First Loves
Our ideas of love are also shaped by our early romances.
In 2015, the artist Rora Blue invited people to anonymously post messages to their first loves.
Over a million people responded with notes like, “You ruined me, but I still write you love notes on paper plates and napkins” and “You'll always be etched into my bones” and “I loved losing myself in you, but it’s been forever and I still can’t find myself” and “If I keep my eyes closed he looks just like you.”
There’s a biological reason first loves create samskaras.
A key area of our brain—the prefrontal cortex—doesn’t develop fully until we’re about twenty-five years old.
As brain expert Daniel Amen describes it, the prefrontal cortex helps us to think before we speak and act, and to learn from our mistakes.
Young people “think” with their feelings.
Without a fully developed prefrontal cortex filter, much of our mental life runs through our amygdala—a brain center associated with emotional processes like fear and anxiety.
As we age, our passion is tempered by reason and self-control, and we don’t feel with the same wild abandon.
Those of us who felt the passion of young love may remember it as more intense than anything in adult life, even if it wasn’t ideal or even healthy.
The first time you enter a relationship out of pure infatuation, the person might break your heart.
If you don’t accept the lesson and enter your next relationship again out of infatuation, then the second time, you might find yourself bored and acting out of character.
The third time, the person might steal your money.
Karma will bring you the same lesson through a different person again and again until you change.
And sometimes it will bring you the same lessons with your partner over and over again.
Vedic teachings say that there are three levels of intelligence.
In the first level, when someone tells you the fire will burn you, you listen and learn and never touch fire.
In the second level, you experience it for yourself.
You touch fire, it burns you, and you learn not to touch fire again.
In the third level, you keep burning yourself, but you never learn.
If we don’t heed our karma, we’re stuck in the third level of intelligence, and we bear the scars.
We forget that what we experienced in the past holds information about how we'll feel if we do it again.
Often, when we believe that we have bad luck in relationships, the real problem is that we keep ignoring the data and refusing the karmic lesson.
In other words—if you don’t learn anything, you repeat the same mistake.
Karma encourages you to reflect on the choice, the reason you made it, and what you should do differently next time.
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Let’s look deeply at some of the “types” we date and what karmic lessons they have to offer.
The Rebel. In the movie I Know What You Did Last Summer, Julie says to Ray, “I hate this, I really hate this. You’re gonna go and you’re gonna fall for some head-shaven, black-wearin’, tattoo-covered, body-piercing philosophy student.”
Ray answers, “That sounds attractive.”
This character is found over and over again in literature and movies—from Rochester in Jane Eyre and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights to Edward in Twilight.
Being attracted to someone who bucks the system isn’t necessarily a mistake.
But if you keep hoping adventure and mystery will give way to loyalty and responsibility, it’s time to learn from your choices.
Why are you attracted to this person?
Are they offering you the relationship you want?
If you’re ready to move into a deeper commitment, then you'll need to choose someone based on the qualities they have to offer instead of just their rebellious allure.
FIVE TYPES WE FALL FOR
◇ Rebel 🎲
◇ Chase 🎈
◇ Project 🔧 ⚒️🛠️
◇ F- boy 💌💟💞
◇ Opulent One 💰💲 🤑
The Chase. Sometimes we're drawn to someone who is emotionally, even physically unavailable.
They keep moving, but sometimes pause just long enough to keep us hoping. (51 of 286)
We are enchanted by them, so we convince ourselves that they will stop in their tracks and suddenly give us their time and attention.
We’re sure that once they finally focus on us, they'll fall in love with us.
So we commit ourselves to tracking them.
Where are they?
How are they spending their time when they could be with us?
When will they call?
How can we make ourselves visible and available without seeming desperate?
When we are caught up in the chase, we are not getting to know a person, discovering compatibilities, learning about each other, and growing together.
All of our romantic energy is invested, but there is no return.
In her book Why Him? Why Her? anthropologist Helen Fisher, the chief scientific advisor for Match.com, explains that playing hard to get creates a phenomenon she calls “frustration attraction.”
She writes, “Barriers intensify feelings of romantic love... probably because the brain pathways associated with pleasure, energy, focus and motivation keep working when a reward is delayed.”
However, she adds that researchers have looked at the eventual result of playing hard to get and found no evidence that it helps establish a long-term relationship.
No matter which side of hard-to-get you’re on, if you are not spending time together, you’re not building a relationship.
If you’re drawn to the thrill of the chase, be aware of what you’re choosing.
If you start a relationship with a musician who is constantly on the road, then you can’t expect them to give up their career and spend all their time with you.
