Monday, June 25, 2012

Love and Sex

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3 Things That Only Feel Like Love


Love is a tricky emotion. There are some things that feel like love but they are much too superficial to be the real thing. Real love takes time and doesn't happen over night. Here are three things that people often confuse for love.

Lust

Lust is the feeling that is often mistaken for love at first sight. Lust is an intense and sudden attraction to somebody you hardly know. It is mistaken for love because the attraction is so strong.
Lust can feel like love because the feelings of attraction are strong and all-consuming. The emotions stirred up by lust can feel very real but they are based on a fantasy. To love somebody you must know them well but many people fall in lust while they are still strangers. What people in lust fall for is a fantasy of what might be and reality can get lost in the excitement.
Overwhelmed by physical attraction people in lust can't keep their hands off of each other. They think about each other constantly and talk about one another all the time. Lust is a happy feeling brought on by passionate attraction. If you are inexperienced in matters of the heart it is very easy to mistake all that passion for love.
Lust differs from love like night differs from day. Lust happens in the early phase of a relationship when people don’t yet know each other. Lust is based on a fantasy, and the fantasy and reality don’t always mesh up. This is where lust runs out of steam.
Although physical attraction is definitely a key ingredient in any romantic relationship, love is more than just a physical longing. If a relationship is all about physical attraction it is based on lust. Really loving another person takes time and it can't be based on physical attraction alone.

Obsession

Obsessions are often mistaken for love because people rationalize the crazy feelings they are having. They assume that it must be love if the other person is always on their mind. Obsession is similar to lust but it is much more misleading and destructive. While lust is often fleeting, fading as two people come to know each other better, obsession sticks around.
The more time and effort invested in an unhealthy obsession the more intense the obsession can become. People in an obsessed state have a one track mind where the other person is concerned and they often lose touch with who they are as an individual. This loss of individuality creates a vicious circle of behavior where the obsessed person grows more and more dependant on the other person to bolster their sense of self.
Even unrequited love, love that is not returned, can become an overwhelming obsession. When one person believes they are in a relationship that doesn't really exist, or when one person is more invested in an existing relationship than the other, the foundation for an obsession has been laid.
Real love is nurturing and helps people grow but obsession is debilitating. If you feel like you have lost yourself, if you are always striving to please your partner without them doing the same for you, and if you find yourself making all decisions in your life based on the feelings and needs of the other person you could be dealing with obsession.

Rebounding

A rebound is a relationship that starts up very quickly after another relationship has ended. Rebounds are rarely based on love but are really a way of alleviating the loneliness people feel when a relationship ends.
Rebounding can feel like love for the simple reason that the people involved want to be in love. They are used to the security of being in love and more than anything else they want to feel that security again. They convince themselves that they are in love when they are actually missing the safety and comfort of the relationship they left behind.
If an old relationship keeps interfering with the progress of a new relationship it could mean that the relationship is a rebound. When somebody is on the rebound they are not entirely over their previous relationship. They may still be trying to work out unresolved issues from that relationship. Rebound relationships may feel like love but they are still impacted by unsettled feelings from the past.

