One of our greatest yearnings in life is to experience and express love. The world, bent on protecting you from your reality, provides you with romantic experiences and calls it love. Romance is great. It can provide you with unexplainable pleasure. When it sours, however, it can be the source of excruciating pain, and when that occurs, you blame it on love.

     A word of caution: the distinction between love and romance is not going to be easy for people to understand and accept. Let's try it this way.
     We begin with what is called a beautiful "love affair," which in truth is a romance, a living dream, a fantasy. Romance is great—it's the dance that includes infatuation, lots of compliments, candy and flowers, picnics in the park, moonlight strolls, lots of kissing and possibly some skin-to-skin body contact.
     Then we enter the golden era of romance. Watching the clock till we can be "together again," with secret code names for each other and constant phone calls that begin with, "Hi, it's me." Each of us can do no wrong. We have deep philosophical discussions and make impossible promises at 3:00 a.m. over milkshakes and onion rings, and everything we do, we do together.

     But let's look closer. Remember, we're the folks with a mountain of guilt and negative feelings from which we so desperately want to be free because of the believed consequences of the imagined guilt. Furthermore, the world has taught us that there are two ways to rid of guilt (neither of which work). First, repress it, put it out of your mind, or push it down to the lower part of the iceberg, below the level of awareness. Then, second, if some turkey comes along and makes us aware of it again, project it on to him. He becomes the guilty one and we become the victim.
     If we enter this relationship for what we can get out of it (which we all do, initially), the most valuable thing we think we can do for each other is help each other repress our guilt. The golden era of romance does this perfectly. Each makes the other feel happy and carefree. Songs constantly go through our minds such as, "Close To You" and "You Light Up My Life." Wow! This works better than a double Valium. Each makes the other feel good about ourselves, protecting each other from our guilty feelings.

     On that level, each hates the other because of being a constant, subconscious reminder of that from which each wants to be free. Neither is really in love with the other. Rather each of us is in love with the other's ability to keep feeling good about ourselves. Each of us has assigned to the other the responsibility for giving us happiness. The romance lasts as long as we can succeed. We do our very best, but the world out there is always looking for ways to remind us how inadequate we really are. Each has become dependent upon the other as the source of happiness. Dependency breeds contempt. So when either of us become unhappy, the seemingly obvious reason is that other is at fault.
     In a young relationship, problems with money usually are very effective to reveal a man's inadequacy and worthlessness. The result is he becomes depressed and unhappy, and he attacks her because, after all, she is the one who is supposed to keep him happy. She plays her part too. From the world's point of view, this is when "love" changes to hate, but love can't change into anything else.

     The "give to get" idea means simply, "I will say nice things to you and feed your needy ego as long as you fulfill my needs." This condition is terminal romance and can only end in disaster, unless we change the purpose for our relationship.
     The end usually begins like this. After a sleepless night, over breakfast, one says to the other, "Can we talk?" Now the partner has seen this coming for a long time and knows what's going down. Besides, the partner has a few choice comments that has been saved up, too. The first salvo is something like, "What's wrong with you?" And the other responds with, "What do you mean, what's wrong with me? I've been wondering what's wrong with you!"
     At this point, it doesn't matter who's talking, the message for both is the same. Where each had served the world's purpose of helping the other repress those heavy guilt feelings, each has now failed and has been elected to serve the world's purpose of being the one upon whom guilt is projected. Each is the other's culprit and gets to be a victim. Where they both used to be the source of the other's happiness, they are now seen as the reason for being unhappy.
     She says, "You used to be so kind and considerate, so loving and supportive, and now look at you!" And he blasts back with, "But you're the one who's changed, what happened to you?" Then the specifics come out. It's as though the long range artillery barrage is over, and it's time for the hand-to-hand combat. She says, "You never mow the lawn anymore." He says, "You don't keep the house cleaned up like you used to." She say, "You don't take the garbage out." Then with a triumphant smirk he replies, "You cooked it, you take it out!"
     In the closing arguments they shift to the strategy that a strong defense is the best offense. She opens with, "Where have I failed? I tried so hard to..." He counters with, "No, no—it's not your fault; I should never have..." They end the roller coaster ride back in the sack.
     Is that sad, or what? Dear friend, that's not love, that's romance, and as soon as one gets tired of this little game, the love song becomes "Please Release Me." If either is not able to change the other into someone who can always make him or her happy (which is, of course, impossible), the ego says, "Another can be found." So they rejoin the dance of the desperates in search of a "meaningful relationship." This time he'll try to find someone who understands him and, of course, younger too, while she undoubtedly will end up humming Peggy Lee's old song, "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me."
     The solution to this is simple but not easy (and it's the same solution to problems in every area of your life). Healing of a specific problem "out there" cannot be the reason for requesting to see your experiences differently, although it can be the result. If you focus on the problem, you will spend a lifetime trying to heal your relationships again and again. Why spend time "fixing" something, just so you can go back to using it in the same manner that caused it to break? Besides, when you get tired of it you will abandon it for another and another, all the time desperately trying to find love.

