Tag Archives: love relationships

Let Love Relationships Change the World

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By Books Author Denise Turney

hands forming heart love for the world
Photo by ATC Comm Photo on Pexels.com

Love relationships change everything in the world because, thankfully, all that is true is connected in love. That’s possible because you’re nonphysical. Once you see the connectedness in all that is real or true, you may perceive how your thoughts, beliefs and actions impact all that is. In that alone, you can receive an experience that the ego continuously searches for but never finds – evidence of your unlimited power, evidence that you are love.

Power of Love to Change Your Life

You have the power to change your life and impact the people around you. Even more, your love relationships may yield greater results than you imagine. Also, these love relationships include romantic relationships, colleague relationships, family relationships and friendships. They also include people you try to avoid or deem unworthy of your kindness, love and care.

However, it’s easy to only consider romantic relationships when you think about love relationships that you nurture and invest in. Here’s the thing. If you’re following a decades-old romantic relationship path, you might be searching for someone you deem to be “special”.

That means that you don’t think about getting closer with family, friends, colleagues, neighbors and anyone else in communication, social engagements, challenging discussions and fun in ways that forces you to reexamine old beliefs you may have held onto for far too long. You’re just on a hunt for this “special” person. In fact, you might have already created this “special” person in your imagination, going so far as to give this person a height, weight, smile, personality, job and financial makeup.

Exciting New Love Relationships

Good news is that you could meet someone who seemingly fits the bill of the “idol” that you created. Even better, the start of this “love” relationship could charge you with feelings of excitement, aliveness, fun, safety, peace and acceptance. Right off the dribble, you might even decide that this “special” person is worth sacrificing for.

Signs that you’ve made this judgment (or decision) include:

  • Sacrificing or reducing the time you spend with family and friends
  • Participating in sex acts you don’t enjoy in effort to make this “special” person happy
  • Visiting places (e.g. golf course, spa, mall, worship centers) that you have no interest in or don’t believe in – again, all for the person you judged or decided is “special”
  • Investing money in the “special” person (again, this is someone who you decided is “special”)
  • Preaching to yourself that what the “special” person wants is more important than what you want

Also, you might think that God will be especially pleased with you if you sacrifice for the “special” person. Clearly, you would have set yourself up for an impossible task. Why? Admittedly, it may take time in the relationship or several experiences you have with this person. But eventually you’re going to see that not only is this person not “special” – if you’re fortunate, you’ll also see that there are no “special” people anywhere.

Don’t Give Up On Healthy Love Relationships

Don’t give up. Despite the temptation, don’t toss in the towel on the relationship if it’s healthy. This means, there’s no physical, verbal, financial or emotional violence in the relationship. A key reason not to give up on the relationship is the fact that, if you do quit on the relationship, you will likely merely start searching for another “special” person.

But remember that there are no “special” people. So, if you sever the relationship, the best you could do is find another illusion of a “special” person. And it may be at the point of discontent (when you realize that the person isn’t “special”) that your love relationship could truly change for the better!

This is when the love relationship could really deepen, helping both your partner and you to awaken more and more to real love, truth, peace and joy. Furthermore, it’s at these levels in a love relationship where your relationship could start to change the world. And again, this can be done with relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, spouses or anyone. You just have to decide to only love.

True Love Changes World

Keep in mind all that is true is connected. Can you see how entering into real love, a love that transcends the body, could have a profound impact? For starters, you’d not only be teaching and learning patience. You’d be teaching and learning the value of patience (not tolerance – patience). Because you have to be patient with yourself to stick with and learn these new love lessons. And, you certainly have to be patient with yourself long enough to see real love work.

Choose and practice only love and you’d be teaching and learning trust, honesty, freedom and the fact that what you really are (far more than a body) can never be hurt. And, you’d be teaching and learning that joining in love, even as it regards communication, with another offers rewards that keeping separate from others never will.

