Couple Love:
The Mature Love Relationship

• In your love relationship, your couple love:
• Why settle for what's 'normal' (i.e. compromises)?
• Instead go for the best (unconditional love)!
• Yes, it IS possible, and it feels sooo great!

Couple Love: Are You Ready for the Next Level?
There are many types of love and many ways to build a love relationship. Most couples have what one might term 'a normal love relationship'. Obviously ... since the definition of 'normal' is 'what most people do'. But the fact that it's common doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best option. There might be better, more satisfying options available. For those who are ready for it.

The common love relationship (in the Western world) is one based on equality and compromise. You, however, might just be ready for something more. We'll get back to that in a moment.

The 'Normal' Couple Love Relationship
Yes, there are love relationships based on lots of other things than equality and compromise. There are relationships based on abuse, on addiction, on sadism/masochism, on the old fashioned roles of males and females (think USA or Europe in the 1950s), or on a host of other things.

The general norm in the West, however, seems to be that people base their relationships on equality of the sexes (and 'equality of people' in same sex relationships) - plus compromise. Nothing wrong with equality, but when it comes to love compromise is a problem.

By compromise I mean 'tit for tat': You give me something and in return I give you something. Like this:

'Is rock climbing, paragliding and beer with your buddies every Friday important to you? Then you're gonna have to accept that I want three cats plus I want the bathroom cleaned twice a week.'

You know - compromises like that. Those examples seem fairly innocent (but are they?); however less innocent compromises abound, too. Like:

'You want more sex than I do. I want more new clothes and shoes than you do. Let's figure something out.'

Making Couple Love Work ... Or?
When I give a speech about all these things, 90 percent of the people listening say, 'Yeah, so what? We're making it work, aren't we?'

Yes, you are making it work. Sort of. But are you happy together, really happy? Do you feel a love so great that it seems like your heart is bursting with love - on a regular basis even thought you've known your partner for several years?

No? Small wonder.

Because, you see, compromises are actually poison to couple love. Compromises change something that should have been based on love into something based on trade (tit for tat). Trade isn't love, it's trade. Practical, yes, maybe even fair, but not very loving.

AND there is a viable alternative.

Couple Love for Conscious People:
The Mature Love Relationship, Based on Unconditional Love
The mature love relationship is based on unconditional love. Its nature can be described said very quickly and easily. In fact it can be said in two words:

‘I love.’

That all there is to say about it.

If you were to say it in a few more words, you might say, for instance:

Everything is experienced as simple and easy.

There is no lack of love.

You make no demands on the other person.

You do not expect anything of the other person.

You do not limit each other.

You do not compromise.

You do not have to get your needs met by the other person.

You are unconditionally open – without limits – about absolutely everything.

You are unconditionally honest – without limits– about absolutely everything.

You are totally free to be, feel, say, and do as you want.

Your only purpose in being with the other person is to experience, express and live out love.

Just love in itself makes you feel the greatest satisfaction – and in addition to that there are all the other things that you may share (sex, children, interests, etc.). Everything becomes simple, easy, and satisfactory.

Unconditional Couple Love: Is it Even Possible?
People have asked me if that sort of couple love, that sort of love relationship, even exits. The answer is yes. It does exit.

To a great extent I experience this myself, and I know other people whose relationship is like that – in varying degrees. It is not very common. Not yet. But hopefully it soon will be.

Personally, I still run into challenges, off and on, regarding these things. Invariably they occur in areas where my ego is still dominant.

Happily, as I keep working at my personal development, those areas become fewer every year. So most of the time I experience my present love relationship as being based on love that is completely unconditional. But still, couple love based on unconditional love is an educational process for me.

I have no real way of knowing if my love partner feels the same kind of love that I do, and in truth it doesn't matter. The important thing for me and my experience of love is that I myself feel that kind of love. Perhaps that is an important point to make:

It Takes Two to Tango ...
But Only One to Love Unconditionally
To make an experience of a couple love based on unconditional love (or with as few conditions as you can handle) all it takes is one person. You. What kind of love your partner feels isn't important!

