Focus on the the Love, Not the Problem

Relationships are our greatest experience and our greatest challenge. For couples, it starts with a spark of interest, full blown attraction, irritation, or even love at first sight. For family, it starts with birth.

As I do readings and a story unfolds, I see that the focus in a relationship has often shifted from the love to the hurts, from the love to the confusion, from the love to the problem.

We want to solve, to fix.

But, it is love that brings us back around to what really matters, not the efforts to fix someone else or ourselves.

Of course, sometimes, it is best for a relationship to end. Or, couples and families need professional counsel to help them break patterns that seem to be so ingrained as to be very difficult to fully understand much less alter.

Relationship problems can be used as opportunity.

Problems give us a chance to remember, re-evaluate, and understand where things went off track. Seize the opportunity in the challenge to get back to who you really are. Begin again or chart a new course. You can use affirmative prayer to affirm love in your relationships.

Remember

1. The love that started it all. Think back. Think of how you felt.
2. The love that grew. Did your love grow?
3. The love that remains or the love that changed.

Re-Evaluate

1.  Am I feeling the love? If not, is it obscured somehow? Did I shut-down in some ways to avoid being hurt? Do I harbor resentment? Did what happened change my feelings?
2. Did love grow? Is it still growing? If it seemed to have stopped increasing, when? What happened?
3. Is love still there as strong as ever? Do I love, but not in the same way?

Understand

1. No one can take away the love that you felt, that you feel, that you give. No one can take away the love that you have for yourself.
2. You can come to know where you, where the relationship got off track if it has. You can decide to focus on the love. To focus on what works now. To move forward.
3. You can decide to focus on the love. You can move forward in a different direction and still be focued on love. Never give up on love. Never give up on yourself.

To have loved is not failure. To love is life itself. Whether you love friend, family, lover, pet, or from afar, love is real and no one can take that away from you.

Shift focus from what didn’t work to what matters

What matters is not how much stuff you have, how many people you have dated, what you look like, or the size of your house. What matters is the love…for yourself, for life, for the Divine Source of all.

“In the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Paul McCartney, The End, Abbey Road album