an African American couple working through childhood trauma and investing in personal awakening, consider Love Pour Over Me.

Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now

Find out if you’re falling in love

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By Denise Turney

You feel alive, alert and in tune with everything around you, in ways that you hadn’t before you met your lover!  To exclaim that life is wonderful feels like such an understatement to you. If everyone could feel the way you feel right now, the world would be a much better place. Emotions and moods like depression, frustration, anger and sadness might not exist.

Being in love with someone else is one of the sweetest, most rewarding, feelings and experiences anyone could ever have!  Yet, a racing heart, overflow of hopefulness and a constant expectation that rich experiences will continue to unfold right before your eyes, doesn’t always point to the fact that you’ve joined in love with someone else.

What you’re experiencing could actually be lust. If you don’t pay attention, the relationship you’re having with your lover may not ascend beyond infatuation, could even dip downward into obsession. Neither you or your love wants that. To increase the chances that you’re actually in love and not feasting on lust, find out if what you’re experiencing meets the signs of falling in love.

According to Live Science, there are scientific signs of falling in love. These signs include thinking that the person you’re in a relationship with is unique or special. When you’re in love, you also focus on the positive traits your lover has.

Furthermore, “You bounce between exhilaration, euphoria, increased energy, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, trembling, a racing heart and accelerated breathing, as well as anxiety, panic and feelings of despair when your relationship suffers even the smallest setback.” The trick with this is to avoid longing for the “high” being in love brings. Get stuck on the “high” and you could find yourself jumping from relationship to relationship,, moving on to someone new whenever the “high” of being in love starts to wear off.

Longing to be with your lover all the time is another sign that you’re in love. Another sign that you’re in love is if you wonder what your lover would think about an outfit you wore, a new job promotion you received, how your home would look if you rearranged the furniture, etc. Bottom line. You care about what your lover thinks. You also want to see and help make them feel happiness, joy and satisfaction.

If you want your relationship to last throughout the remainder of your physical experience, you’re going to have to learn how to honor, respect, celebrate and appreciate your lover long after the feelings of being “in love” have evolved into something deeper. Appreciating the small, everyday things the person you love does goes a long way. So too does communicating with your lover regularly so you can deepen the emotional bond that you share.

It’s this that Raymond and Brenda learn as they evolve and grow as scenes unfold throughout Love Pour Over Me.

Share the experience. Get your copy of “Love Pour Over Me” Now at –

http://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html

The drive to keep running from pain

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By Denise Turney
It’s a good thing to pursue happiness. After all, pain and disappointment do not come bearing worthy gifts. However, running from pain is not the same as pursuing happiness, and being that we are creatures of habit, if we run away from pain too long we may become experts at it and miss out on the thing we want to experience most – real love.

Putting an end to the run

Even so, few people, if anyone of us at all, sees running from pain as a means to avoid love. It’s a ritual or habit that can start early in our lives, when we are kids. We may be repeatedly disappointed by a parent who makes promises but seldom keeps them. Or we might witness one or both of our parents walking out of our lives as if we were merely children they’d met at a park, not people they helped to create, not their own flesh and blood.

Let these heart wrenching experiences continue to find their way into our lives and it’s no wonder some of us shy away from love and affection. We’re tired of being hurt, tired of being disappointed. We might even think that we only get hurt when we let people get close enough to us to cause us to feel love for them. After all, as the saying goes, it’s often the people who are closest to us who cause us to feel the deepest pain.

When this happens to Love Pour Over Me’s Raymond Clarke he responds the way many of us do. He turns away from love, even dismissing it when it shows up in a woman who has never disappointed or hurt him before, a woman he was born to love. Raymond’s good at running, but over time even he realizes that running has cost him too much. Even he, the man with the broken childhood, realizes that it’s time to stop running from love in ways that are disguised as running from pain.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Even if you choose not to purchase your copy of Love Pour Over Me today, I encourage you to “consider Love.”

Opening to love is a great awakening

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By Denise Turney
Love may never be fully defined. It’s outside the realm of human logic. Those who experience its impact, serving as conduits for love to flow through, generally say the most they can do is feel it. For some, that may come while creating a novel. For others, it might occur while jogging, hiking or white river rafting.

Our painful pasts

Most of us know when we’ve been touched by love. We feel joy, peace and care. We may also feel as if everything is okay. Worry, stress, anxiety and concern melt away in the face of love. Knowing this, it’s a marvel that we don’t pursue love more, every second of the day and night.