When someone is unavailable, they will generally stay that way.
Are you drawn to them because you are looking for someone who is as busy as you are?
Or did you grow up with an unavailable parent, so that is the only level of love you think you deserve?
To use your karma well, you must be conscious of who you're choosing, why, and whether they fit what you want in your life, as you began to explore in Rule 1.
The Project.
Sometimes a partner needs saving.
You are compelled to take care of them, giving them attention, help, and stability.
This may play to your nurturing side. In the short term it makes you feel competent and in control.
They need you, and you feel like you can help them live a better life.
But in the long term if they aren’t transforming, you feel drained and resentful because you've become that person’s caregiver. (51 of 286)
You’re not equals.
And you're investing far more in the relationship than they are.
Dominating a relationship bolsters our ego and makes us feel important.
It doesn’t require us to question ourselves or to follow our partner’s suggestions.
But ultimately it interferes with the long-term connection we’re trying to form. We're attracted to the dynamic rather than the person.
If you love the role of guiding, leading, and giving advice, you can find that elsewhere in your life.
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RELATIONSHIP ROLES
Here are some questions to help you examine what role you played in your most recent relationship or expect to have in a new relationship.
Is it what you want?
You'll play all the roles I describe below, but you want to move toward being supporters of each other while consciously allowing for moments of being fixers and dependent.
TYPE 1: FIXER
Did you find yourself constantly trying to solve, nurture, help, or make the other person better?
Were you trying to carry them, trying to make their goals happen for them?
TYPE 2: DEPENDENT
Did you feel like you relied on your partner too much?
Did you go to them with all your issues and expect them to find solutions?
TYPE 3: SUPPORTER
Did you like their personality, respect their values, and want to help them toward their goals?
Did you respect how they spent their time and kept their space, or did you always want them to change it?
The fixer has a parental mentality.
You feel that it’s your responsibility to take care of the other person, nurture them.
Their happiness is your priority.
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This mentality can be useful, but it can also go overboard.
When you parent your partner, it makes them behave like a child.
The dependent has a childlike mentality.
You rely on your partner.
You want them to figure it all out, and you get upset when they can’t solve everything for you.
Sometimes we settle into this mentality when we have a domineering partner.
It can feel comforting to have someone else take the lead.
But we lose out when we don't follow our own path and shape our own lives.
The supporter is their partner’s champion.
You're not a parent, you're not a child, you’re side by side with your partner.
You're trying to take responsibility; you’re trying to develop patience; you're trying to help the other person grow, but you're not trying to micromanage.
This is the Goldilocks “just right” mentality.
For a quiz to help figure out the relationship role that you play, please visit www.RelationshipRoles.com.
Its natural to move in and out of all three of these roles throughout our relationships.
Sometimes we take the lead.
Sometimes we're more comfortable following.
What we're trying to avoid is dating a type with whom we are stuck in the same dynamic all the time.
Being a full-time fixer means your partner isn’t taking their own journey.
We don't have the right to take it for them.
It’s not our role to fix something that may not even be broken.
Being fragile full-time means you lack confidence and seek validation from others.
You feel broken and want someone to fix you.
Being with someone who supports this side of you interferes with you taking responsibility for your own growth, joy, and SUCCESS.
The supporter is an ideal to strive for.
Both partners communicate as equals.
Your partner is always teaching you, but you are always teaching them.
And when you both understand that
you’re both teaching and learning at the same time, that’s when you create a partnership. (More on this in Rule 3.)
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The F-boy or F-girl.
When we date someone who sleeps around, they are clearly communicating that they aren’t interested in an exclusive commitment.
If that’s what you’re looking for, consider whether it’s worth staying in it for great sex.
Sex can distract us from making good choices about who to be with and whether to stay with them, and one of the biggest causes of that distraction is the hormone oxytocin.
According to neuroscientist and psychiatrist Daniel Amen, oxytocin is related to feelings of being in love, and the release of oxytocin can support and even accelerate bonding and trust.
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Generally, men have lower levels of oxytocin than women, but sex causes men’s oxytocin levels to spike more than 500 percent.
New York University neuroscientist Robert Froemke says that oxytocin acts like a volume dial, “turning up and amplifying brain activity related to whatever someone is already experiencing.”
During and after sex, we feel more in love, but it’s not actually love.
We feel closer chemically even though we’re not closer emotionally.
Additionally, the hormone actually has a temporary blocking effect on negative memories, so all of those “little things” that were bothering you or that argument you had beforehand—which might have been a major warning sign— could fade after sex.