You might not notice it at first. But you’d also come to see that you’re lovable as others return love to you. After all, if you’re being loved, you have to be lovable. Another benefit is that you’d see that you can and do love. Watch what happens then. Love relationships, including the love relationship that you have with yourself, really do change the world. But first you have to commit to love.

When It Doesn’t Feel like Love Is Enough

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By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

frozen wave against sunlight in love is enough shape
Photo by Hernan Pauccara on Pexels.com

Love holds all that lives together. In fact, it is so vast that it’s impossible to describe. Talking and singing about it doesn’t bring it more fully into your awareness. It has to be shared, experienced. When you realize that love is enough, you’re encouraged, inspired and invigorated. You also tap into the vision and courage to live the life you came here to enjoy.

When Questions Keep Surfacing

But is love always enough?

It sure doesn’t feel like it’s enough when you’ve endured a traumatic childhood. If you spent the first 12 years of your life being told that you aren’t enough, that you’re less than others and that you don’t belong, as sweet as they may sound to you as an adult, all the sweet messages, quotes and songs about love won’t be enough.

Why? You’ve probably come to believe that you aren’t worthy of love. In fact, you might even be afraid of love. This is the crossroads that Raymond Clarke finds himself facing in the book, Love Pour Over Me. His mother abandoned him when he was only two years old. On top of that, his father has untreated alcoholism. And his father is mean – real mean to young Raymond.

Yet, the only person who can demonstrate love to Raymond is his father. Although Raymond’s story is a fictional account of childhood trauma and its far-reaching effects, the story, unfortunately, mirrors the real-life experiences of millions of children, teens and adults around the world. It might even mirror your own life.

Signs You’re Struggling to Believe Love Is Enough

But how do you know you’re running from the very thing you swear you want? Pay attention to how you feel when people talk about their relationships. Do you think people are lying or exaggerating when they say they are happy and thankful for the healthy relationship they are in?

Here are more signs that you might not believe the source of life is enough:

  • Close relationships scare you
  • You pull away from people when you start to feel emotionally close to them
  • Excuses for why you can’t attend social gatherings are generally how you respond to requests to have fun and be vulnerable
  • Keeping in touch with friends isn’t in the top three on your priority list
  • Living alone, not just at home, but in life feel safer than letting other people in

Love And Friendship

It’s this type of childhood trauma that can leave you accepting mistreatment from people who show you an ounce of kindness, even from men and women who ultimately intend to cause you more harm. Let this vicious cycle start turning and you may spend the rest of your time in this world convinced that love simply is not enough.

Fortunately, there is a path out of this vicious cycle. It starts with telling yourself that you are loved, worthy to receive love and created as an extension of love. You may have to do this for months, perhaps years, before you start to believe it, especially if you’ve spent years hearing and believing the opposite.

And, you have to demonstrate to yourself that you’re worthy of love. Do this while you choose people to allow into your life. For starters and in safety, bid farewell to people who traumatize or abuse you. Do it safely. But start making decisions that find you surrounded by people who truly care about you.

Love Is Enough

Yes. It would have been good if your parents and elders had demonstrated for you that love is enough. But, if they didn’t, you’re going to have to do this for yourself. Also, pray for loving people to come into your life. Ask for guidance to know who these people are. This starts to happen for Raymond at college.

As more loving people enter your life, you’ll start to change. You’ll start to blossom. And you’ll know genuine love messages when you hear them.

Perhaps most of all, you’ll start allowing yourself to receive and give true love. It can take hard inner work to get there. You might even have to go into psychotherapy, meditate, read books on love and more. But, along the way, you should come to know that love is enough. Love really is enough.

