Get Deeper Love — Inside & Out!

When we are yearning for deeper love relationships, we are often needing to reawaken the passion and power of our own internal love connection. Our ability to energize our love relationships starts with grounding into a deeper space for holding love. And that space exists INSIDE US! By deepening the love connection to ourselves first, we move into a love-full "flow," that nourishes and holds spaces for the flourishing of our love desires. Creating love on the outside begins by cultivating an inner love which is contagious to those around us!

So many times in my life I have yearned for a deeper connection in my love life: in my marriage (past and present!), with my kids and other family members, with friends and with members of my community. I've prayed for love, meditated on love, actively strived for and pushed to create love. And oftentimes, in the end, I was severely disappointed. For years, I made a particular meaning of these disappointments: I wasn't that lovable, or I wasn't good enough to be loved, or others didn't really want me. At some points, I even became disillusioned with love, figuring that it just wasn't for me. Maybe I'd had my chance at love, failed and that was it, I would tell myself.

These were the "stories" that I lived into and out of each day, and the result was that I would continuously expend my energy to create loving situations and relationships around me, but I would always come up empty. I over-gave. I overdid. I tried WAY too hard without receiving the return on love investment (ROLI!) I was longing for in every cell of my body. I was all about love, but love wasn't all about me, it seemed. It sucked.

When my love investments didn't work out the way I wished they had, I'd withdraw, feel awful for awhile, and tell myself that I needed to be tougher and less needy if I were to actually find the love I was longing for. I needed a tougher skin. I needed to "just do me," and not worry so much about connecting with those who weren't ready to connect with me. I'd give love the cold shoulder, so to speak. But that didn't help either. I would still feel unfulfilled and just generally crappy about my love path.

And despite my best attempts, that oh-so-familiar ache of desire to love and be loved, to be fully met and held in love, never really went away. At times, I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Maybe I was missing something that other people who seemed to flourish and thrive in love had, and I had somehow been skipped over at birth.

I had gotten the short end of the "love stick," I figured (ya ya, I know how that sounds! :-). And as these cycles of desire and denial continued, like a rollercoaster ride, I could never quite find my footing. Things would be working out well in love for awhile, and then... they wouldn't

There were long patches of my life in which my love relationships always seemed to be missing something. I would feel misunderstood. Or unsafe. Or unsure of whether the relationship would last. I would worry I wasn't giving enough at times, and at others I would be overwhelmed by how much I was giving without feeling like I was receiving all that much in return.

"Love was complicated for me, during these times, and I yearned for it instead to be full of flow, open, deep and beautifully powerful. I believed in the epic possibilities of love, but I rarely felt them, and that was beyond disappointing to me. My history of disappointment in love sucked me of my energy and made it difficult to engage in love connections without worrying and stress."

After years of trying and trying and never quite getting the results I wanted, I gave up on searching outside of myself for answers, and decided to turn inward. At first this sucked even more than going outside of myself seeking love, because, well, I had never taken the time to get to know my inner love landscape! It was scary, intimidating and frustrating, as I set out to get to know myself, my feelings, my needs and my desires, on the level of depth I had always yearned from from another, for the first time.

I finally decided that I was going to find a way to experience deep, beautiful, lasting love — with myself!! Believe it or not, I was in my late 30's when I began this journey into loving myself. I was married (for the second time!) with a beautiful family, and everything actually seemed to be going pretty well. Except, of course, I still couldn't shake that inner ache! The idea of connecting to myself deeply from and with love was a totally foreign concept for me, and at first I really didn't know how to do it. After all, as children, we'd always been taught to love others, be kind to others, even to put them first.

I felt incredibly selfish as I started down the path to loving myself first. Me first. I struggled to even figure out what that meant! But, there was a deep knowing that began to emerge as I came to realize that what all of my external efforts at creating and embracing love were lacking was... ME. I wasn't truly able to be myself in my love relationships, I started to realize, because I was so desperate to find and to keep and not to lose love! I realized that until I knew and understood and deeply loved ME, no one else truly could.