When I interviewed husband-and-wife relationship experts John and Julie Gottman on my podcast, John said that oxytocin can be the “hormone of bad judgment.”
He says, “You keep thinking it’s going to be okay because that hormone makes you feel safe and secure and you don’t see the red flags the person is sending saying, ‘I’m not trustworthy.”
If someone makes it clear that they aren’t interested in committing, there can still be a fun connection, but know that you aren’t likely to learn much from them.
The Opulent One. The Bhagavad Gita talks about six opulences: knowledge, fame, money, beauty, strength, and renunciation.
Sometimes we are attracted to someone who has a single opulence, and this is enough to prematurely convince us were in love.
In Beyoncé’s song “Halo,” the light surrounding someone convinces her they’re “everything [she] need[s] and more,” yet someone’s “halo” isn’t necessarily an accurate indicator of who they are.
In psychology, the halo effect is a type of cognitive bias where we form an inaccurate impression of someone or something based on a single trait or characteristic.
For instance, if someone is attractive, we’re more likely to assign other positive attributes to them, like intelligence, wit, or kindness.
This particular halo effect is called the attractiveness stereotype.
One study showed that teachers graded attractive students more favorably when the class was in person, but not when the class was online and the teachers couldn’t see the students.
Other studies showed that servers deemed to be more attractive made higher tips.
When we see a good-looking person, we might make unconscious assumptions that they’re wealthier, or more ambitious, or more likable, and so on, and this can influence our attraction to them.(55 of 286)
The Bhagavad Gita says that the six opulences show us the fallibility of desire.
We want attention but a million likes won’t make us feel loved.
We want beauty, but we try to make youth (which is not the only kind of beauty) last forever.
We want money, but it won’t buy happiness.
Try googling “lottery winners” if you want proof of that.
If we look for the opulences in a partner, we are being sold a temporary bill of goods.
The Bhagavad Gita says that divine love of God is to know their greatness but gravitate to their sweetness.
You may know all of your partner’s accolades and achievements, but that doesn’t define them as an individual.
Being attracted to our partners for what they have or what they’ve achieved is not a bad place to start, but it’s not a good place to end.
Abilities and achievements don’t matter so much as qualities and actions.
We make the mistake of assigning qualities to people based on their abilities.
We assume that a good communicator will be trustworthy.
We think a writer must be thoughtful.
A manager must be organized.
The only way we can know what qualities a person truly has is by spending time with them and observing them.
Only when we know someone intimately and deeply do we find the sweetness in them.
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TRY THIS:
REFLECT AND LEARN FROM A PAST RELATIONSHIP
We tend to base success in relationships on how long they last, but their actual value lies in how much we learn and grow from them.
If we understand that, we can examine the choices we've made, assess why we picked a person, figure out what went wrong, and develop a better sense of whom to pick and whether we need to change anything for next time.
1. What energy were you in when you chose to be with your ex?
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Energy of ignorance.
In this energy, you might have picked someone because you were bored, because there was nobody else around, or because you were lonely.
Choices made in ignorance lead to depression, pain, and stress.
Energy of passion.
In this energy, you picked someone because you wanted one of the opulences.
Decisions made in passion start well but have to deepen into understanding and respect or else they end terribly.
Energy of goodness.
In this energy, you chose someone with whom you felt connected and compatible.
There was mutual respect, and often these relationships end with some feelings of respect still intact.
2. Why did it end? Be as honest with yourself as you can when you assess what went wrong in this relationship.
3. Learn from it. What can you think of that you will try to do differently next time?
Can you enter your next relationship from an energy of goodness?
Can you set aside opulences and look for qualities that make good partners?
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You Attract What You Use to Impress
The opulences highlight a very practical way of understanding karma.
If we are attracted to someone for their ambition, that’s what we get—a person whose priority is ambition.
There’s nothing wrong with ambition... until you realize that you want someone who has lots of time to share with you.
Sometimes we feel like none of the options before us are people we want to date.
And then we have to ask ourselves,
Why are these my options?
Why are we attracting these people, and how can we attract the ones we want?
Again, karma has the answer.
If you put something into the world, you get it back.
This is karma in its most basic form.
If I use money to present myself as valuable,
I'll attract someone who believes that money is what makes me valuable.
When we present ourselves, we are signaling the dynamic we want, how we expect to be treated, what we think we deserve.
I had one client who was a successful entrepreneur.
He was upset because every woman he met “only wanted him for his money.”
But every picture he posted in his online profile showed him in a supercar or him in front of another home he’d bought.
He said, “I’m not like that in person.”