     The relationship you are in right now is the best tool imaginable. To do this you simply change the purpose of your relationship. You enter every relationship initially looking for what you can get out of it. Because you believe that you are incomplete, you seek wholeness. The ego urges you to seek for what you want outside yourself. The purpose used to be to get your happiness and your wholeness from the other person and this you can never do because your wholeness is not in the other person. It is never "out there." it can only be found within.
     So change the purpose of the relationship from one in which you try to find your wholeness in the other to one in which you share your wholeness with the other. Now you will think in terms of what you can give to the relationship, and if you're thinking about what a great body you have to give, forget it! Relationships are not of the body, they are of the mind. The amount of wholeness or happiness that you can get from another is very limited (if any at all). You can only give wholeness in a relationship.

     And remember. Whatever you give, you have! You can only have by giving. The result is you find your wholeness within by giving it to another. You find it in yourself as you give it away, but how do you give away wholeness?

     If you can see the other as OK, or whole, you are teaching the other that you are whole. You are giving wholeness. What you teach, you learn. What you give, you have, but there are always some behaviors that you can accept and some that you cannot. So whenever you see something that you like or admire, you must think, feel, and express gratitude. Whenever you see something other than that, you must ask your inner-truth to help you see it differently—the first step in the process of forgiveness.
     Now we can almost hear you say, "Wait a minute! Am I supposed to forgive everything that everyone wants to do to me?" No. If you perceive that someone is going to attack you either physically or verbally, you'd better defend yourself (because you are in a state of fear). But if, in a moment of sanity, you can remember the chapter on forgiveness, it might become clear that:

     They've just brought a little chunk of your iceberg of guilt (from where it was safely repressed in your subconscious) up into your awareness. You now can choose whether to free yourself of it through forgiveness or reinforce it through projection onto them.
     Time for another "wait a minute?" Are you wondering how a thug attacking you could reflect something you don't like about yourself? Remember, don't be fooled by the form the world is reflecting. Do you remember how kids are best friends one day and worst enemies the next? Maybe at 10 years old you told your best friend (in anger), "I wish you were dead!" Or maybe at some point you have avoided someone, wishing they were out of your life. These are murderous thoughts and inevitably result in guilty feelings which, over time, you have successfully forgotten (repressed). And here is why a wise man said "Love your enemies."

     How thankful you should be for your dear loving friends who devote so much time and energy, and sometimes endure so much pain, just to help you learn. So what if you don't do it right? What if you're not ready to forgive this one? No problem. No opportunity for forgiveness is ever lost. You'll get another chance.
     Because a particular problem has come into your awareness, it is one you are ready to deal with and it will come around again. There is, however, no use saying, "I see my error and I'll be ready for it when it comes around next time." Next time, the same "fear thought" that is awaiting forgiveness will be disguised in a different form. It's never easy.