5 Things Your Girlfriend Won't Tell You


Last week we took a look at the 5 biggest secrets that boyfriends keep from their girlfriends, the 5 things we can’t let you know because it throws a real curve ball in our game. But as we all know guys aren’t the only game players in relationships. Girls play their fair share of games too. Girls play it coy, they wait for you to make moves before strategizing their own, and girls honestly don’t always say what they mean. Why? Why wouldn’t girls just tell it like it is? What do girls want from their guys? Why does it seem like girls only want the guys who treat them badly? Just what is going on in the female mind? Why won’t girls give good guys a chance? Finally we can give you some answers. Here it is, as promised, a look at the 5 things your girlfriend doesn’t want you to know as told by Love Lady Tina Kells.
1. We like the chase – you chasing us.
Yep, it’s sad but true that when a guy is too eager to catch us we wonder why. What is wrong with this guy? Why is he so clingy? Is he a control freak? Is he a serial dater? A player with many girlfriends on the go? Is he insane? It’s not that we don’t want to be caught, we do, we just don’t want to feel trapped and when things happen too fast trapped is how we feel. We need to be sure of our feelings and of our attraction before we can step off the racetrack and give up the chase. You need to woo us to make us yours. Some guys lay out traps, saying all the right things and meaning none of them, in an attempt to woo us and this gives way to our biggest fear; falling prey to an insincere guy who is more about the game than being in a relationship. For this reason even once we’re yours, even once we are sure of your feelings and you are sure of ours, we need to still feel a little bit of the chase. When you chase us we feel like you want us and are willing to do some work to be with us and we don’t want that feeling to go away just because you’ve caught us.
2. When we say we’re “OK” or that things are “fine” the opposite is probably true.
Girls are communicators. It is hardwired in to our psyches to talk and talk and talk some more whenever there is discord or conflict. So if you sense there’s a problem and gather the courage to ask us and we respond with a “fine” or “it’s ok” or some other sentence with less than 7 (short) words chances are good that we really want to talk. So, you think, what’s a guy to do? You ask a question, you get an answer, and you plan based on that answer. Who wants to read between the lines or guess what is really going on? What a waste of time, right? Wrong! When girls pull the short answers out during a conversation it is because we want you to put the effort in to getting us to open up. It comes from a place of feeling like you don’t usually care what we have to say so we want you to put some effort in to getting us to talk so we can be sure we will be listened to. Now those perceptive guys among you may have your hands up right now waiting to ask the obvious question… if a girl feels like she’s not usually heard isn’t that the REAL problem? Yes, yes it is, and one little talk won’t stop that feeling of being marginalized. In psychology we call this a learned response, a behavior that does not come naturally but rather has been developed through a process called social conditioning. You may very well be the most attentive boyfriend since the dawn of time but if her previous guys made her feel insignificant or unheard you’ll have to help her carry that baggage. Heck, you’ll have to help her unpack it and put it away! So when your girl replies with a curt little answer to your questions don’t take her at face value. Calmly and gently ask her a few more times. Once she feels like you will hear her nature will take over and, voila! You’ll be communicating.
3. We want you to have your guy time.
It is such a myth that girls don’t like to let their guy just hang with the boys. It's a terrible lie perpetrated by relationship-phobes throughout the ages. It is totally untrue that we want you to give up your life to be with us. Think of it this way… when we met you and fell for you, you were (hopefully) single and your friends were a big part of your life. Take your friends away and a big piece of the guy we fell for goes with them. So we want you to keep your guy time. We know you need your friends and truth be told we need our friends too. That being said, obviously when you are single you have lots of spare time to spend with friends but when you are in a relationship some of that time is going to be taken up by your significant other (A.K.A. us). That is only normal. It is normal for you to need your guy time and it is normal for you to want to spend time with us. If you find the right balance the guy-time issue quickly becomes a non-issue. It is when we feel like you don’t make as much time for us as you do for them or that you resent being away from your friends when you are with us that the stereotypical “girlfriend verses the friends” scenario takes the stage. It’s all about balance. Spending time with your friends or with us will never be an issue as long as there is a balance and as long as we never feel that they mean more to you than we do or that they come always first.
4. We want to know your friends but aren’t so sure you need to know ours.
I’m not going to lie; this is hypocrisy in its most raw form. We want you to bring us around your friends, we want to know them and we want them to like us, but we aren’t quite as crazy about you knowing our friends. The why of this is as simple as it is irrational and here it is… we want to know your boys so we can understand the kinds of things they may get you to do when we’re not around. In short, will they encourage you to cheat on us, will they get you doing reckless and dangerous things, and will they help you engage in self-destructive activities? What we want to know is if they will be good or bad influences on you. We also want to create a buffer; we want your friends to like us so that they won’t want you to lose us. If there is no tension between your friends and us then we don’t need to fear them asking you to choose between love and friendship. Now on the flip side, we don’t really want you getting all chummy with our friends because we don’t want them to fill you in on all of our dirty little secrets. As previously noted girls are talkers by nature and we don’t want them to let something slip that may make you raise an eyebrow in our direction. We also fear, but will never admit fearing, you wanting one of our friends more than you want us. It’s bad enough to lose your guy to another girl but when that girl was once a friend, well, the sting is even sharper. So allow us this hypocrisy. It’s irrational, that's true, but it’s also quite harmless.
5. We worry that other girls look better now that you are in a relationship.
Mike nailed the core of every girlfriend's relationship insecurity on the head when he brought up the GIGS (Grass Is Greener Syndrome). The idea that life is better on the other side is one of the most destructive forces in relationship world and girls feel that guys fall for it way too often. It is a great fear of ours that once you can’t have other girls you will suddenly want them all. It leads to a lot of unfounded jealousy brought on by innocent comments on your part or casual non-flirtatious conversations with other girls. So what’s a guy to do? In a perfect world you’d stop interacting with other girls altogether but our rational super-ego knows that’s not realistic. What you need to do is follow these three simple rules; 1) never pay more attention to another girl than you do to your girlfriend, 2) never comment over and over how hot/cool/nice/fun another girl is, and 3) if you meet a great girl while you’re in a relationship hook her up with one of your buddies (also known as taking her off the market and getting her out of our face). And should you ever really get the itch to jump the fence and live life on the other side... just do it! Don’t lead us on, don’t cheat on us, don’t sneak around, just end the relationship. If it ends up being a GIGS fueled mistake… oh well, consider it a hard lesson learned and leave us alone... we won't want you back anyway!