But he shouldn’t have been surprised that he was attracting a certain type of person.
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●If you use wealth to impress someone... you are committing to whatever it takes to sustain your wealth. But one day you may want to change how you spend your time. You may want to feel that your partner values you for more than your net worth.
●If you use your body to impress someone... you are putting yourself in a position where aging is hard to accept. One day your body will change, and you may want a partner whose love will last for years.
●If you use your social status to impress someone... you may find that someone with a higher social status is more attractive to your partner. Or something may change your status and you’ll want a partner who can support you through a hard time.
●If you use your intellect to impress someone... you may find that you dont feel an emotional connection.
●If you use sex to impress someone... you are setting a standard for physical connection that may be hard for one or both of you to sustain if attraction fades.
When we put ourselves out in the world, whether it’s on a first date, social media, or a dating profile, we are saying, “This is the version of me that I want you to like.”
It’s important to put out the version of yourself that you want someone to be attracted to, as opposed to the version of yourself that you think someone would be attracted to.
These are two different things.
If you attract someone through a persona, then you're either going to have to fake being that promotable person forever, or they’re eventually going to discover the real you.
One study showed that 53 percent of online daters lied in their profiles— women more than men, and more often about looks (doing things like posting an old photo so they looked younger), and men more often about financial status.
Considering that men tend to rank physical attractiveness as a highly valued characteristic in a potential partner and women tend to rank financial success similarly, you can see how that might play out, at least in heterosexual relationships.
Even if your self-positioning is more subtle, and you’re willing to play out the role you’ve invented indefinitely, you will always know in your heart that you aren’t loved for who you really are.
You’ve made them fall in love with a character that you created, not you.
By pretending to be someone else, you will attract strife into your life.
Save yourself that time and energy.
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It’s natural to want to present the best version of yourself.
You may be doing this through the opulences, whether by trying to slip where you went to college into conversation or taking your date to an expensive restaurant to demonstrate wealth or uploading your most seductive photos to a dating website.
We can easily get caught up in judging ourselves by our net worth, or the way we show it in material possessions; our friends or followers; our physical appeal.
But we all know people who have high “value” using these metrics and still have low selfworth.
There is a saying that the poor man begs outside the temple while the rich man begs inside it.
Or, as Russell Brand puts it, “The more that I've detached myself from the things that I thought would make me happy like money and fame and other people’s opinions, the more truth is being revealed.”
We market ourselves to others using our opulences, but doing that won’t benefit us in the long run.
We want to show our real personality, values, and goals, so we are loved for what matters most to us.
The converse is also true.
Be aware if opulences are what attract you to your partner and beware if they’re all that attracts you.
You don’t want to end up with someone whom you're only attracted to physically, or whose social life captivates you, or whom you only connect with about work, or whose external success compels you.
These qualities are tied to temporary situations and characteristics.
They won’t last, and when they are gone, so is the relationship.
When I met Radhi, I had nothing.
No—that’s not true.
What’s true is that we've been together ever since all I had to offer her was myself, and that seemed to be enough.
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TRY THIS:
WHAT YOU SHOWCASE
When there's a disparity between what attracts your partner and what you love about yourself, you may struggle to live up to their vision.
First, make a list of what you love about yourself.
Think about the qualities you are most proud of and try to steer clear of the opulences.
Are you kind, caring, hardworking, honest, creative, grateful, flexible, reliable? (59 of 286)
Now, for each of your long-term or defining relationships, make a list of the qualities you think that person saw and appreciated in you.
We want to build relationships where we are loved for what we love in ourselves.
What You Want from Someone Else First Give to Yourself
Once we have a better sense of the samskaras we’ve gathered over the years, we can look at how they’ve influenced our choices and see if we like the results.
We don’t want to make the same mistakes over and over again.
We want to carry the gifts from our pasts into the present, but we can’t assume our partner will receive them exactly as we expect.
We don’t want to bring gaps to our relationships, expecting our partner to fill them.
We want to fill our own gaps.
As you observe your partner or potential partner, consider what draws you to them.
Is your judgment influenced by outdated criteria from your past?
If your parents gave you all their attention, are you expecting that from a partner?
Do the movies you saw in your youth have you expecting to be swept off your feet?
Was your first love remote and unavailable, so you’re stuck in a pattern of repeating that dynamic?
One of my clients was getting really angry at his wife when she didn’t come home from work on time.
I asked him why he was having such a strong reaction, and in the course of our work he realized that his own mother never came home on time, and it had bothered his father.
He had “inherited” his father’s anxiety.
I asked him what his wife’s lateness signified for him.