The point of that is this: Your experience of love takes place inside you. When you experience love, you're experiencing your OWN feeling of love. YOU are the source of that great feeling!

But isn't it important that your partner loves you back? Well, yes, but only because chances are that without love there'll be no relationship. So, conversely, if there IS a relationship, chances are that there is love. Chances are also, however, that the love isn't without conditions. No matter!

Your experience is what matters to you, and that comes from your own feeling of love. If that feeling is unconditional (or as close as you can get to that), it will feel great! Much better than if your love is conditional.

The absolutely wonderful thing is that when you begin your quest towards unconditional couple love, your partner will feel safe and inspired. And so the lack of conditions on your couple love becomes contagious.

Case in Point: Me, the Personal Development Guy
For me the way to progress in unconditional couple love has been based on a few things especially: Raising my consciousness, opening up, accepting and letting go.

Understanding how things are connected (=raising my consciousness) has made everything much easier. Raising your consciousness takes dedication/will power.

Opening up to everything that I contain (including some very repressed feelings) and everything my partner contains, too, has been of incredible importance: No openness = No results. Opening up takes courage/trust, too.

Accepting other people is a choice, nothing more. It's a choice I made back in the Danish equivalent of high school. I decided that I am human, other people are human, and whatever is human must be natural and acceptable. After that it was easy.

Probably that's why people started coming to me to talk about their problems and challenges. That started shortly after high school. Apparently these people, some of whom I hardly knew, felt my acceptance.

Later I became a coach/counsellor and teacher, pretty much because it was what I did anyway. The only difference is that now I get paid for it. :-)

The hardest thing for me, it turned out, was accepting certain parts of myself - the suppressed parts. The parts I thought were negative; the parts that I didn't want to be there - unpleasant emotions among them. They were there, of course, and learning to live with that fact - and accept those parts - was a real challenge.

In the course of my personal development it has been a fantastic help to have a method for letting go of everything that limits me and causes discomfort/pain (the Let Go Method).

I must add that I have been (and am) almost completely uncompromising in this respect.

When I encounter something in my love relationship which is unpleasant or painful, I consistently use the two tools of raising my consciousness and letting go. I start immediately and I go on until the problem is solved.

(And I encourage my partner to do the same thing, but that is entirely up to my partner).

Unconditional Couple Love = No Compromises
By nature unconditional love is like that, too: Uncompromising. Both ways, so to speak:

The moment you decide that this is the sort of love you want to experience, nothing else is good enough. It is simply the best, and you want it all!

The same thing is true the other way around: Unconditional love wants you to let go of ALL the parts of your limited personality that have something to do with love (and that is most of them). Nothing less will do!

Ultimately unconditional love will 'cost' you a lot of your small and limited identity [LINK], but is exactly what is needed for you to live an infinitely larger, more radiant, more real, and much more satisfactory version of yourself. And I tell you: It just feels so much better!

Ingredients for an Unconditional Love Relationship
How, then, do you create couple love - a love relationship - based on unconditional love?

Undoubtedly there are many different ways, but, among other things, they have this in common:

• Love - the important thing is loving, not being loved ... choose to love unconditionally

• Consciousness - learn to understand life, love, yourself and your partner

• Honesty - choose to be unconditionally honest in your love life ... be completely authentically you

• Openness - practise being open and receptive no matter what happens

• Trust - practice NOT defending yourself ... instead put your energy into daring to trust

• Being responsible for yourself - take responsibility for meeting your own needs

• Courage – all the above things take courage ... practice daring to choose them

The more you fill yourself and your love relationship with these things, the sooner you will move towards unconditional couple love - a mature love relationship.

Book or Special Report Coming Up
I'm pretty sure that in time I'll write a book or at least a special report on the above mentioned ingredients and unconditional couple love in general. But that'll have to wait a bit.

In the meantime you might also look at the one step regarding couple love that will prove the most useful to most people: Learning to separate needs from love. You can read about that on the page I Need Your Love.

Good luck! :-)