And so I began to shower myself in the love that I was so desperate to receive from others. I started to love me first. And guess what?! For the first time fully in my life, I began to experience the love that I had been longing for. Only it wasn't with a romantic partner, with a friend or family member, or somewhere out in the world. It was ALL. WITHIN. ME. Before you say something along the lines of: "that's not TRUE love; true love has to be SHARED!" I will say I agree with you — at least I used to!

Here's why: Once I began to turn toward myself with love, I started to see all of the lovable, beautiful, brilliant, amazing, capable parts of myself that I had been missing, or not expressing in my love relationships. I had been out in the world desperately trying to fill a void within myself. and it turned out, this was not because I was actually lacking something, but because I lacked a deep love connection with myself. I really had NO IDEA how much love potential I held inside of me, because I'd never actually taken the time to get to know myself! So embedded in my old "love stories" had I been, that I had totally lost track of my own greatness. I was busy turning myself inside out, wishing for something that seemed way out of reach, and blaming and judging myself for not being able to get there. Not to mention, I was making myself miserable in the process, all the while continuing to create experiences and expectations in which love never quite panned out. Which of course made me feel even crappier about my potential to fully experience love.

I had been stuck in a loop, as so often we are when it comes to the things that we are so deeply wishing for and dreaming of and desiring in the outside world that have us totally disconnecting from ourselves. And I knew that the only way to really experience the love that I had been chasing after for so many years was to begin with myself.

This may sound #easiersaidthandone and it is, because we are so conditioned — culturally and in our upbringing — to look for our meaning, our answers, our connections outside of ourselves. Also, getting connected to our inner landscape, really exploring it, mapping it and getting to know it is HARD WORK! Think of the energy, time, commitment, curiosity, excitement, wonder, exhilaration, sexiness, pleasure, thrill, rush, longing, appeal, magnetic draw, willingness, super-human stamina that we put out when we first meet someone that we are enamored with. How much of your thoughts, energy and desires do they occupy? If we're really being honest, it's A LOT, isn't it?!?

We'll go WAY out of our way

to connect with and impress that special someone when we're caught up in the thrill of a new romance.

"We will go to the ends of the earth — or at the very least, drive across town in the middle of the night after working all day just to bask in the glow of our lover's arms when we're in love. We'll talk for hours on the phone to get to know them and understand how they tick. We'll bring our best selves to each date, dress to impress, go out of our way to make magical memories with them...But do we make that much space and take as much time and energy to fall in love with ourselves? Aren't we worth it???"

After all: I am the only me, and you are the only you that we will ever be! So how do we do it? How do we fall in love with US FIRST? Imagine yourself going on a first, second, third date with a new lover that you are SO enamored with. Imagine the passion and energy of that "honeymoon phase" where they can do no wrong. Envision the care, attention, adoration that you lavish on that special someone who you hope will be "the one." Envision how much time and effort you will expend to really, deeply understand their perspectives, their needs and feelings and beliefs...

Now, take ALL OF THAT and GIVE IT TO YOURSELF! Right here, right now, starting today! There is no time to delay!

Give it a try! I promise you won't regret it. In fact, as you begin to commit to loving yourself on a level you never imagined or dreamed was possible, you will start to see that this love that you embody, this love that you are living into and out of yourself, inspires and uplifts those around you. The energy of deeply rooted love — deeply rooted in YOU of course — is contagious! As we know and love ourselves fully and prioritize our connection to our inner love life, we find that love opportunities begin to blossom outside of us — not out of neediness or lack or a sense that we are missing something, but because we are SO FULL of love in ourselves that it inevitably starts to spill over to those around us.

My love experiences — with my life partner, my kids, my family members and my friends, have become SO MUCH MORE LUSCIOUS, deep, rich, beautiful, fulfilling, authentic and vulnerable since I began to prioritize loving myself first. I hardly recognize the woman I was before: who was always running around trying to conjure up some kind of connection outside of herself.

Begin with you, and you will find that new love resources, opportunities and connections begin to find their way to you — and the love relationships you have will be enriched and amplified through your #mefirst love practices!