Harville writes, "We are taught to believe that being in love is an indicator of the rightness of our partners.  When the romance wanes, many take it as an indicator that the relationship has run its course."  But this is far from the case. Romantic love is really "nature's anesthesia" or "nature's glue."  Romantic love blinds a couple to the reality that they are so different and that they are about to begin a long and arduous journey of growth & healing together.  If nature didn't mask this with the wonderful, powerful chemicals of romance, a couple might run the other way! Romantic love is the catalyst for healing and change.  It's real purpose is to bring two incompatible people together for the purpose of mutual growth and healing, and by making the romantic love glue so strong, it enables a couple who works at it, to survive the disillusionment of their inevitable power struggle as a couple.

What couples don't understand if they are not well versed in Imago is that romantic love is supposed to end. It is NOT meant to last, because it is chemically based and eventually those chemicals wear off.  Harville talks about romantic love as a "time bomb which carries within it the seeds of its own destruction...  Inevitably, reality rudely shatters our illusion.  I (Harville) hate to say it, but there is no love in romance. Real love is something entirely different-and better-but it only comes to couples who wrestle with their demons and stay the course during the power struggle."

"Romantic love comes easily, but it is fleeting, nature's gift from the unconscious to lure us on the journey to our full potential... but real love is an achievement of consciousness and intentionality, a way of being, a hard-won prize granted only to those who persevere."  As Harville says, to get real love, you have to "knuckle down to the work of healing and consciousness."   And part of that process is to experience the power struggle with your partner when they fail to live up to your expectations and begin to exhibit familiar negative traits. It is a horrifying feeling when we realize it, but couples invariably begin to re-enact the relationship they had with their primary caretakers within the context of their intimate love relationship. You learned how to react to, as well as interact with, your partner a long time before you ever met them!!  (If you wish to learn more about this, either read Getting the Love You Want or Keeping the Love You Find OR come to one of our workshops).  

Real love gives us something that romantic love can not.  "The euphoria of romantic love, the sense of wholeness, the feelings of connection and communion can become a constant in your relationship; such qualities are the prevailing tone of real love."  But they are available only to those who choose to journey to the other side of the valley of conflict and fear and experience the power struggle within the relationship.  You can flee to the arms of another partner, but you will never experience the transformation of personal growth & healing that is the reward of real love when you stay the course with your partner. 

Romantic love is a preview of the possible.  Nature knows it has to lure us with ecstasy - romance-to the portals of personal transformation.  But with real love, "substance has replaced fluff, surface yields to depth, and transience is replaced by stability."   Something worth striving for & thinking about on this Valentine's Day.