What to Do When Love Relationships Aren’t Easy

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By Books Author Denise Turney

couple holding hands love relationships
Wikimedia Commons – Picture by Dtd1986

Love relationships bloom, explode, empower and go bad. Like life, love is not still. Instead, love is like the wind. It’s hard to tell where it’s going. And it’s certain that love cannot be controlled. It doesn’t matter how hard you try. You cannot control love. In fact, tears won’t do it. Screaming, cursing and arguing won’t give you the keys to control love. When romance is sweet, it’s good, but what do you do when it goes bad?

Relationship Roadblocks

Simply, love calls for patience. Love calls for trust. And love calls for faith. The competitive, controlling part of our minds doesn’t like that. Is it any wonder that love relationships churn up so much discomfort in us?

Yet, it’s in sincere love relationships where we awaken more to our true self. It’s certainly worth the work. However, there may be roadblocks, unexpected roadblocks. These roadblocks show up sooner or later. They’re on the inside of you and your partner. You can’t see them with your physical eye.

It’s these roadblocks that can see your love relationship shift from pleasure, excitement and warmth to pain, fear and icy doubt. How so? For starters, what if you and the person who you’re in a love relationship with has yet to even begin facing, let alone dealing with, your erroneous perceptions and beliefs?

Erroneous Love Relationship Perceptions and Beliefs

For example, what if you or your partner was hit and/or verbally demeaned while a child? But not only that. What if you or your partner developed (and accepted) the perceptions that people are a danger to your well-being. The belief driving this perception might be that you shouldn’t try new things because you’ll fail and be teased because you’re dumb?

Or perhaps the perception is that people can’t be trusted because they only love or accept you when you work hard, give them money or do favors for them. Again, there’s a belief driving the perception. In this case, the belief might be that you’re really worthless and that the only way to gain a smidgen of acceptance or love is to work hard or to give people things and favors (because, after all, they don’t really want you because you’re really worthless).

And, these are just two beliefs and two perceptions. Imagine what your love relationships may be like if you and the people who you relate to had just ten similar beliefs and perceptions?

Tough Love Relationships

Can make for tough love relationships. So, to get to a healthy relationship rooted in love, it’s important that both you and your partner do the work. After all, your inner world isn’t going to magically fix itself. Furthermore, your partner’s inner world isn’t going to magically work itself out. And this inner work journey is ongoing.

Unfortunately, talking about how much you want to change isn’t going to work like a magic wand. This is where prayer, meditation, trust and faith can do wonders (not magic). Additionally, it takes honesty and a clear, shared goal that you both find extremely rewarding.

This means, no lying, abuse, manipulation, competing or controlling. Even more, it’s important to respect deal breakers. Clearly, abuse is a sure relationship deal breaker. No excuses. It’s a relationship deal breaker.

Pathways to Enduring Love

When there’s no abuse, but your relationship gets hard, try spending more time with each other. Spending time a part could also help. If you take the latter approach, set a date for when you and your lover will connect again. Getting back together is just one step in the relationship recovery process. To make your relationship sweet again, consider:

  • Talking about what is causing you to feel unloved in the relationship
  • Focus on active listening. Try to listen to your partner as much as possible
  • Discuss specific issues that are weakening the relationship. Examples include money, child raising habits and work boundaries.
  • Make your relationship a priority
  • Set aside time to be with your lover and avoid letting non-emergencies intrude on this time
  • Accept that all relationships take work, the more frequently you’re with someone (a spouse, child, sibling), the more work you might have to invest in the relationship
  • Keep your word and do what you say you will and expect the same of your partner
  • Hold yourself in high regard, no more or less than you do your partner
  • Spend quiet time in your own company
  • Engage in activities that cause you to feel empowered

Getting Closer to Sweet Love Relationships

You’re not going to get closer to a real love relationship if you stay in abusive relationships and keep trying to convince yourself that you’re someone who it’s okay to beat up. After all, you deserve love. You deserve to be loved real good.

 So, if your partner is responsible and accountable for their self and doesn’t blame you for where they are in life or how they feel, although it might not always be easy to navigate the love relationship, it might be worth it. Together, you could help each other to see the erroneous perceptions and beliefs that have been serving as roadblocks to real love.