Painful past experiences may be a leading reason why more of us don’t pursue, open to love. To truly be open to love, we have to give and receive love. If we’ve been hurt in the past (i.e. relationship breakup, career dream failure or sidestep), we might become convinced that those setbacks will happen every time we go after something we think we lead us to love.

Awakening to a marvelous way of being

If we find success, we might even feel that we’re not worthy of constant (I’m talking never turning off) love. As Raymond Clarke learns in “Love Pour Over Me,” both of these situations are caused by a lack of forgiveness, also known as an unwillingness to release the past.

Releasing people from the past is probably the majority of the work that psychologists do, as most, if not all pain, is rooted to a past event. To get and stay unblocked, forgiveness is absolutely necessary. There’s no way around it. All the singing, dancing, money giving and church going in the world won’t remove the need to forgive.

For Raymond, it’s a lesson that takes years to learn, but later is better than never.

What event from the past still has you? What’s holding you captive? Let love show you how to let it go. It’s time you awakened and advanced.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! 

What Makes Women and Men Fall in Love?

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By Denise Turney

Years ago I thought falling in love was something orchestrated only by heaven. Now, I wonder if that’s really the case. True. Little — if anything, feels as invigorating, as intoxicating and as all consuming as falling in love. Yet, as magical as falling in love feels, studies have revealed that the process of falling in love can be orchestrated, with intent, by everyday folk.

Power Feelings of Falling in Love

Your Amazing Brain says we fall in love in three stages. In the first stage, we feel lust (others might call it infatuation) for someone. Then, we move on to attraction and finally the third stage of attraction. The entire time we are moving through each of these stages, our brains are fast at work, causing the process to seem almost mechanical.

During the first stage estrogen (women) and testosterone (men) increases. It’s no wonder we feel so nervous and giddy during this stage. Hormones are rushing through our systems, including our brains, at heightened levels. It’s during the attraction stage that we can’t seem to stop thinking about a person. Adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin (the godmother of good feelings) take center stage during the attraction stage. We also tend to view the person we’re falling in love with as being perfect or damn near perfect. Some refer to this as wearing rose-colored glasses (of course, sooner or later, those glasses come off).

After we’ve been in a relationship with someone for several weeks or months, we may start to enter the attachment stage. This is when we start producing an increase of oxytocin and vasopressin. However, should our brains start producing or secreting lower levels of these hormones, we might start feeling less in-love with a person.

Growing Into Deeper Love With Someone

Studies have shown that the process of falling in love can be orchestrated if couples spend enough time together to allow their brains to move through the stages. There’s also still more research being done to discover what happens to our brains and our bodies during the early, middle and late stages of being in love. Perhaps we’ll never fully know what happens to us during the time in our lives when we can feel so out of control as we start feeling incredibly strong emotions when we meet and/or think about someone. What we do know is that the feelings generally don’t last.

If we run away from relationship challenges and don’t have conviction about a loving relationship, we may never reach deep commitment, we may never enter the deepest and sweetest places of a relationship. It’s what Raymond and Brenda learn in Love Pour Over Me as they try to understand why they feel so drawn to each other, almost as if heaven is pushing them together, so soon after they meet at college.

Falling and staying in love would be easy if all we had to do was focus on the one we felt a strong emotional and psychological connection to. But, that’s not the way it goes. As happens with Brenda and Raymond in the book Love Pour Over Me, other events of our lives seem to get in the way. There are jobs to go to, children to care for, houses to keep up, friends to hang out with . . . the list goes on and on and on . . .

Before you know it, we’re not feeling so in love anymore. Maybe it’s because our minds and our brains get cluttered with too many other things to focus on. Who knows? What remains sure is that, whether studied or not, little beats or compares to the feelings of falling in love. It’s an exhilarating time, and when it’s right, when a relationship can and does stand the test of time (and any other test thrown its way), being in love is right – perfect.

Thank you for reading my blog. Please return often and read more blog posts. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You!

Sources:

Love Pour Over Me – http://www.ebookit.com/books/0000001582/Love-Pour-Over-Me.html

Your Amazing Brain: The Science of Love – http://www.youramazingbrain.org/lovesex/sciencelove.htm

Psychology Today: The Early Stages of Falling in Love – http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/get-hardy/201203/the-early-stages-falling-in-love