After some thought, he said, “It’s like she doesn’t care about me and doesn’t want to spend time with me.”
I suggested that he ask his wife about it, and we talked about how instead of saying, “So how come you're always late?” in an accusatory tone, he could ask, “What have you been working on?
Is it exciting or stressful?”
It turned out that his wife was stressed about a project, and that she thought in three months’ time she’d be able to start coming home earlier.
She didn’t realize that it would have eased his mind to know about this project and when it might end, but even more important was his realization that the reason for her lateness differed from his interpretation.
It wasn’t a perfect happily ever after, but he was able to come to terms with the situation instead of enduring his inherited anxiety. (59 of 286)
He asked for time with her over the weekend, and they figured out how to address both of their needs.
Our relationships aren’t supposed to be responses to what our parents did and didn’t give us or balms for the insecurities of our youth.
If we look to our partners to fill an emotional gap, this puts undue pressure on our partner.
We are asking them to take responsibility for our happiness.
That’s like saying, “I won’t drive my car until my partner puts gas in it.”
Why wait for someone else to make you feel good?
And that’s why it’s so deeply important that we heal ourselves, taking charge of that process instead of shifting blame and responsibility to a partner.
If we’re trying to fill an old void, we'll choose the wrong partner.
A partner can’t fill every gap.
They can’t unpack our emotional baggage for us.
Once we fulfill our own needs, we’re in a better place to see what a relationship can give us.
Meanwhile, and always, you can give yourself what you want to receive.
If you want to treat yourself, you could make plans to go someplace you’ve never been before, or arrange a birthday celebration for yourself, or dress beautifully for an upcoming event.
If you want to feel respected at work, you could decide that you’re going to make a list for your own benefit of everything you contributed to a project.
We think of feeling appreciated, respected, and loved as core needs in a relationship, but when we attend to these needs for ourselves in small ways every day, then we don’t have to wait for our partner to deliver them through a grand gesture.
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TRY THIS:
GIVE YOURSELF WHAT YOU WANT TO RECEIVE
Fill your own gaps by looking for ways to treat yourself the way you're looking for others to treat you.
I never felt appreciated by my parents.
If you want to be appreciated...
What do you want to be appreciated for?
What can you do every day that makes you feel appreciated?
I never felt like my parents thought I was special.
If you want to feel special...
What do you want to feel special for?
What can you do every day to make yourself feel special?
My parents didn’t respect my feelings or opinions.
If you want to feel respected...
What do you want to be respected for?
What can you do every day to respect yourself?
These are hard questions, so take your time with them.
Answers may not come quickly.
Ponder them for a day.
A week.
You may gradually start to identify recurring negative thoughts that you've carried from your past.
If you keep telling yourself, l'm nobody until someone tells me I’m someone, it will make you more prone to insecurity, stress, and pressure.
It's not what others say or don't say about you, it is what you say about yourself that matters.
If you often tell yourself that you’re not good enough, you become not good enough.
We need to disrupt those negative patterns by developing new thought patterns.
It may feel forced or fake, but when you practice these new, positive thought patterns, you start living up to them.
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Check In With Yourself
Set aside three minutes before you start your day and three minutes at the end of your day to make sure you're filling your own gaps.
Attaching new habits to the beginning or end of things is natural to us and the best way to bring the behaviors and beliefs we need into our lives.
In the three minutes you’ve set aside in the morning, sit by yourself and pick one thing you can do for yourself today to improve your day.
It might be deciding to make a lunch date with a friend you haven’t seen in a while.
It might be showing up at a yoga class or taking no phone calls for the first hour of the morning.
To wake up and hope the day will be great is outsourcing the day. Instead, pick just one act you can perform yourself that might change your day for the better.
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In the last three minutes of the day, assess how you felt about the one thing you picked.
Did it help your day?
Should you try it again tomorrow or choose something else?
Expanding Our Love
Our preparation for love began with two rules guiding us to solitude and selfexamination.
We began practices to transform loneliness to productive time in solitude.
We unpacked our pasts and began to unlock our samskaras so that we can learn from our karma.
Whether you’re in a relationship, looking for one, or leaving one, these rules help you build and maintain the skills you need for love.
By now, you're already better prepared for love than most people!
And that opens the door for you to share your love with another person.
One of the translators of the Bhagavad Gita, Eknath Easwaran, said, “Love grows by practice, there’s no other way.”
Now, as we move into the practice of love, we will build our ability to recognize love, define it, develop it, trust it, and, if and when we are ready, to embrace love.
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Click here to read on .... Write a Love 💌 Letter to Yourself