Feeling safe with each other, you both might start to release these errors in thinking. It could take years. But it’s worth it. In fact, that’s when love relationships become really sweet.

Great Quotes from Love Pour Over Me

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By Denise Turney

love pour over me book quotes

Love Pour Over Me is a book that is created to endure the test of time. Through multi-faceted characters, major and minor, the book explores and examines the human condition. It celebrates love, the joy that it brings and resistance to experiencing love, helping readers to see that anytime they thought they tried love and love failed it wasn’t love they tried but instead an illusion of love.

Scenes from Love Pour Over Me serve as wake up calls, motivation and inspiration for readers from various parts of the world and all walks of life. I share a very small portion of some Love Pour Over Me writings with you below:

  • “He wanted Malcolm to walk through the convention center doors sober and real proud like. He wanted Malcolm to be glad to call him his son.”
  • “A ghost haunted him; it pulled at him with so much force it felt stronger than he was. It was the shadow of a boy who didn’t want to leave, who wanted to stay and beg for his father to love him.”
  • “He wanted the thing he hated but had grown so used to he missed it.”
  • “Mirth hung between them like a thread. It bonded them closer one to the other — the good, the bad — the dark secrets.”
  • “He smiled as if images and sounds from the long ago experience were seeping through the memory so strongly that he looked like he’d just walked away from the concert, Lionel Hampton’s white dress shirt wet with sweat much like his t-shirt now was, his fingers entwined with his mother’s, his small head turned, looking back at the maestro as if he was more magic than man.”
  • “With his free hand, he brushed her forearm. ‘The only thing about trying to be too independent is that it gets you out of balance.’”
  • “Uncertainty hung in the air, and because it did, Brenda wanted to hold onto what was familiar to her. She couldn’t explain it. With each forward step she took, she had no evidence for it, but she felt certain that when she saw her sister again she would be deeply changed – forever.”
  • “He was jealous of Raymond. He envied the way Brenda doted upon him. She was unlike Leann, his tall, wiry wife of thirty-eight years, an emotionally steely woman with a frozen heart. Leann and he were tucked inside the walls of a dead union that not even all his preaching could revive. Yet somehow they found the energy to play the role of a happy, spiritual couple. Even their families thought love, not communal concern, kept them together.”
  • “The writing appeared smooth yet hard to read, the mark of a man who wrote often, who wrote fast. The letters were broadly curved at the ends. Space between each letter was wide, as if to leave room for the reader to pause or contemplate what was on the page. There was a pitch of deep sincerity in the note which read: ‘Even with an ailing loved one, I know you can do it. You’ve got what it takes to get over the top.’”
  • “Forfeit had long stood as a symbol of love to her. The more she sacrificed, the better she felt about herself. It was almost as if she believed that to sacrifice, to do what she least wanted to do, to go where she especially did not want to be, was to earn her place in the universe, akin to a tenant paying rent. Elders taught her that to relinquish her wants for another was the greatest act of love. It’s what made mothers good women, they told her.”
  • “If we didn’t have so much fear attached to things we want, I think we’d understand all of our dreams. Fear that we won’t get what we want makes us force dreams in a certain direction, to mean something deep down inside we know isn’t true. You know,” she added while she looked across the café. “I hadn’t thought of this before but I wonder if that’s the reason so many of us don’t remember our dreams. We don’t want to know the truth.”
  • “Twelve unaltered years, routine and habit forcing each new day to turn out like the one before, passed long and slowly for Raymond, like the train moving from station to station down the uneven tracks.”
  • “She took you down a new path with the way she loved you. She was the person you had courage to love in return. Do you know how freeing love is, Man? Do you know the gift this woman gave you? She opened you up to receive love, the greatest gift.”

Open to love, my friend. It’s inside of you, welling up even now. It lights your path. It knows the way.

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!